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maintaining stiff sourdough starters in room temperature

sallam's picture
sallam

maintaining stiff sourdough starters in room temperature

Greetings

I know that if you keep your starter in room temperature, you should feed it once every 12 hours, but that's for 100% starters. What about stiff starters? mine is 60% hydration. Is it ok if I feed it once a day, or even once every 2 days?

Feeding a stiff starter once every 1 or 2 days suits my schedule, because I now bake every day or every couple of days.

I've left a piece of discarded stiff starter in a jar on the counter (around 75-77F), unfed and neglected for about 2 weeks. It now smells very strong alcohol, too strong for my nose, I could even hear a sound of gas escaping when I turned the lid to open! but no unpleasant smell and no mold or anything bad. Does that mean that its OK to leave a stiff starter in room temp. for at least 2 days without feeding?

Did anyone have past experience with maintaining stiff starters in room temperature?

alfanso's picture
alfanso

Hi sallam,

Not answering your question about leaving the starter at ambient temperature, but...I keep a stiff culture in the back of my refrigerator, and bake using it maybe 2x/week.  Once mixed, it lives back there in a container and, per dabrownman's, build schedule I scoop out scant grams per build of the SD/levain to be used as part of my mix.  If I make enough of it, maybe 350g at a time during the refresh, it will last me a few months before it needs to be refreshed again.  I can then use it to make a stiff levain or liquid levain, depending on the formula requirements.  It is a lot simpler to keep it at ~40dF and forget about it rather than feed it daily.

alan

sallam's picture
sallam

" It is a lot simpler to keep it at ~40dF and forget about it rather than feed it daily."

Thanks for your reply. My situation is a bit different. O don't need to forget about it, as I bake daily or every other day. My question was not about feeding it daily, but rather using it on a daily or bi-daily basis. I hope someone with such experience to confirm whether its ok with stiff starters to leave them on the counter if I'm refreshing it every 2 days or so when I'm baking (I bake 3-4 times a week)..

merlie's picture
merlie

Maybe I'm doing this all wrong but I have been keeping my 50% all bread flour starter on the counter and feeding it once a day for many months now with no ill effects . In fact I have on occasion forgotten to feed it for about 36 hours and it still makes great bread. For me , keeping it in the fridge means sour tasting bread. It is a bit wasteful but how else can I manage to produce bread that does not taste sour ?

Merlie

sallam's picture
sallam

Thanks Merlie for this info. So a stiff starter can be left on the counter for at least 36 hours between feedings. This suits my schedule and baking daily or every other day.

PetraR's picture
PetraR

I used to use a 50% hydration starter and yes, that is fine, you can leave it without feeding for 2 days.

When such a stiff starter rises you can see that it has kind of a dome when it is at a peak, it stays at a peak for about 36hours and than the dome starts to sink in and slowly goes down.

So once you fed it you can use it after 8-12 hours after feeding for up to 48 hours before you need to feed it again.

I now maintain a 80% hydration starter as it gives a bit of a milder sour which my daughter prefers , and the 50% hydration starter sits in the fridge and will be used for the occasional more sour dough.

sallam's picture
sallam

I plan to try keeping a stiff starter in RT for a whole week. I thought, if 2x flour is enough as food for a starter in RT, then 5x would be enough food for 2 days. So, 10g starter + 100g flour + 50g water would probably keep the starter nice and fed for 7 days. I imagine that one could tweak the amount of starter/flour ratio to suits one's own schedule. Suppose someone bakes only once every 2 weeks, perhaps 10g starter + 200g flour could keep it maintained for 2 weeks, more or less. Of course other factors play a role too, such as room temperature and flour type. Experimenting is key here, but the idea seems applicable.

What do you think?

The beauty of maintaining a starter in RT, I guess, is that its always ready when you are. No need to wait for several cycles of feeding to wake it up from its dormant state in the fridge. The downside of maintaining it daily or every 12 hours can be easily avoided if the starter is firm and fed several times its weight in flour.

sallam's picture
sallam

Turned out that my assumption was wrong. Even though I used 10g starter with 50g water and 100g flour, in just 10 hours it tripled. So the time it takes a starter fed with flour 10x its weight is only double the time it takes the same starter when fed flour only 2x its weight. I'm beginning to understand how starters work. yeast cells seem to reproduce in multiplication not in addition (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128..etc). That is probably why a starter when newly fed takes an hour or more without noticeable rise, then it begins to rise slowly, and keeps accelerating towards its peak.

So my conclusion is that a starter maintained in RT cannot be left without feeding for long as I wrongly calculated. The fridge seems inevitable for those who bake once a week or so like I do.

rmzander's picture
rmzander

If there is a bread baking glossary I would love to know its location.

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Room Temperature

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

and it would take some experimenting... is to lower the hydration well below 50%. 

I,ve done this for traveling without refrigeration and for long time refrigeration storage to slow down fermentation.  To the point of moist crumbs that just barely stick together to form a tight ball.   Roll in flour to judge expansion and create a protective "skin."  I believe "the trick" is in using a mature culture and not thinning too much with water -- keeping an acid level high enough for the culture to defend itself from invasion.  Limit the water and you limit replication speed.

Try feeding something like  1:1:3.  1:1:4.  1:1:5.   1:1:6.  And time them (days) until they swell and/or smell ripe to use.  Rehydrate for formula use and to make a levain.

I would also let the culture make a few peaks at normal hydration levels ever so often just to check on its bacteria/yeast balance. 

Daphne Dawn Herbert's picture
Daphne Dawn Herbert

i know it’s not considered “kosher” but I’ve fed my high and low hydration starters larger quantities and left it for weeks at a time In room temperature In San Francisco with no ill effect. Just be sure to feed it before starting the Levain and it’s alwaus worked perfectly for me. 

not.a.crumb.left's picture
not.a.crumb.left

that you posted just now as I just was looking as this thread in order to understand how best to look after my stiff starter that I created in the last few days from my liquid starter. I bake quite often and for now wanted to keep it at room temperature with smaller re-fresh amounts also to just get a feel for the rising pattern. 

My liquid starter has a twice a day feed pattern that I now really well and I also have a feel from what it smells like that it is not getting an acetic overload.

How do I do that with a stiffer starter...my new one I feed on WW only at now 1:3:5 ratio which is 60% and it smells much more sour. I expect that but how do I know that it is well and getting an acetic overload?

So last night at 19:00 I refreshed 5g stiff starter, 15g water and 25g WW... and it is a tiny Weck jar..and looks after 16 hours like photo. Do I best refresh when it has large bubbles from the side and the dome starts to collapse?

One of the things I like about a stiff starter that people say it is not as important to judge the maturity exactly right compared to a liquid one?

Once I have a feel for my stiff starter I would like to experiment using both on same forumula's and whether I see any difference, especially when if it comes to WW breads. I don't have a mill sadly but I hear that it makes a difference especially with freshmilled WW loaves...

Kat