The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Sourdough basic question

bobku's picture
bobku

Sourdough basic question

I have been reading a little about sourdough starters. I have a basic questions do you use the same kind of starter no matter what kind of flour you are using for your bread. Should there be different starters for rye, white, whole wheat or do they get made from the same starter. I see some starters are made using whole wheat or rye how does this effect a bread that doesn't use the same flour in its original recipie.

gaaarp's picture
gaaarp

Bobku, there are a couple of ways to tackle your question.  First, you can use any type of starter for any type of bread.  The amount of starter, compared to the other ingredients, is nominal, so it shouldn't have much effect on the final dough. 

On the other hand, it is easy to convert a starter of one type to another.  For example, if you have a starter made with bread flour and you want a rye starter, a few feedings using rye will convert it.  What you definitely do not need to do is keep a bunch of different starters, as it is easy to convert your mother starter to adapt to any recipe.

Phyl

SulaBlue's picture
SulaBlue

One I keep pure white flour, the other is a hodgepodge. When I'm getting ready to bake a specific loaf I take both starters out, feed them and stick the one I'm not going to use back in the fridge. This just helps insure that I feed both starters regularly.

Which starter I'm using depends on which bread I'm making. White bread gets the white starter. Anything else gets starter from the Heinz 57 Starter. Two days before I'm going to bake I feed it, take out roughly 1/3 of what I'm going to need for the recipe, and put the rest back in the fridge. That 1/3 starter then gets elaborated on the counter and fed daily (or sometimes twice daily) with whatever flour is called for in the recipe.

Doing this you'll have a minimum of additional different flour (rye, wheat, spelt, whatever) and it won't affect your bread much at all.

LindyD's picture
LindyD

I built a pure rye starter for my rye breads simply because when I'm baking a new recipe, I prefer to follow the instructions precisely the first couple of times.  The instructions called for building a rye starter from rye, so that's what I did.   It's easy to maintain, tastes wonderful, so I've kept it.  If you're going to build a rye starter, if you can find Arrowhead Mills organic rye, use it.  I found it is much more responsive than Bob's Red Mill organic rye.

I have a two-year old wheat culture of about 60 percent hydration and a two-week old very stiff wheat culture using only organic flour.  The latter produced a very different, and very nice, sourdough taste, so I'll continue to experiment with it for a while.