January 18, 2020 - 6:25pm
Feeding my sour dough starter
I wanted to try to try separating my starter into several different jars after I finally have the time to make one and try feeding each of them different ingredients to see what sort of different flavours I get.
I was thinking in the lines of fermenting fruits, rice flour, or even whole grain rice (ik it sounds weird but I have heard of someone using this method before).
Does anyone have any experience with this and do you have any fun ingredients you can suggest to me?
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Some people did just that, on this thread:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20693/culturing-growing-and-baking-range-wild-yeasts
Lots of interesting experiments, with photos, in the comments. Including rice.
Enjoy.
to starters. As you mention playing with raw (or cooked) rice, I feel the need to strongly suggest other carbohydrates to feed starters. Yes, it can be done but it carries a big risk. Rice is known to harbor Bacillus cereus spores which can create problems especially at temps between 10° and 50° C. The bacteria spores survive boiling, baking and tolerate acid environments between pH 2 - 10. That is why keeping moist cooked rice too long at room temp becomes problematic.
As far as flavouring a starter goes, may I suggest maintaining a "mother starter" but experiment with the starter build, using part of the starter. The build (leaven, levain) then goes into the bread dough. The mother starter remains the same. Yeast waters can be made and used independently or used with sourdough starters, they tend to darken the crumb more than flavour it and often give a moister, softer crumb.