If I'm making cinnamon-raisin-nut bread, for instance, most
of the flavor will come from the nuts, cinnamon and any sugar
or fats added. So long as I measure everything right, it's pretty
much going taste like cinnamon-raisin nut bread.

So why not just make that as a conventionally yeasted bread?
It is totally unlikely that the sourdough flavors will be noticeable
in such a fancy bread.

I do make it as a conventionally yeasted bread. I was talking about bread in general, not just sourdough, but I guess I should have kept it to sourdough alone.


The starter is off to where? The races?

If I'm lucky.

I really doubt that sourdough
flavors are going to be distinguishable in honey-sweetened whole-
wheat bread. Again a good possibility for Fleishmann's, which
incidentally is not so likely to take the day off and go to the races.

I've made it with sourdough and plain yeast. Both taste good, and both taste very different from the other.

As Mike said, with a lean loaf, if your technique is bad, there's
nothing to hide behind and the bread will suffer.

Mike should be braver, and so should you! Take your lumps and
learn from your experience.

What makes you think I haven't? Just because I like breads with more than four ingredients doesn't mean I don't make good bread with just four ingredients.

Also, when you're making an enriched bread, you don't expect to get
(at least, I don't) a very open and airy crumb. If you're making a lean
wheat bread, an open crumb is one of the hallmarks of a well made
loaf, and getting that open crumb is not easy to do. So expectations,
I think, also play into it.

"Lean" and "hallmarks" and "well-made" are some terms deserving of
contextual qualification. "Lean" is good in meat if you are not socked
into Lipitor, "Hallmarks" for greetings, and "well-made" for reverent
book readers. "Enriched" is a lovely word (usually, in bread, meaning
added vitamins).

Dick, you really should write an anti-dictionary of forbidden bread terms for rfs. It would make posting much easier.

In plainer terms, if you're looking to make bread that tastes and looks like the bread you buy at a good bakery, it's easier to achieve that goal if you shoot for the breads that have more "stuff" in them than the breads that use only four ingredients.

Simple sourdough is pretty straightforward. I do not think that one should
rise to the status of an advice giver with a message like: simple sourdough
bread is hard to make so you should start by adding a lot of stuff to your
dough so that, if the sourdough fermentation fails for some reason, no one
will notice it.

If sourdough were so simple, there would assuredly be fewer of the noobies around here who so regularly bring out the best in you.

But that's really not what I meant, and if that's how it came across, then I take all the blame for bad writing. I've been busy and distracted -- cut me some slack, here, would ya? ;-)

How's this? Simple sourdough bread is indeed simple to make. Sourdough bread that looks and tastes like sourdough bread from a good bakery is hard to make. Cinnamon raisin bread that looks and tastes like cinnamon raisin bread from a good bakery is not as hard to make.

Huge holes are a loftier goal, but arbitrary, and not brought closer by
inappropriate ingredients.

Agreed. If you're after big holes, adding more ingredients just makes it harder, most of the time.

I'm not saying that I think it's tougher for a beginner to get a loaf of
bread with just water, flour, salt and leavening. It may be easier,
actually. But I do think it's easier to get a tasty, good-looking loaf
of bread with additions than it is with just the main four ingredients.

Yes, it does appear that you think that, and you should be ashamed of
yourself!

Ashamed of myself? For sometimes putting butter and honey in my bread?

Do I get any points for confessing that, on the rare occasions when I make white bread sourdough, I generally don't add anything but flour, water, salt and starter?

But you may be on the way to writing a book, or launching a fancy web
site, so good luck, especially after I finally succeed to publish a practical
recipe for simple sourdough bread on one page, maybe even a half-page.

I liked your half page, and I admire your religious devotion to the cult of the holy four ingredients. But I like to stray, what can I say?


--
Jeff