sour vs. sweet starters
I've been using my sourdough starter for a few months and have been very happy with it. I enjoy the sour taste a lot. My husband, however, likes his bread sweet. Over the months I've experimented with my starter and recipes to see if I could get a sweeter loaf, and while I did have loaves that were less sour, the sourness was still definitely there.
My whole sourdough journey was started (in a roundabout way) by my aunt. She says that she has received starters from a few friends over the years. The first couple she got were quite sour, and like mine, no matter the recipe or process, the sourness was always there--which she enjoyed, but her kids didn't.
She recently got a starter from a friend that is quite sweet, and she claims that the loaves it produces aren't sour at all, though they are kept the same as the sour starters--just flour and water. The first time she received some of this sweet starter she accidentally ruined it by keeping it out on the counter. It went sour (and even slightly bitter) and never went back to its sweet flavor even after being moved back into the fridge. She asked the friend for a new starter, and has been careful to keep it cold since then. It is still nice and sweet, and makes bread her kids like.
From this experience, this is her theory: different yeasts with different flavors like different temperatures. Starters with a more sour flavor were started at warmer (room) temperature, and even if they are moved to the refrigerator later those yeasts still dominate. A sweet start likes colder temperatures and will go sour if allowed to warm up to room temperature.
My question is, is this true? Does anyone here have experience with multiple starts of varied sourness? Is there a way to start a sweet start (maybe kept in the fridge from the beginning) vs. a sour one?
I would say she her theory is headed in the right direction. The important thing to remember with a starter is that you are not just dealing with yeast but also bacteria. There are many factors that will then determine the outcome of your dough, temperature being one of them. The amount of feeding and mixing (which can determine aerobic/anaerobic fermentation) ,hydration and the flour used. All of these things can change the outcome. I am sure there are many threads on this site and in other places give different combinations to achieve these results. - good luck
and most folks don't, is to make another kind of natural leaven called yeast water. In this case,the yeast on fruit s captured and cultivated in water with no flour. There is no sour component in yeast water so the bread comes out perfectly sweet. I use it for a replacement in commercial yea st breads with great success. Here is how you do it
YW Primer.
more from reading than from my limited SD experience of only a few months, there are various ways to help decrease sourness including but not limited to:
- use an AP or white bread flour starter rather than whole wheat or rye
- use a higher proportion of starter to total dough weight
- shorten the fermentation time e.g. by doing it at a warmer temp and not cold retarding
One thing I can vouch for personally is that it's possible to produce bread with an AP starter that is mild enough so most people won't spontaneously recognize as SD.