starters and loaves
Hello bakers,
I have a few questions. If anyone has time and inclination to help me I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you :)
-I am using a culture that I did not start myself and have no idea what type of yeast is present. Will this have any bearing on how to feed it and what items I can make and with what ingredients?
-I have heard that the use a metal is a bad idea, is this so?
-Can you overfeed your starter?
-Can you feed your starter while it's refrigerated and put it right back in? I was running out of starter because I was giving bits of it away to so many people; so I fed it on day three instead of one week as suggested for starters kept in the fridge.
-Does anyone have any good recipes that use weight not volume?
-I live at over 6,000ft does anyone have any suggestions for feeding and baking at this altitude?
-My first loaf was delicious, however it was hard as a rock on the outside and perfectly soft and palatable on the inside. How can I remedy this problem?
Thank you again :)
To answer two of the major Q's. Yes you can overfeed a starter and in feeding a refrigerated starter it is easy to overfeed.
After taking out a refrigerated starter early, I might suggest letting it mature or ferment fully before feeding and then wait for signs that the feeding was successful. That would mean waiting for the starter to start rising about 1/3 or even 1/2 way to maximum rise before chilling. In other words one or two complete reproductive cycles, yeasts double roughly every one to two hours. A newly fed starter often tastes of just flour and water, when fermented byproducts build over time until it tastes more like ready to bake bread dough.
Feeding and watching for 1/3 risen also assumes one knows how far it is going to rise. As the starter is new to you, it might be worth the watch just to feed, mark the level and watch it reaches maximum rise marking off each hour. That works well with a thicker starter than a runny one. So it would also be good to know... what flour you are feeding it and what are the weights of starter, water and flour when combined?
Hard crust? Bag it overnight. That lets the moisture inside the crumb migrate to the outside crust to soften. At higher elevations, it is important not to let the dough processes dry out the dough and baked crust too much.
You might want to follow a well written sourdough recipe in the beginning to understand the rising and handling but my favourite "go to" weight recipe is Flo's 1,2,3 Sourdough. Any amount of starter can be plugged into the recipe, or the total weight of dough can be divided by 6 to arrive at: one part starter; two parts water (hold back just a bit with more refined flours) and three parts flour; add 2% salt on the total flour weight (starter flour + dough flour.)
Welcome and don't be afraid to type in Q's into the site search.
Mini
I'm overwhelmed with your generosity in spending so much time to help answer my questions, thank you very much. :D
I am a little confused by the feeding process you described; by "two reproductive cycles" did you mean that whenever I feed it once a week, that I need to take it out of the fridge, let it sit, double, and then feed it twice before putting it back in the fridge? That does sound like a lot. Also, Im not sure if this matters but the starter I have is, I think, about 9 years old. It was given to me by a friend who has a bakery, with no explanations, other than to feed it....he's a very busy guy and of course uses his starter everyday on a grand scale.
Ideally I was hoping to just be able to feed it once a week by pulling it out of the fridge and then putting it right back in, unless I was planning on making bread. It sounds like this might not be possible.
Thank you again Mini :)
My comment is based on limited info about the state of the initial starter, the last feeding (3 days chilled only from normally one week) fed and immediately returned to fridge.
I have a Question before giving any more advice. What was the feeding? (Amts of starter, water and flour type) I feel this feeding should ferment longer before removing any to inoculate more flour and water or risk eventual decline of the starter.
Yeasts are little one celled organisms and reproduce at particular speeds. In the refrigerator they are moving very slowly, the colder the slower so depending on the refrigerator temp, they will reproduce accordingly. At comfortable room temps and warmer they can reproduce much faster. In order to raise bread, a healthy population of yeast is needed. Raising the temperature of the starter lets the yeast roughly double their numbers (invisible to the eye and not their gas output) within a short time. It takes several reproductive cycles (feeding-budding-separating) before enough yeast exists to begin to raise the starter or the dough after a substantial feeding.
Keeping the starter chilled, removing some starter (very normal) and replenishing the flour and water (4 days early) can limit yeast growth. A great strain is put upon the yeast to maintain a healthy population if too much flour and water is added in a very cold environment. This feeding and subsequent yeast growth can be further stunted if the next feeding follows only a week later when perhaps two or three weeks are required to reach the original yeast population.
You are correct in asking and thinking over feeding may influence the starter. Letting the starter ferment partially before returning to the refrigerator (time depends on the amount of food given) is the best way to maintain it.
Ideally I was hoping to just be able to feed it once a week by pulling it out of the fridge and then putting it right back in, unless I was planning on making bread. It sounds like this might not be possible.
Close. You should be able to feed it once a week by pulling it out of the fridge, letting it stand an hour or so and then putting it right back in. It all depends on the amount of starter and the food given.
But that routine got changed when the starter was fed early. The way to correct that is to let the starter stand out to warm up and ferment longer showing obvious "signs of life," before putting it back into the refrigerator. :)
Mini
Depends on what you mean by "use of metal". Stirring your starter with a stainless steel spoon isn't an issue. But your starter will become very acidic, so prolonged contact with reactive metals (carbon steel, cast iron, copper), is not a good idea.
Thank you Eric :) I used a metal fork the other day without thinking and I gasped when I realized what I had done, I thought I doomed my starter to an early grave, lol. Would you say that I should not use a metal bread pan for my future loaves then?
Thank you :)
Stainless steel should be fine. I would avoid cast iron or those aluminum pans, particular for long rise doughs. If you had a sourdough that only needed 2-3 hours proof, it's doubtful that it would become so acidic as to be a problem, but I'd probably still avoid it.
I agree. The warning about metal does not hold for stainless steel and is a throwback to before it was commonly used. Stainless steel or other non-reactive bowls, spoons, etc. are fine.
but at 6000 you shouldn't have to make huge adjustments. I am over 5400 and I can a difference, but most formula/directions are very close. Just keep any eye on things and you should e fine.