February 18, 2015 - 10:29am
Holding a refreshed starter
After my last baking atempt which was plagued by a sluggish starter, I am being extra careful. so before I make my next lot I have a question.
Say I have sucessfully refreshed my starter and it is bubbling away on the bench top and the next step is the levain build. What do you do when life gets in the way - go ahead with levain build then refrigerate it after 12 hours or so until you can bake (if so how long can you keep it)? or do you refresh starter again using same hydration on a daily basis keeping it on bench top? or refrigerated?
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refreshed it can be stored in the fridge for at least 2 -3 days.to fit your schedule and it will be able to build an active levain in 12 hours. I keep my 66% hydration Whole rye starter in the fridge for 12 weeks with no maintenance and it routinely makes a very active levain after a 3 stage levain build totaling 12 hours. So 2-3 days of fridge time is really not much to worry about.
Check out the No Muss No Fuss Starter on TFL.
Happy baking
... ask 12 bakers get 13 answers types of questions.
Tonight (weds) I used my mothers directly from the fridge -the wheat had been topped up after I used it yesterday, the spelt topped up on Tuesday... I do not anticipate any issues with the fermented dough tomorrow morning because I've been doing this for a couple of years now..
So if I'd made up some bulk starter from the mother then for whatever reason I couldn't use it when it was ready, I'd just put it in the fridge, then as far as I'm concerned, it's "mother" from that point on.
I was recently away for a week and I used the mothers directly from the fridge when I came back and they "just worked". My Rye starter (@150%) will be used on Friday and by then it will have sat untouched in the fridge for nearly 2 weeks. I have no concerns about its ability to work because I've done this in the past.
So I take a rather relaxed attitude to maintaining the mothers - mostly because I've never had to do anything else and they've always worked.
-Gordon
and as I have only been using SD for 3 or 4 months I still have much to learn even though I have had mostly reasonable sucess. So it seems the idea is not to stress, make sure the refreshed starter is nicely active and if bake day gets shoved sideways as it can do, just pop the starter in the fridge. ... I will try and see, hopefully starter is strong enough. thanks for the help.
Take little amounts off each time and do 2 or more builds to bring it back up to strength. When the starter in the fridge runs low I just take it out, feed it, allow it to become active but not exhaust its supply then pop it back in the fridge again. I've never left it as long as dabrownman before feeding it again but have done up to 4 weeks.
i recently made a Forkish loaf. However I made the whole big batch of levain. Blame it on my head cold. Generally muserable in nature and sinus congestion caused my grey cells to malfunction. That's my story anyway. The long and short of it is that I had a lot of levain left over. I stuck that "spent fuel" in the fridge and mulled it over til I felt better. On the third day I took it out, added some whole wheat flour and some multigrain that I was trying to use up and worked it til it seemed like any other batch of dough. I didn't use a lot of water, keeping the hydration at a similar level.
I ended up with two very edible loaves of bread. I'm sure they were not what Ken Forkish intended but there were no complaints from those that ate. In fact my son sliced into one after it had been sitting cooling for a couple of hours only. By the time he left I didnt have to worry about storing that loaf. I had the last piece of the second loaf a couple of hours ago for breakfast.
While I won't consider this to be an award winning technique, I have established to my own satisfaction that flour and water ican be very forgiving. Because of the way I created the dough I really could not predict how it would taste. It did have a nice tang while the crumb was not quite what we strive for here. So no blue ribbons but no waste of 660 grams of unwanted levain either.
it 's all a learning process isn't - it just keeps on.. and it is great to be able to tap into the collective knowledge and experience here on TFL!
Manage your starter?
Do you feed it and bake with it everyday?
To make it easier to handle why don't you create about 150g. Allow it to feed and bubble but don't allow it to use up all its food. So feed it, leave it out at room temperature for a few hours then store in the fridge.
Night before baking take a little off and feed it: build one.
Day of feed build one into however much you need and it'll only take a few hours to be ready as it's already active.
EG. Say you need 150g starter for your recipe.
Night before take off 16g and feed that 17g water + 17g flour. Build one.
Next morning, feed the 50g from build one with 50g water + 50g flour and in just 3 to 4 hours you'll have your levain to bake with. Build two.
When your starter in the fridge runs low. Just take it out. Feed it. Leave out for a few hours and return to the fridge with reserves. And the whole process starts again.
I would never have made it this far without TFL. It is an incredible resource. Every time I log in for some answers I say a quick thank you to Floyd for bothering and to all the experienced bakers that take the time to instruct and encourage.
Comes from the wonderful people on TFL.
Take advice and learn from everyone then come up with your own unique twist.
I retard the dough at final proofing stage.
and bake several loaves of at least 2 types. Not very fancy ones compared to some here. I run 2 mothers in the fridge - a white firm and a rye firm one and the plan is to eventually reduce to one. At the moment, my original starter (white) seems to be the stronger. I rebuild the mother when needed and maybe it had gone too long last time (and that is why it was sluggish) and I was impatient! I am still getting my head around overnight retards and if loaves need to proof on bench (which might have helped last time) or if I can bake straight from fridge?
So I plan on baking Tuesday or Wednesday and have taken a little from mother and fed and left on bench. I want it really strong and bubbling for my bake!! haven't enjoyed the semi bricks from last bake at all :(