厨房的奥秘是每周探索烹饪和食物周围的奇怪之处。它们可能是不应该在不应该失败的食谱，来自不同来源的建议，或者只是怪异的。如果发生在厨房中，您不确定为什么要发送tweet to The Food Geekto find out what’s happening.

Donna asks via twitter:

嗨，唐娜，

面包，从面包大师和作者彼得·赖因哈特（Peter Reinhart）借用，都是关于转型的。我们烹饪的一切在某个时候都活着，但是面包经历了活着到死者的转变多次，然后才能最终向我们发展。你知道吗？我什至不会继续解释。有关一些出色的面包信息和哲学，让我们听到赖因哈特先生自己的声音：

What you’re attempting is that much more interesting than even normal homemade bread, because you’re not starting with yeast. Instead, you’re inviting the yeast that’s hanging out in your kitchen and giving it an inviting place to live before you give it some meaningful work to do.

It’s as if you have a halfway house for wayward yeast, and you’re hoping their more varied lives can make for a productive member of society that is far more rich and varied than your garden variety, prepackaged yeast. More importantly, you’re hoping that it makes your bread something special.

There are a few ways that the bread rising process can go wrong, and an extra way or two that is special only for wild sourdough breads. However, all of them revolve around the same issue: for whatever reason, you don’t have enough living yeast producing living yeast by-products.

In a normal bread, the first problem to check for is that your yeast is alive to start with. If you’re using the hardy instant yeast, then by and large you merely have to verify that the expiration date hasn’t passed, and if you’ve kept them in the refrigerator after you’ve opened them, all should be well. If you’re concerned, take a half-teaspoon, put it in some lukewarm water and wait 15 minutes. If you have a bunch of bubbles, all is well. If not, get some new yeast. This won’t help with the sourdough, of course, but it’s worth throwing in.

使用普通面包检查的第二件事是，您随后不会杀死酵母。杀死酵母的最快方法是将其加热至120°F。起动器很难做到这一点，因为酵母已经与一些水和面粉完全混合在一起，但是酸面团起动器可能更容易受到较低的温度（例如100°F）。为了安全起见，不要让水超过体温，您应该无忧无虑。

第三个潜在问题是侵略性自来水。这并不是列表中的很高，但是如果您使用的是氯的自来水，则有可能杀死酵母。如果您的自来水闻起来可疑，请使用过滤水，但我真的只是在这里覆盖基地。

Okay, now to the sourdough-specific problems. The most likely culprit in this case is that your starter isn’t all that active. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a lazy starter; in many ways, it’s idea, because you don’t want the starter to rise like a bread would rise, or the starter would quickly overtake the kitchen. You want a home for the yeast, not a gymnasium for them.

To use the starter, you want to let it know that it’s time for work to be done. This means giving it more food in the form of water and yeast, then give it time to go. Shirley Corriher suggests in烘烤to take a 1/4 cup of starter with 1.5 cups of water and 9 oz of AP flour, mix that together, and let it sit for 12 to 16 hours. From there, you can use it as you would any other starter. It should be active and tasty.

一些食谱甚至建议您在最后的面团中添加一些额外的酵母。我怀疑有些人认为这是作弊，并建议酸面团的真正精神纯粹是使用野生酵母。请为此心动，但是只要起动器做得很好，我就不会感到羞耻。加工的酵母不会为面包增添任何不良口味，但您可能不会那么强烈。

There are, of course, many care and feeding issues with the creation and maintenance of a sourdough starter that are not covered here. Yeast, left to its own devices, will reproduce until all of the food is eaten and it’s sitting in a pool of alcohol of its own making. Your sourdough yeast are no different, but they also mix with bacteria who have stopped by your halfway house. The bacteria lend the extra acidic flavor, but let the acid mix get too high, and you’ve killed the yeast.

因此，请遵循您的入门者的护理说明，并记住这几个酵母面团管理的原则，您将获得面包的奖励，并带有所有奇观和多样性，只有完整的生活才能带给您。