No Knead - Whole Grain Testing
OK, as the remaining three starters duke it out for the prize of getting to stick around, here is the plan. I want to use the discard to build a recipe process to make a nice sour, no knead, whole grain or something like it SD bread. Long fermentation of 12 to 24 hours or more is fine with me. If its edible.....fine.....if not....its practice until I get it right.
The combined 100% hydration starters are producing about 120 grams of discard. About 2/3 of a cup. These are currently 25% rye, 25% whole wheat and 50% AP white flours. These starters are more than tripling in size in 8 hours as 1.5:1:1 feeding. All eventually grow to the same volume. One jumps out and takes off. Another grows slower, eventually gets there, but is the most sour/tart of the three. The other is in the middle.
The test I started today is about 2/3 cup (120 grams +/-) of discard, plus 1 tsp salt, plus 1/2 cup spring water, plus 1 cup whole grain, red spring wheat bread flour, plus 1/2 cup white bread flour. All that was mixed together and I'll let it ferment from 10 hours to 18 hours, stretch and fold, let rise from 1 to 3 additional hours, then bake in either a covered cast iron pot, or something like it. This one was more of a wad of dough than a slack, sagging no knead mix like I've seen others use.
If it helps, next time through I will convert that all to grams. I've got the following KA flours:
Whole wheat
White whole wheat
AP
Bread
I have some freshy ground whole grain high gluten bread flour. I'm about out of whole grain rye, but could walk to the store to get more.
My hope is to keep the basic simple process outlined above, but fine tune it as to amounts of starter, salt, water, flours, and ferment times.
Small batches, single loaves to get this going. Any suggestions?
While you can use salt in a starter, it's more commonly used in a very small amount to slow down the fermentation rather than as a required ingredient.
I mised a detail in your posting.
as PostalGrunt.
I had to re-read very carefully to see that you seemed to be making a levain (instead of feeding a starter!)
I do a LOT of NKB loaves and I can't visualize your formula very well, but I think for about 1 lb or 450g of flour, you only need 1/4 cup of starter, assuming it's pretty active.
Even at that low rate, a simple over-night rise often makes me wonder whether I'm making beer or bread...I still have to wait until my 'real job' is over before folding and final proofing and baking and I do sometimes worry—unnecessarily. However, I DO have a fair bit more flour in my recipes than you seem to be experimenting with.
When I read a cups-only formula, I use the translation of "one US cup of flour = approx 240g (or less)". I think you'll need to add more flour to make something really good. Hope this helps!
Sorry for the confusing way I posed the question. To clarify, I'm taking the discard from feedings and attempting to make bread with that. I've done very little in this regard, so the bread making is practice.
Here are the most recent efforts......first the one I was attempting to described above.....
Second......a modification in the ratio of whole wheat to white and a longer proofing time.......
Just from what I learned from these two efforts, I think I will get there.
you're already there.
Good stuff!