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Warning: My bread kept falling flat until I stopped using tap water
I used to grab water straight from my kitchen sink in Austin for dough, but my loaves always came out dense and flat after 6 tries. Last month I switched to filtered bottled water and the rise doubled immediately, turns out our chlorine levels were killing the yeast. Has anyone else had their local water mess with fermentation like that?
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carr.lee29d ago
and man, I felt that frustration in my bones. @ray136, you've got a point, but when you're determined to make decent bread, you'll try anything. Same thing happened to me when I moved to a new city. My first five loaves were these sad, dense bricks. I switched to bottled water just out of desperation and boom, worked like magic. It's not just chlorine either. Some places have so much fluoride or other minerals they basically nuke the yeast before it can do its job. I've heard of people letting tap water sit out overnight to let the chlorine gas off, but who's got time for that when you just want bread? Bottled water is cheap insurance in my book.
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