March 29, 2015 - 3:58pm
increasing stater for large batches of baking?
Hi, I am wondering if anyone has recommendations for increasing a 100% hydration starter from its maintenance amount of 50 g to 10,000 g. I usually simply feed it every 8-12 doing a double or triple amount feeding until I get to the desired amount. While this works okay I do see that the starter doesn't quite double as I increase it amounts as I climb towards the mid range of what I need. Is there something I should be doing differently? I only use ancient grains for all of my baking and my starter is currently made from Kamut© (khorasan wheat).
Thank you in advance!!
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Seed a 10kg mixture with a bloop of active starter and let it sit longer, like at least overnight.
let it ferment until it peaks, Then try the next feeding (1:3 or 1:4) waiting again until it peaks. Aim for enough starter so that you have a little left in the bucket to take out some maintenance starter at the end of all this feeding.
Doing a 50:5000:5000 (or 1:100) feed would be very sour.
A 1:10 feed (50:500:500) could be possible if your starter was stronger but it sounds like it gets fed too soon before the yeast number are high, so it is slow. Wait for peak of activity to feed. If it normally more than doubles, wait for it. Wait for the inoculated flour's rising dome to peak in activity then add more flour and water.
Hi Mini Oven, I don't know that it's a slow starter. It doubles itself in 3-4 hours in a 70°F kitchen. Perhaps that is?? I could feed it more ofton during the day. I've tried a variety of feeding schedules. Although never feeding it more than 3 times in a 12 hour period. Also the most I've fed it is a 50:200:200. Night is always difficult because it must go through an 8-10 hour period without being fed. Not sure how to avoid that at this point. How do bakeries do it? Are they feeding there starter more often because it's in consrant use?
I mark my containers to see when they double and watch for the dome and feed after it has reached that point. I guess I will have to pay very close attention to when the starter is at that point in the later phases. Working in a home environment with variable temperature a sure makes this harder!
after the 2nd and 3rd feeding just means it is ready to go. That is my rule of thumb for when the levain is ready to go,
Happy Baking
I can't remember having a kamut starter (which makes me very curious) but it must be similar to whole wheat. 70°F is worth mentioning and yes, that would slow things a bit, it just takes longer. I was going on your comment that as you increased the flour and water, it seemed to be slowing down fermentation, that would indicate to me that the starter is overfed at that point, the yeast cannot ferment as fast as the flour additions demand.
There will be a lag time for yeast to put out gas as fresh food is added. When the yeast population reaches a certain density, it starts becoming noticeable and then rapidly expands the volume of the starter. Yeast double the population ever hour or two under ideal temperatures, exponentially. If you need the starter in a hurry, using warm water or a proofer may help speed fermentation. I would be tempted to hang a candy thermometer over the edge of the starter bucket to control temperature.
As the mass builds, it tends to warm up and speed up.
My starter easily rises overnight to peak in the morning if I give it enough food to work on. Try a higher amount of flour for the 8 - 10 hrs stretch, 1:5 or 1:6 or chill the starter to slow it down.
:) I started my own Kamut starter several years back. I sell bread once a month and Kamut, as well as, einkorn are the two most popular grains. I do 100% einkorn or Kamut loafs using a no-knead method. I am in a food community in MN that has a lot of people who have wheat allergies or intolerances. They are able to eat my ancient grain, sourdough bread. Many have gone years without being able to touch bread. This is the reason for the question about growing the starter. I don't maintain a huge quantity and grow it each month just in time to do several days of intense baking. :)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate it and will try the 1:5 or 1:6 feedings. Interesting to read that 70 seems cool. :) It's warm for us. Most of the long winter my starter is maintained in a 60 degree home. I do stretch out the feeding quite a bit more in the very cool temperatures, but for my starter it's great, because the warm temperatures make it so active at times I have a hard time staying on top of feeding it as often as it needs. I always assumed that the larger batches of sourdough starter should ferment at the same rate as the smaller batches, since proportional they are they same, but perhaps not.
This seems like a great community. I am new member, although have visited the site quite often over the years of sourdough baking.
Some of us are experimenting (trial and error) at the moment with Einkorn. My stocks went dry last week, but I got my hands on a kilo :) whole einkorn flour yesterday. My einkorn starter was fed two slices of cut up einkorn bread ( + water) to get it over the hump. This does ferment faster than the flour so I was eager to mix flour into my starter today. I like to add day old bread to many of my rye starter builds and recipes as it gives some strength to the dough (as pre-gelled starch) but mainly flavour is vastly improved. Wonder if kamut responds in similar ways.
I've had the einkorn starter sitting out warming up from being in the fridge, stirring and breaking apart the chunks of bread with a fork. All the stirring is making it difficult to judge the yeast population by gas/dough expansion. I want to make sure it is as fermented as it should before I feed it with the flour (and i just might make a loaf) while I'm sniffing and tasting it.
I thought rye starters fed with altus smelled and tasted great, but einkorn sourdough starters fed einkorn altus smell fantastic! Way up there on the joys-of-sniffing starter scale. I'm looking forward to the bread from this starter before I've even made it. It's smelling very yeasty after a few hours at 23°C. (solar warmed house) I don't even care if it's a brick! but I will try very hard to get a nice crumb. I've got 25g of flour soaking with 125g of water to make tangzhong or water roux to include in the dough.
Got a few pictures of your loaves? Interested in recipes, thoughts, ideas, tricks that work for you. :)
Mini
I bulk my wheat starters (kept at 100% hydration) by adding double the water+flour and leaving it 5-6 hours, repeat as needed.
So, working back from 10000g - that needs 2000g starter + 4000g flour + 4000g water.
and backwards again; 2000g starter needs 400g starter + 800+800 flour+water
I keep > 400g starter in my fridge, but if I needed to make 400g, it would be:
80g starter + 160+160g flour+water.
So 3 stages from 80g.
I've yet to do a 3-stage build though, but am now doing a 2-stage build to get about 2.5Kg of starter and that works fine. Start at abut 10am for the first bulk (100 -> 500), then at about 3pm bulk again (500 -> 2500) and its ready to use by 9pm.
-Gordon
I've sort of noticed the same thing. As I increase the amount of starter I need for the breads I bake, keeping the flavor and getting it to double become a bit challenging. I did get a good double when I added some sprouted wheat, in fact it tripled. Since it's not a wheat I normally use for my starter I don't want to count on it. When I tried to build too much too fast I did lose flavor. Even though my starter doesn't double but gets close, I have no problems with my dough rising and I do long fermentation at 3-4 days in the refrigerator and the loaves still give great oven spring. I would just love to be able to maintain a large batch of starter without having to toss anything before feeding it again. Today I tried using three smaller containers and while they did double, it wasn't enough starter for what I needed.
After I make a batch of dough I feed what's left of the starter, and add some of the main starter from my fridge and let it sit out overnight. About 5 hours before I need to start making dough I'll feed the starter and then wait for it to start going down to start making the dough. Most times it's only about 3/4 of the way to the doubling mark before it starts to go down. The weather is starting to warm up so I'll see if that has any affect on it. I would also love to know how bakeries keep large batches of starter. Thanks for posting this.