well, I gave in and just added a couple more teaspoons of activated yeast, incorporated, kneaded, and shaped. turned out ok, but a didn't get any of the interesting flavors I had sought with a longer ferment... probably because nothing was fermenting. so many dead yeast cells in this loaf😔😂
@izaya I've been meaning to look up how humans started leavening bread this way. the weird thing really is grinding grains down to flour: like why would you think that makes sense if you'd never done it? and then baking it? you can imagine how you get yeast from unleavened bread dough: you just forget about it and leave it out for a while then still be hungry enough to cook that weird sticky dough that's bigger for some reason
Sourdough takes a long time to do right. You need to keep the dough at the right temperature, about 23C if I remember correctly, and make sure it's not sealed airtight, just covered with a cloth or something. It takes about a week for it to get bubbling really good.
It also takes longer for the dough to rise after you mix it with flour for the bread, about a day. You can add bakers yeast to the sourdough loaf if you don't want to wait but, as you found, the flavor is not as strong.
Regarding the history -- just a conjecture -- when whole grains are stored in a large bin, when you get down to the bottom of the bin you find tiny grain pieces and dust instead of whole grain due to granular convection. Perhaps when some pre-historic cooks were down to their last bits of grain, they noticed that those pieces cooked much quicker and decided to do that intentionally.
@Pat thanks. it wasn't really a sourdough bake: I was trying to use this sponge method I saw mentioned on a forum, but I doubt I got all the details. Haven't really tried making sourdough yet.
That's an interesting theory about grinding. Somewhat related: you know they sell snacks that are just potato chip crumbs like you get from the bottom of the bag? Go figure