Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Yes, I was joking, but thanks for the heads up. I am actually planning to use regular bottled water since we are on a well. Wonderful water but really high PH.

I forgot to mention the problem with the waters in some areas. There seems to be some disagreement on this subject, but this is probably because some areas water has much more chlorine or chloramine in it. I did a test many years ago, with yeast and a starter, using local and bottled water to make a poolish for each. In both the bottled water rose faster (barely faster with the yeast), but both eventually caught up, then collapsed. Since then, I have used bottled water for starter breads. I figured that even though the starter is not totally killed, maybe some of the organisms are, so the balance may be thrown off by the chlorine. For yeast breads I just use the filtered water from my fridge, as there is no aroma or taste of chlorine. Maybe I'll do a test with that water soon.

Dave,

Chloramine is the real danger. Chlorine evaporates, so it can be removed just by leaving the water to sit out, open, for a few hours. Chloramine takes literally days to break down, so this isn't practical.

I learned through bitter personal experience that if you use chloramine water for your sourdough (a) it'll take 2X to 3X as long to rise, and (b) multiple cycles will eventually kill off your starter. This means, ironically, that SF tap water is unsuitable for SF sourdough.

I don't know if ozone purification has the same effect.

While our city water has chlorine, we are on a well so we do not. However, I ended up switching to white tile everywhere to combat the calcium deposits. We have a service now so I don't know, but when I used to take care of our pool, I had to add acid constantly. We have a filter on the pump and on the fridge itself, but I still would not trust it. One of these days I'll get a ph kit and test the fridge water. It does taste great and got an all clear from the health dept. when we last tested it.

Cubangirl,
You may find this youtube video of interest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUJH98Io_BE

Thank you Linda, it is a nice refresher. I taught myself how to bake bread when I lived in London, had a toddler that lived on peanut butter and honey and the bakers went on strike. Learned to make cookies, chocolate eclairs and shortbread without a mixer as well. However, I have not baked sourdough in many years and not any bread for the last year and a half. Glad to be getting back into it.

That is great info on the chloramine. I recently tried to do a sourdough start and it went very poorly; I presumed my kitchen wasn't warm enough, but our water does have chloramine, so it may well have been that. I've giving it another swing this week hopefully, so will use filtered water this time.