The Fresh Loaf

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Rye flour starter hydration?

Ellingham91's picture
Ellingham91

Rye flour starter hydration?

I've started a rye flour starter as an offshoot of my normal 100% hydration white/whole wheat starter. I'm using whole grain rye made it to 100% hydration and it's still very stiff. Ive always used a more liquid starter so I guess my question is how does a stiffer starter change things? 

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

wet. But it dies seem less wet than a white one at the same hydration.   Even 100% rye breads are routinely 100% hydration, or even more and quite gloppy.  I keep my stiff rye starter in the fridge at 66% hydration.

Happy rye baking  

drogon's picture
drogon

For another data point; My rye starter is kept at 150% hydration. My 100% rye loaves work out at about 96% hydration overall.

-Gordon

GAPOMA's picture
GAPOMA

So I just made my first 100% rye starter a couple of months back.  I too started with a coarse "dark" rye flour (Hodgson Mill Rye), but used the starter "recipe" from Norm Berg & Stan Ginsberg ("Inside the Jewish Bakery"), which is a 73% hydration starter.  So even stiffer!!!  I fed it for two weeks with my whole grain, coarse dark rye flour (Hodgson Mill) and boy was it stiff!  It smelled GREAT and was very active, but it was hard to work with.

Recently I asked Stan what hydration he uses in response to a Moscow Rye recipe he posted.  He said he uses a 100% starter.  So I switched.  What I found was that the 100% hydration is easier to work than the 73% hydration, but it was still pretty stiff while I was using the coarse Hodgson Mill rye.  

More recently after talking with Stan and running out of the Hodgson Mill rye I was using,  I started feeding my starter with a finer grind of rye flour that I got at Whole Foods.  I think they called it "whole" rye flour.  Whatever.  It's not a white rye, but it's a much finer grind than the Hodgson Mill rye.  Almost immediately my 100% hydration rye starter was much wetter and easier to work/feed.  Much more like my 100% white flour starter in texture.  But it still has that great rye smell and is very active. 

What did I learn ... I probably rediscovered the wheel.  My experience says that coarser ground flour leads to stiffer starters, and that moving to a finer grind will result in a thinner and perhaps easier to work starter.  I probably should have known all this before I started.

Ellingham91's picture
Ellingham91

i understand all of that I'm just wondering how stiffer starters affect the dough? Flavour  wise, texture wise, or if any effect at all. I know a stiffer starter is more forgiving in terms of feeding. But is there anything else?