June 7, 2015 - 8:41pm
Care and feeding of a starter. (It's dead Jim....)
My first one: 1 3/4c APF, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp salt, 2 tsp yeast and 2 1/2c room temperature water.
The first day, it was a well blended gooey mass. The second day it was a gooey mass on water. The third day is was a gooey mass under water.
I did a stir once in a while and bubbles came up each time. In the beginning it bubbled on its own now very few bubbles.
There was not much of any odor or scent. The yeast was from a newly purchased Fleschman packet.
It was in a stainless steel bowl with a plastic plastic wrap bonnet and left at room temperature.
Is this normal? Did I kill it? Will I be reported to the ASPCY?
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That's a different kind of starter from what I've utilized in my baking. Is that a "friendship" starter?
Where did you get this starter formula from, or it this your own concoction? It sounds like a incomplete bread formula. Normally, salt is not used to develop a starter. Go back to your source and start over.
d
I received it as a suggestion. As I said it is my first attempt. I suspect something got lost in the translation. I will try again with the suggestions offered here,
Commercial yeast is great as a short term worker but it just doesn't have the ability to survive long term to be a long-lived natural levain. I have seen many things written about using commercial yeast to start a starter but I haven't heard of one lasting too long.
Flour,water,time. Start with 2 tbsp. flour and enough water to make a thick pancake batter. Stir several times a day to prevent skinning over and distribute anything developing. Keep covered with cheesecloth,coffee filter, clean cotton cloth because the fruit flies LOVE the stuff. Keep it at 70-80F.
After a few days, it will bubble a bit.When you have no doubts it is bubbling, add about the same amount water and flour. Do this once a day for a few days. After a few days, it should be obviously responding to a feeding. THEN start removing about half , discarding it and feeding the remainder in the jar with about the same consistency flour and water.Use the discard for pancakes or accumulate the discard in refrig until enough accumulated for a batch.
It will go thru stages-slight bubbling, crazy bubbles and rise (but it is not ready yet-that's another microorganism that will help acidify the mix and help the yeasts develop), then a slower,more steady rise and fall with each feeding. If it ever develops a liquid layer on top-that is hootch- and it means the yeasts are hungry and need a second feeding. Stir in the hootch or discard-your choice and I have done both.
Always wash hands before handling, scrape down the sides of the jar so it doesn't develop mold and replace the covering if it gets starter on it.
When it reaches the slower,steady rise, it can start to be used as yeast.
Flour,water,time. The wild yeast is ubiquitous and generally in/on the flour since that is it's natural food source. All animals tend to live near or on their natural food and water.
A note about water: Municipal water tends to be treated with some form of chlorine or chloramines(not as easy to get rid of as other forms of chlorine). This can prevent the yeast from developing or even kill it. Try letting the water stand overnight in a pitcher or boiling and cooling it or even using bottled SPRING water (not carbonated and not bottled water from the grocery store that is just bottled from a different municipality). I have had this problem and it makes a difference.
A note about flour: Always use UNBLEACHED flour. Same reason as water. AP is easiest to develop, in my experience, but whole wheat,rye,etc can be used. My whole grain starters tend to be more fragile.
Have fun! You will find it is like a pet-needs regular care and feeding.
If not commercial yeast, what yeast to use and how to get it.
You start with flour, water, time but do not mention using yeast.
Do you have an ingredient list with measurements that I can use?
Although I rarely sense chlorine in the water, I did set it out overnight to let it precipitate out (however much would...).
It was King Arthur unbleached flour,
Just give it a quick boil and let the water cool and all will be good. I think folks are telling you to work on creating a natural starter. Use either whole grain wheat or better yet whole grain rye flour to get the starter going. There are lots of postings on TFL and other places that will give you directions.
is the yeast that already lives in the flour. That's the yeast and bacilli you're trying to cultivate. Flour and water is all you need. Sometimes a little acid kick-starter is helpful, e.g. D. Wink's pineapple juice or my own variation, very small amount of lemon juice.
Once you get it going (figure two weeks for a strong culture), it's hard to kill it. Mine's been going now for seven or eight years of haphazard care and feeding alternating with benign neglect.
cheers,
gary
I saw some months back that Fleischmann's breadworld site has recipes for SD starter made with commercial yeast. No idea what it's like compared to natural yeast though.
If you are trying to make a sourdough starter, then check out the "pineapple juice solution" by Debra Wink in the search box in the upper right side of this page.
Ford
I am still a bit confused about the name of this. I never liked Sourdough it self yet almost all of the recipes for starter say that they are "sourdough". If there are non-sourdough" starters, they are not easily found. Maybe I am not using the correct search terms. I have even tried "bread starters -sourdough" and have not netted much.
Sourdough does not have to taste sour. My sourdough breads do not taste sour. To get a sour flavor you can retard your dough for 24 to 48 hours in the refrigerator and it will develop a stronger sour flavor.
Ford
flour is combined with water and allowed to ferment. The yeasts in the flour (in nature on the grain from the field) after several days under ideal conditions, come to life. With proper nurturing the bacteria and yeast is called a sourdough culture and can be used to raise dough.
Saying you don't like sourdough translates that you didn't like one particular type of sourdough. There can be many types and combinations of bacterial and yeast colonies in a sourdough culture to make up the flavour profile. How you feed and use your sourdough culture can determine how "sour" or "not sour" it tastes at the end of a bake.
By the way, the initial recipe contains a Tablespoon of salt !!! Ridiculous! What is that? 17g?
If I take 1.75c of flour and multiply by 130g per cup, I get 227.5g ... the salt content is around 8% and that is enough to preserve it into the next millennium. Good luck with that, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to do anything. :)
I see that KA has a $9 1oz starter that is over 200 years old. Maybe someday I will try that one.
"flour is combined with water and allowed to ferment. The yeasts in the flour (in nature on the grain from the field) after several days under ideal conditions, come to life."
So, I don't have to add yeast. No one seemed to state that specifically.
I did question the tablespoon of salt but was assured that it is correct. It has been working for her.
"How you feed and use your sourdough culture can determine how "sour" or "not sour" it tastes at the end of a bake.
Are all starters sourdough? If it is, then why even call it sourdough?IT starts to smell of arrogance. If it can be made "not sour" then why is it stilled called sourdough?
I guess I can now start looking at all the starter recipes and ignore all the apparently misplaced "Sourdough" monikers.
"Saying you don't like sourdough translates that you didn't like one particular type of sourdough."
Ok, getting closer. My only experience with "Sourdough Bread" is during the few trips I had to San Francisco. Yuck (To both the bread and my experiences in the city. Careful, a rant may be brewing here.)
Now, how to I make a non-sourdough "sourdough" starter?
All I need is a normal bread before adding any weird flavors.
One, as the other posters have described, is the wild yeast route, aka sourdough. And, as mentioned, flavor profiles can be quite variable depending on how it is handled. I haven't seen instructions for beginning a sourdough culture that called for salt.
The other should be thought of as a preferment, such as a poolish or sponge or biga, where part of the flour is mixed with part of the water and a tiny fraction of the commercial yeast. The mixture is allowed to ferment (usually a matter of hours, at most) prior to combining with the rest of the dough ingredients. When another batch of bread is made, a new preferment is begun for that batch. Salt is only rarely an ingredient in this type of preferment. If salt is used, it would typically be at or below 2% of the weight of the flour in the preferment.
The term "starter" is much abused, even by reputable bakers and authors. It is most often used in discussions of wild yeast, or sourdough, cultures. Then again, there are people who think that a mixture containing commercial yeast can be called sourdough, even though it does not exhibit the traits that are commonplace in sourdough. The problem is that there is no hard and fast set of definitions for many of the terms we use, which makes standardization a problem.
So, pick whichever process will achieve your goals and use it, whether sourdough or a commercially yeasted preferment.
Paul
You can get starter for free. Check out Carl's Oregon Starter.
Just ignore the activation instructions. Take half the powder they send you, put a tablespoon of warm water in it and let the hard chunks dissolve (help them along by crushing them beforehand if you like), then add some flour and mix it up so that it is the consistency of toothpaste.
Wait a day or maybe two, add a tablespoon of water, stir it up and then add some more flour like you did the first day. Feed it once a day and within a few days you'll have a bubbly happy starter to do your bidding.
Ask your friend to give you some of hers.
Check out the "pineapple juice solution" by Debra Wink in the search box in the upper right side of this page.
Ford
Listen to those who are saying to go to the Pineapple Juice Starter. It uses the natural yeast in the air. Yeast is all around us. It will take a few days, but yes, I will start to bubble and do what it is supposed to do. It's not going to be crazy tangy despite the juice. You'll probably like it.
for Deborah Wink's pineapple juice method. Just follow the instructions and everything should fall into place. You just need to do this one time, and from that point on, your starter can be refreshed forever and have a thousand new lives. After that, with a low enough hydration, your starter can take up permanent residence in the back of your refrigerator and need to be refreshed only once every few months, or until you run out of the starter. But don't run completely out! Save a few dozen grams to begin a new refresh.
alan
There's now an ASPCY? What will they think of next? Society for the prevention of cruelty to LABs?
I just spent the last 15 minutes looking through lists and lists and lists of discussion about said starter but found not a single actual recipe.
How is this magical/miracle starter created?
The title of the post with her procedure is
The Pineapple Juice Solution, Part 2If you put "pineapple juice starter" in the search engine, this article is the third hit on the returned list.
It is well hidden at the bottom of the article of overly long paragraphs. Although it is interesting reading, the article is not designed for electronic text. I will begin building the starter tomorrow.
Day 1: mix...
2 tablespoons whole grain flour* (wheat or rye)
2 tablespoons pineapple juice, orange juice, or apple cider
Day 2: add...
2 tablespoons whole grain flour*
2 tablespoons juice or cider
Day 3: add...
2 tablespoons whole grain flour*
2 tablespoons juice or cider
Day 4: (and once daily until it starts to expand and smell yeasty), mix . . .
2 oz. of the starter (1/4 cup after stirring down-discard the rest)
1 oz. flour** (scant 1/4 cup)
1 oz. water (2 tablespoons)
* Organic is not a requirement, nor does it need to be freshly ground.
** You can feed the starter/seed culture whatever you would like at this point. White flour, either bread or a strong unbleached all-purpose like King Arthur or a Canadian brand will turn it into a general-purpose white sourdough starter. Feed it rye flour if you want a rye sour, or whole wheat, if you want to make 100% whole wheat breads. If you're new to sourdough, a white starter is probably the best place to start.
On average, yeast begin to grow on day 3 or 4 in the warmer months, and on day 4 or 5 during colder times of the year, but results vary by circumstance. Feed once a day, taking care not to leave mold-promoting residue clinging to the sides or lid of your bowl or container, and refer back to the different phases to track progress. Once you have yeast growing (but not before), you can and should gradually step up the feeding to two or three times a day, and/or give it bigger refreshments. This is the point at which I generally defer to the sourdough experts. There are several good books on sourdough which address the topic of starter maintenance and how to use it in bread. Just keep in mind that the first days of the seed culture process have nothing to do with developing flavor or even fostering the most desirable species. The object is simply to move through the succession and get the starter up and running. The fine-tuning begins there. Once yeast are growing well, choose the hydration, temperature and feeding routine that suits you, and the populations will shift in response to the flour and conditions that you set up for maintenance.
One more thing I have found is that with regular feeding at room temperature, new starters seem to improve and get more fragrant right around the two week mark. Maybe this coincides with the appearance of Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis mentioned previously. It is generally regarded as the most desirable species, as well as the one found to be the most common in traditional sourdough.[7] A Fifth Phase? Obviously, there is still more to learn. -Debra Wink
keeping the temperature around 85°F for the first day and then above 75°F (and close to it) for the following days. Too warm is not good (too much bacterial growth) and too cold slows everything down, can even take two to three weeks for yeast to multiply enough to notice. As you seem rather impatient, this will be a grand lesson in patience as well.
Reading Debra Wink's article soon becomes clearer as your culture progresses from one stage to the next. Important is not to rush that final step between phase 3 and 4 sticking with step 4 and not force feed the starter before yeast are actively present. Remember, just because it smells and tastes a little sour (old English word -- from German) does not mean it makes a sour bread.
Once the starter smells yeasty, then it becomes important to feed more flour. The starter will ferment and trap gas, rise and level out before deflating. When it starts to fall back, it is time to give it more food. If you stick to measuring the feeds, you will notice that the culture is using up the food sooner with each feed providing the temperature stays the same.
Warmer temps speed up fermentation and cooler ones slow it down, similar with water, the more water or hydration the faster the culture will ferment. Slowing it down is easy to do with thickening or chilling. Watch the culture and learn from it while gently ushering it into your desired time schedule. (And what would that be? --something you have to think about but in the beginning a 12 hrs feeding schedule with an 8 hr active rising time -includes after feed lag time- with consistent results is sought after.) Getting into that time slot can mean a few midnight feedings but that is only temporary. Adjust the amount of water and flour food to get the culture rising and falling consistently on the first rise.
"As you seem rather impatient, this will be a grand lesson in patience as well. "
One cannot afford to be impatient when one is dedicated to a study.
I have been on this quest for over two years now. I finally discovered that the 450d preheat and cook at 400d is certainly not going to produce the "al-dente" texture that I get when I bake my croissants at 325 for 15 minutes starting from a cold oven.
I have also realized that the butter really has no effect on the breadiness I seek other than giving it a buttery flavor and that a mix of butter and lard is just as good as this "European" style butter.
I now see that I have several options for this starter idea. It is probably going to take a month or two in order to test them to see if they give me what I want from them, probably longer now that I have to let each one sit and develop a week or two. It may well be that a starter is not going to give me the results I seek.
No, not impatient. Overly exacting maybe.
If you want my opinion of how that article was written, you probably should not go there. Suffice it to say, I would not accept that style from my students when using an electronic medium. The content is good and thorough though.
"just because it smells and tastes a little sour (old English word -- from German) does not mean it makes a sour bread. "
This has never been made clear to me until recently and I was totally against anything that said "sourdough" due to previous experience.
starters, you might want to start several at one time, but be careful to keep spoons & notes separate. :)
One observation I have made is that if feeding a starter small amounts of fructose (table sugar, honey, fruits contain fructose) a sweeter starter tends to develop. I believe it may have to do with turning on or off DNA switches as the yeast reproduce. Perhaps the presence of sugar tends to discourage the symbiosis between certain sour flavour making bacteria. I'm just suggesting that should you happen to come out with a culture that bakes out sour there are options before ditching it. The "Friendship" starter (and there are many of these) is basically one of these sweet sourdough starter cultures.
Living thru starting a sourdough culture is a learning experience in itself. Have fun and enjoy it.
Pick a method that has worked for others and stick with it long enough to get your starter going, which can take a couple of weeks. The pineapple juice method has quite a few supporters here on TFL, so I have no doubt it works although I haven't used it myself. What I suggest you avoid is trying to mix and match various methods and/or tips. You can experiment to you heart's content after you have an active starter.
I will keep trying them, one at a time, until I see what the process can do for me. This may take months.
The first one failed and it was suggested that I get a sample from her. I will do that as she is local to me. Meanwhile I will get the pineapple starter startered.
Could you please tell me the procedure from the original recipe that you used, the one with a tablespoon of salt and 2 tsp dry yeast? What was to be expected from it? On which day was the starter supposed to develop? Were you supposed to feed it?
Salt is normally used in stiff French-style starters in order to protect flour from fast disintegration (from the effect of proteolysis) but then it is used in amounts closer to 1%, i.e. 1g salt per each 100g of flour in starter.
Here, in your example above, the recipe uses huge amount of salt - 18g of salt per 250g of flour, 7% of salt (compared to 100% flour). In stiff starters that would be enough to inhibit any bacterial or yeast growth. The most salt resistant sourdough bacteria, l. plantarum still grows at 6% salt, most other sourdough bacteria will survive and multiply at 4% salt, not higher. Normal amount of salt in bread - 2% (2g salt per each 100g flour ).
Yeast is added as a source of food for the microbes in the starter. As a source of amino-acids and nitrogen, some vitamins.
"Could you please tell me the procedure from the original recipe that you used, the one with a tablespoon of salt and 2 tsp dry yeast?"
It was my first attempt at a starter. All it was was to have yeast salt, flour and water. Mix it up, set it aside, feed it flour and water when needed. Either It failed or I gave up too soon. I think it was about to smell rancid soon.
At any rate, I am not going to try to resurrect that one. Maybe the original source will set me up with a sample of her starter already in action but I have not asked yet.
Meanwhile, I am going to try that pineapple juice one.
Hi Emerogork,
Me again... Last year Mariana laid out a three stage levain/sourdough refresh schedule in response to a posting, and to which I have adopted. It is a bit of work over the course of a day, but does work like a charm - just as Debra Wink's does for the initial pineapple starter.
For my money, it appears that Mariana is another sourdough starter genius just as Debra Wink is. Follow this link for her explanation on how and why to do a refresh using her methodology. Her response is just a few comments into the posting, with another series of follow-ups further down.
Um, Actually, Mariana brings up very specific points. Knowing the feeding or diluting of the salt in the flour/water mixture may be it's secret. If fed everyday flour and water and no salt, the salt amount is dropping. Knowing how fast this happens would be interesting.
I am sure she could explain it better than anyone else why it works and if the process narrows or singles out specific bacteria/yeast combinations.
So what are the specifics of feeding this salty culture?
I think you gave up too soon or perhaps the flour or yeast were deficient in some way. I just pulled my wheat starter...which was started last year with that recipe...yes, I am the culprit....and fed it. Picture 1 is just out of the fridge after a week or so. Picture 2 is five minutes after feeding.
Yes, it was started with commercial yeast but by now, I would think all of that CY would be eaten away and only the natural yeasts in the flour sustain it.
And just fed....
So let us reveal ourselves and I will bestow upon you a sample of each of my viable starters. You have a PM.
but after three days, I was not seeing any bubble action either before or after stirring the muck. Not having a visual reference, I was not sure how what was happening, Still, it was quite an experience.
My 2nd day looked like your first pic and my 3rd did too but no bubbles. Both the yeast and dough were new just for this.
I made a new batch of croissant dough and added some of the questionable starter anyway. I messed it up and the dough was just too wet so I kept adding flour until I had a manageable dough. I ended up with about 1/3 more dough than the recipe should have given and as a result almost twice the number of croissants and almost twice as large. (: I brought a dozen to the other instructors at CCSU and they enjoyed them.... I am told that they are looking forward to the next batch of experiments.
I am ready to give it a go again. This time, more patience for time and a glass container over a metal one even if it didn't make a difference.
I will send you my phone number and we can meet for a sample of your starter. Maybe we can go to Jerry's for pizza and I can let you know the flavor I seek. There is something about his dough that drives me.
.