Server Room Sour Dough Bread

Server Room Sour Dough Bread

Normally I am all about ones and zeros, but today, I am all about food.

What does food have to do with Experts Exchange? Simple: the tool we are using today is a computer.

That's right. We're using a computer to prepare our bread dough.

The most difficult part of preparing a good sour dough bread is finding a place to keep your starter (the part of the dough you let turn sour) that is around 85F - 90F. Turns out that computers will do this job wonderfully for you.

Being the HUGE nerd that I am, I happen to have a 42U HP rack in my home. It's loaded with 13 boxes that do various different things. Most of them are dev servers for anyone of a number of websites.

The ambient temperature in the server rack is a balmy 85F.

Now, the ideal temperature for a server rack  in a production environment is well below 85F, but these are my play boxes in my home, and I am not about to install a halon system and a server air conditioner for them. So they stay at 85F. When they fail, I'll get another one.

Even if you don't have a server rack, I am betting there is a computer in the house that will be able to give you that tempterature. Perhaps your wife's computer, which she insists on having in a cabinet because she finds it unsightly. You can find one. I promise.

Back to the cooking part.

To create your starter, use the following ingredients:
1 Package dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (bath water warm)
2 cups bread flour
3 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
2 cups warm water to "hatch" the yeast.

Now, sour dough fundamentalists will come to your house and drag you into the street and beat you for using yeast. They want you to ferment your dough the old fashioned way. I, however, care about the quality produced over the methods that produced it. As since active dry yeast is not illegal, I use it.

Drop the yeast into the 2 cups warm water, and let it sit for 5 minutes or so. Don't use a metal bowl. Metal + yeast is bad. Use glass. Do not eat the bubbles.

After 5 minutes or so, combine the rest of the ingredients into the bowl, and blend well with a mixer.

Cover it with a cheesecloth or plastic wrap (I used aluminum foil), and place it in a metal mixing bowl.

Place the mixing bowl in the server rack in a safe place. (Somewhere where it will not get knocked over and kill machines).

Let the starter ferment in your server rack for 3-4 days. The longer you let it ferment, the more sour it will be. Stir it about 3 times a day. After 3 days it is ready to use. After 4, it is extra sour.

At this point, you could bottle it and put it in a refrigerator, for use later, but that's outside the scope of this article. In this article, we're using computers and server racks as incubators for sour dough bread. So we're staying fresh.

Once you have properly fermented your sour dough starter, it's now time to create the bread itself.

Again, we'll take two packages of yeast, and hatch them in 2 cups of warm water for 5 minutes.

Then, in a bread mixer, or giant mixer, or bowl that you can mix with, add the following:

1 cup of your famous starter.
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 eggs (beaten)
3 cups of bread flour

Mix. Mix until you cannot mix anymore.

You may find that the 3 cups of flour are not enough to give you a dough-like appearance. If that is the case, continue to add bread flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is elastic and dough-like.

Once you have good dough, it's back to the server rack we go!

Place the dough in a bowl, and cover it, and place the bowl back in the server rack in the warm 85F air. Allow the dough to rise and double in size. This will take about 90 minutes or so.

During this time, write code, answer questions on experts-exchange.com, or play Age of Empires.

After 90 minutes, check on the dough. It should be huge.

Remove the dough from the bowl, and cut it into 4ths. Each fourth will eventually become a loaf.

foreach($fourth as $loaf) {
        $loaf->flatten();
        $loaf->tightly_roll_into_loaf_shape();
        $loaf->pinch_edges();
        $loaf->place_into_greased_pan();
}

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Cover the pans with aluminum foil, and place them BACK in the server rack for another 90 minutes to let them double in size again.

Once they have doubled in size again, go back into the kitchen and pre-heat the oven to 375F.

Once pre-heat is complete, remove the bread loaf pans from the server rack, and lightly coat the tops with some oil (for a pretty appearance).

Bake at 375F for 30 minutes.

Remove and let cool for 5 minutes.

Slice, serve.