The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Am I the only idiot?

rgreenberg2000's picture
rgreenberg2000

Am I the only idiot?

So, I was enjoying my last loaf of sourdough over dinner with my family, and in a Zinfandel induced moment of clarity, I realized........all of my starter went into the dough for the loaf!!!  Ack!  Poor guy, he deserved so much better! :(

I'm guessing that I'm not the only one who has done this, and, honestly, I'm a bit surprised that I haven't done it before! :)

I got right back on the horse, of course, and got a new starter going that very night.  It's now a couple of weeks later, and I have already used my new starter to raise a loaf of bread (deliciously sour!), so all is well on that front.  I have also implemented a new step in my process.  When I use my refrigerated starter to start building up my dough for baking, I will also feed a small amount of it in a separate container that will go back in the fridge (after a few hours) to ensure that I am always propagating the starter.

I felt like such a dope when I figured out what I had done.  If nobody else wants to admit it, maybe this post will make you feel better if you have done what I did.

Bake on!

Rich

PetraR's picture
PetraR

Sorry, I have only * almost * done it. lol

In the last moment I realised and put 1 tbsp back in the Starter container for feeding. phewww

Now I make sure that I feed my starter FIRST once I took out what I needed.

AbeNW11's picture
AbeNW11 (not verified)

Don't know exactly what happened but say you had 30g of starter and you needed 150g for your bread...

You wouldn't have created 150g including the 30g of original starter, rather you would have made a further 150g by adding 75g flour + 75g water. Then when coming to make the bread I assume you would have weighed off 150g and be left with 30g.

Why would you put the whole thing in?

Perhaps your method is slightly different to what I've just described.

Anyhow perhaps it might be better to have a different feeding schedule of taking off from your starter to build a pre-ferment.

Also it would be good practice, when making the dough, is not to add the salt straight away but incorporate it after a period of rest. This way if you do make a mistake, and you remember in time, then you can take a bit of the dough back and keep that as the base for your next starter.

 

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Most likely because the recipe said to do so.  There are any number of formulae out there, some by Big Names in the business, that call for this practice.  

Paul

AbeNW11's picture
AbeNW11 (not verified)

But largely ignore their recommended building process. All I need to know is how much active starter goes in and devise my own way of creating it.

Now s*ds law dictates i'll be making the same mistake come this weekend.

ElPanadero's picture
ElPanadero

" When I use my refrigerated starter to start building up my dough for baking, I will also feed a small amount of it in a separate container that will go back in the fridge "

The key imo is, to keep using the same small jar for your mother starter. You only need to keep a tiny amount, say 30-50g at most. This jar should never be emptied. When you want to build up a quantity for a dough you take some of the mother from the jar and put that in a different jar together with larger quantities of flour and water (i.e. this is the preferment/levain). What's left in the mother jar is simply refreshed with a little more flour and water. So the mother should not ever run out.

Still mistakes do happen. What I would say is, if this ever happens again, you don't need to create a new starter from scratch. The actual jar that your starter was in, even if you've more or less emptied it, will still contain scrapings around the sides and on the bottom. You only need to add a little flour and water into this and stir it around and you'll find that those scrapings will innoculate the mix and you'll be back to normal next day.

AbeNW11's picture
AbeNW11 (not verified)

I like it :)

pmccool's picture
pmccool

And they weren't giving out T-shirts that day.  Consequently, I'm no fan of recipes that tell you to make a quantity of levain that is greater than needed, then hold back the excess as the storage starter.  It is way too easy to miss that step.

You are not alone.

Paul

DavidEF's picture
DavidEF

I've mixed all my starter in to my dough at least a half dozen times by mistake. Thankfully, I have so far always caught myself before actually baking, and I keep some of the dough out to turn back into starter. I just did this recently, in fact. I made a bowl full of dough and even baked some of it before realizing what I'd done, but there was still some dough not baked, and I kept some back to return it to a state of being a starter when I get a chance.

My daughter however, has gone all the way through baking and never realized what she did. When I get home from work and find a couple of fresh baked loaves and no starter, I grab the container the starter was in, wet it to mix the (by that time - dry) scrapin's back in, then feed it. Sometimes it can be a good thing that my daughter doesn't clean up after herself!

David Esq.'s picture
David Esq.

Definitely a good thing that she doesn't clean the starter container.  You know, starter is so flipping sticky it is impossible to get it all out of the jar which means unless you really make an effort to eradicate your starter you will always have enough to add a bit of water, wipe down the sides, add some flour and start over, as you and others have said here.

And there is no need to go through the extra step of "drying" your starter special.  If you mix the levain in a plastic container, let it sit out for the day, all the "smears" can be easily pushed to the bottom of the container and, and poured into a ziplock bag for "backup" powdered starter.

rgreenberg2000's picture
rgreenberg2000

...I use that got me!  Starter in fridge (~30g), add flour water to make needed amount for recipe + 30g to go back in fridge, mix starter into dough while holding back 30g.  It's that last step that I forgot this time (and I can't even blame being busy with other things!)

@Abe, yep, I need to adjust my method to provide more failsafe (oh, and I do have a rest before adding salt, but didn't realize my mistake on this one until the bread was on the table about four hours after baking!)

@El P, I think I'll probably either use your method of just taking a little starter and building it up, or like Petra, and just make sure that I take care of the starter first.

@Paul & David, thanks for owning up to it! :)  Makes me feel better.  And, hey, I got to practice my starter making skills! :)

Rich

AbeNW11's picture
AbeNW11 (not verified)

but also fun to create starter. I love it when you see your starter taking hold. Lots of satisfaction.

Enjoy that bread and just think it's very "unique" as it's that last ever bread from that starter. Savour it.

Best way, and ElPanadero taught me this, is to feed your starter to keep it going. When you wish to make bread just take a little from that starter and build. So you always keep it separate.

rgreenberg2000's picture
rgreenberg2000

Abe, that makes sense.  I think I was looking at my other process as more efficient.....perhaps it was lazy? :)  Either way, it's obvious I need to adjust the process so that it's idiot (me) proof! :)

By the way, the bread with the old starter was great, and the loaf with the new starter was, too!  Actually, with the cooler weather, I like the more sour flavor that is created due to longer ferments at room temp.  I typically haven't done retarded fermentation in the fridge, but this last loaf just needed to bulk proof overnight, and our current overnight room temp was perfect (luck!)

R

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

to use or feed an old one.  

It is also better to build a levain from a small starter than to use it all and try to remember to hold back some for next week.  If you keep doing as you are doing, it will happen again .....

Happy SD baking with a new starter

drogon's picture
drogon

I maintain 3 "mother" jars of wheat, spelt and rye starter, each of about 500g - possibly unusual, but I'm baking most days for a small shop... I need about 340g of wheat/spelt starter for a batch of 3 small loaves, so if that's all I'm making then I use it directly from the mother jar, then top that up again right away, otherwise (like this afternoon) if I'm making more then I do the same as ElPanadero  and I take a little out, bulk it up for tonights dough, top-up the mother and its back in the fridge it goes. (I'm not yet at the stage where I have to do a double-bulk but almost hit that last weekend, but decided to use the Rye starter to make some seeded rustic loaves with wheat flour and they turned out rather well!)

I did start my spelt starter from the wheat one so if I accidentally lost one or the other of those then I can easily re-start them. I got my rye from someone else, but given that rye more or less self-starts with little effort I am not overly concerned about it.

Here's the loaded question - is my spelt starter the same age as my wheat one, given it came from the same stock, as it were? :-)

(And as a bonus question, after 18 months of refreshing is there any wheat left in the spelt starter? I think it was down to under 5% after 5 refreshes and test-bakes before I sold the first spelt loaf, but who knows!)

 

I've seen lots of variations though - bulk up then put back, take some out to bulk up and so on - and based on my experience last weekend, I've just read about someone who keeps what looks like 100g of starter, then starts on Thursday, doubling the starter every 12 hours until he has enough to bake 50 loaves on Saturday - it's all a matter of working out a strategy that works for you - and sticking to it :)

-Gordon

ElPanadero's picture
ElPanadero

"is my spelt starter the same age as my wheat one"

You won't believe how controversial that question can be ! When you talk about "age" you have to define what it is that has aged. Your starter is a medium containing yeasts and labs. The yeasts multiply approx every 90-100mins (call it 1.5 hrs). Each yeast can multiply approx 26 times before it then expires. Thus 26 x 1.5hrs = 39 hrs. So loosely speaking there are no yeasts in your starter older than 39 hrs. I know people and companies like to market their starters as being many years old, but the reality is otherwise. The true statement would be that their starters have been successively maintained for years though nothing in there is older than a couple of days (assuming it wasn't frozen or suspended by some other method). A equivalent statement for a Mr Smith would be that the Smith family has been going for 600 years whilst no actual Smith is older than 90 yrs.

:)

drogon's picture
drogon

Oh I know - always a good talking point though - like my grandfathers old axe - my dad replaced the head and I replaced the shaft, but its still my grandfathers trusty old axe!

 

Cheers,

 

-Gordon

AbeNW11's picture
AbeNW11 (not verified)

My starter is as old as the TLC that has continuously gone into it.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

When I make sourdough, the first step is to get the starter going. This involves making a slurry of 1/3 C flour and 1/4 C water, then adding some inoculum which is kept in the fridge. If I used up all the storage starter there would be more new starter to replenish it. In about 4 hours the new starter is bubbly and frothy and is carefully weighed and added to the dough. It's such a ritual that I can't see using all of it as a likely mistake without first catching my error.

I hope this is a mistake you only make once.

Hippytea's picture
Hippytea

Seems like another good reason to name your starter. It changes the mental question.  'Do I have all the right amounts of floury goo in all the right places?' Is far harder to check, and more prone to error, than 'where's George right now? Is he OK?'

Mind you, the answer 'oops, I ate him' is correspondingly more guilt-inducing...