Wild Yeast / Levain / Sourdough starter flowchart

Submitted by arzajac on January 5, 2009 - 10:54am

Wild Yeast / Levain / Sourdough starter flowchart

I made a flowchart describing the process of culturing wild yeasts. What do you think?

Right-click to save a larger version.

I deliberately left it a little vague because I found many conflicting points of view and too many details make a relatively simple process rather confusing. I wanted to describe a process that should succeed every time, although there may be a lot of things that can be done to speed up the process.

Please comment on it and/or improve it. The original file is here. It can be edited with Inkscape.

Thanks!

Edit: I revised it to add a few corrections.

Edit 2009/01/15 - version 1.2 - more clarifications.

Filed under:

Submitted by Wisecarver (not verified) on January 5, 2009 - 11:25am.

Very nice

...Love the CopyRight. ;-)

Submitted by arzajac on January 5, 2009 - 11:58am.

It's public domain. I quoted

It's public domain. I quoted that from the Creative Commons site. I want people to be able to use/modify and redistribute this if it's useful.

Submitted by blaisepascal on January 5, 2009 - 11:39am.

The intial daily feeding is

The intial daily feeding is to remove half and add just flour? Not water?

Submitted by arzajac on January 5, 2009 - 11:59am.

Oops

Some text got cut off. Thanks for noticing. It's fixed.

Submitted by m2scq on January 5, 2009 - 12:25pm.

Nice

Very nice. I appreciate flowcharts as I was an IT person in a very past life :) Just a few suggestions, you might want your processes to be in rectangles, input/output (adding/taking away ingredients) in parallelograms, and decisions (if-then ?) in diamonds. I tried downloading and editing but could not get the file to open properly.

Submitted by arzajac on January 5, 2009 - 3:59pm.

It certainly does get better than this...

Sounds complicated. Do you think the average artisan bread enthusiast would appreciate the proper use of the various geometric shapes that much? But please feel free to modify and improve upon the original.

The file opens fine in Inkscape in Linux and Windows for me. It probably doesn't open properly in any other kind of image viewer. What did you use to try to open and edit it?

Submitted by m2scq on January 5, 2009 - 8:02pm.

original flowchart works

original flowchart works fine. the suggestion was mostly for technicality, i'm just weird like that. i did not download inkscape as i have not reviewed the specs but just used the default viewer from my computer. i'll look into inkscape. thanks.

Submitted by arzajac on January 7, 2009 - 6:47am.

I fixed some details.

I edited the original post and inserted the new version.

Again, if anyone thinks something is wrong or should be done differently, please let me know and I will try to adjust the flowchart to include those improvements.

Also. is it too complicated? Personaly, I had to make this for myself. I found that trying to follow these instructions from a printed page is hard because I kept having to try to figure out "where I was" in the process. In that sense, I find a flowchart easier to follow.

What do you think?

Submitted by cake diva on January 8, 2009 - 10:14am.

Comments from a newbie

Arzajac,

Appreciate the thought and effort that went into the flowchart. It certainly goes a long way to simplify what could be a complicated process.

My perspective is that the flowchart is probably helpful to bakers who have experience in creating starters. For those naive to the process, it provides a good overview and dimensionalizes the complexity, but leaves important gaps (e.g., when waiting, when exactly do you wait? ).

I think I would do well to read more about the subject from this site. Your flowchart will serve as one of my resources.

Thanks.

Submitted by gaaarp on January 8, 2009 - 10:27am.

Sourdough Tutorial

cake diva, I started a Sourdough 101 blog the other day to try to demystify the process of creating a sourdough starter. Look under blogs on the main page. I've posted for two days so far (it's a live experiment) and added pictures last night. I will add Day 3 this evening.

Submitted by arzajac on January 8, 2009 - 12:32pm.

This is the sort of thing I would like to know

Cake Diva, thanks for your comments.

The most confusing thing I have gone through in the process is trying to follow some of the detailed instructions out there. With differences in temperature, flour, other ingredients the timeframe is not always exact, but some instructions rigidly make you follow things according to a schedule ("on day two, do this", or "wait twelve hours and move on to step three anyway"...)

What I am trying to accomplish with the flowchart is exactly what you describe. For example, add flour and water and wait until bubbles are seen. It may take two days or three. When it happens, move on to the next step. The same goes for the other steps, you don't move to the next loop until the starter can double in size within a certain time frame.

Now, how can I make that more clear on the flowchart?

Submitted by Rosalie on January 8, 2009 - 12:41pm.

Make a poster of it

Someone (not me - someone with graphics talents) should add maybe pale background photos of bread and turn this into a poster!

Rosalie

Submitted by cordel on January 8, 2009 - 4:18pm.

I did see it, but now the

I did see it, but now the thread is longer, it won't download, at all.

Submitted by arzajac on January 8, 2009 - 6:28pm.

Do you mean that since I

Do you mean that since I edited the original post, you cannot download the larger version?

Submitted by cordel on January 9, 2009 - 11:58am.

Missing flowchart

When I open the thread, there is a white space where it should be.

Submitted by arzajac on January 9, 2009 - 2:32pm.

Your browser cached (kept a

Your browser cached (kept a copy) of a bad link, I guess. You can clear your cache. I think pressing CTRL-F5 will reload the current page and refresh the cache.

If that's doesn't work, it's here:

Flowchart

Submitted by holds99 on January 8, 2009 - 8:27pm.

Very good and useful

arzajac,

Thanks for posting the flow chart. I had no problem saving the file. Only, wish I had had this years ago. It should be very helpful to folks trying to understand sourdough feeding and build cycles. I like Rosalie's idea of turning it into a poster with bread photos embedded.

Howard

Submitted by arzajac on January 9, 2009 - 7:20am.

I can do that

Any suggestions for a photo? Or maybe a combination of photos?

(EDIT)Here is an example: (This is just a baguette I made - not sourdough)

Flowchart with Photo

Submitted by holds99 on January 9, 2009 - 10:07am.

I really like that chart!

Howard

Submitted by TinaV on January 18, 2009 - 7:15pm.

Now that is class

wish I would have had that when I go started 6 months ago :)

Submitted by crazyknitter on January 19, 2009 - 1:29pm.

flow chart

Thank you. I have had some experience so I appreciate the exactness of a "recipe", but now I really appreciate a flowchart method.

Thank you for your time and effort doing this.

Submitted by Rosalie on January 20, 2009 - 5:13pm.

Which chart to use?

I'm not going to compare, but I believe the two flow charts are now different. The first chart was tweaked, and the second was changed graphically. Can we get the tweaked chart with background graphics?

Rosalie

Submitted by arzajac on January 21, 2009 - 9:26am.