Greeting;  

I am knew to your nice page here and have a question.  Is there a generic water to flour ratio for most breads.

Thank You

joe

I've been trying and trying to get my sourdough bread up but have had little success.  The 1-2-3 recipe worked out ok except it was always too gloppy to make anything but ciabatta.  So I started experimenting with different forumlas, twice a day for two weeks. I think I've hit on something and I'd like some of you guys to maybe try it out and see if it works as well for someon else as it does for me.

I maintain two starters...a 100% hydration white and 100% hydration whole wheat.  I used Gold Medal AP Flour for everything, both refreshing the starter and making the dough.  If I want a wheat bread I use the wheat starter in the recipe, the same a white bread.  All ingredients are measured in grams for simplicity's sake.  So here's the formula:

1. part ripe starter

1. part water

2. parts flour

2% salt

Here's my technique.  I take a nice ripe starter and measure out the first part.  Normally I use 150g as a base.  Then I stir in 1 part water (150g) to make a slurry.  To this I add the 2 parts flour (300g) and mix in to incorporate.  I use a fork and my fingers to get everything mixed completely.  After everything is mixed I let it sit for about 20 minutes to autolyse.

After the autolyse I sprinkle in the 2% salt (12g) and give the dough a quick 5 minute knead in the bowl.  Part of this experiment was to cut down on the amount of crap I had to wash and clean up.  After the knead I let rise until doubled.  This could take anywhere from 1-3 hours.

After the dough has doubled, I flour a work surface and scrape out the dough.  It's should be a little on the sticky side but easily workable on the bench.  I've only made batards and baguettes so far, but the dough could probably hold other shapes.  I shape it into a rough oblong, give it a flatten, then do a quick letter fold and let it rest about 10 minutes.  Now a stretch, flatten and make either the baguette or batard.  I have a makeshift couche (read: old napkin) that sometimes doesn't work so well, so I tend to place the formed loaf right onto parchment with a little cornmeal on it.

After the loaf is formed you can do two things,  cover it and let it rise to about doubled.  I use spray oil to lubricate a piece of saran wrap so it won't stick to the loaf.  Again, this takes about 1-3 hours for me, your mileage may vary.  About halfway through the second rise preheat oven to 450.  Steam the oven, slash the loaf and put bread on a stone or cookie sheet.  After five minutes I give the oven another spray for more steam.  After another five minutes I give the bread a turn for even browning and reduce heat to 425 for another 15 minutes or so.  Here's how the white bread turns out...

and here's the wheat...

I've also formed the loaves and retarded overnight in the fridge.  This really brings out the sourdough twang.  I'm also experiemting with the salt percentage, 2% feels too high in some loaves. 

I would appreciate it if someone else could validate this recipe and let me know if it worked out as well for them.  Thanks!

Hi everyone. I'm new here and I want to start out by saying thanks for all the terrific information on this site. Thanks to you I am now sourdough-obsessed. lol. I wonder if all you sourdough experts could help me with a question I have.

I'm trying to figure out a feeding schedule and ratio for my 6-week-old starter that isn't too inconvenient for me or too unhealthy for the starter. I'd like to maintain a once-a-day feeding schedule at 75% hydration - once a day because that fits my schedule best, and 75% hydration because that's the level at which I feel I can best tell what shape my starter is in (I get a nice rise and fall at 75% - too thin and it doesn't rise, too thick and I'm afraid I won't be able to tell when it's overripe).

My question is, what is the smallest amount of starter I can get away with to inoculate my maintenance starter? In bwraith's blog post "Maintaining a 100% Hydration White Flour Starter," he says that he uses 5 grams of old starter to inoculate 20 grams of water and 25 grams of flour. Judging from the pictures of the bread he bakes, that seems to work just fine. But how much lower is it possible to go? 2 grams? 1 gram? 1/2 gram? At some point, if I remember correctly from biology 101 more years ago than I care to admit, the number of critters in the old starter will be so small that they might not contain whatever particular variant of yeast/bacteria that's responsible for making the starter taste like it does. As I rather like the taste of the bread I'm getting from my starter right now, I'd hate to inoculate with so small an amount that I risk having it change on me just because I used 1 gram of old starter instead of 4 or 5.

I'm no microbiologist, and I know some here are, so please correct me if I'm wrong about that. Or maybe there are so many zillions of organisms in a gram of starter that there's nothing to worry about. At any rate, has anyone tried using tiny amounts like 1 gram or even less for any length of time? If so, what were the results, both for the health and the distinctive flavor characteristics of the starter? I'm tempted to split my starter into several batches and compare the results doing 1/2, 1, and 2-gram inoculations for a week or so, but I don't know if I could sustain having to coddle 3 starters for that long.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Well, I'm on attempt #3 and into month three of trying to start a starter. Almost 8 kilos of flour into it and still nothing to show for it. Ignoring the two previous attempts here's what I've been doing:

Day 1: Start with organic, stone ground rye, 60g and bottled spring water, 60g. Wait 24 hrs as it sits atop the fridge.

Day 2: Add 60g water, 60g rye, place on fridge, wait 24 hrs

Day 3: Discard all but 120g, add 60g water and rye, place on fridge, wait 12 hrs

Day 3.5: Discard all but 120g, add 60g water and 60g unbleached all purpose.

Day 4: Bubbles and slight foaminess, but I'm suspecting this is unwanted gas this early in the game. Smells like flour and water, no alcohol. Feed normal 120/60/60 ratio (half old, half new). Oh, I wash the container every time I feed it, too.

Day 4.5 and onwards: repeat cycle. Bubbling subsides, eventually begin to get alcohol smell, very minor bubbles in batter could just as easily be from mixing in air. Occasional SLIGHT growth, at most just under 1/4" on about an inch of mix. This eventually subsides and hootch shows up. Alcohol smell gets REALLY strong, little to no activity yeast wise.

I'm now on week three, as noted and thinking this is going nowhere fast. Or slow, actually.

What should my next step be to try and get this thing to grow? Does it make sense to thicken 'er up at this point (1:1:2 perhaps?) to try and stave off excess hootchiness?

And I'm calling it Audrey 2.

I've given you sunshine
I've given you rain
You've given me nuthin'
But heartache and pain
I'm begging you sweetly
I'm down on my knees
Oh please... grow for me!

(seriously botched lyrics from the musical
Little Shop of Horrors (1982))