starter suddenly hyperactive
I have had a fairly benign 100% hydration starter for last several months, feeding it 25% rye, 75% apf. Feeding 1:3:3 ratio roughly ever 8-12 hours, sometimes it'd be almost 24 hours, but didn't seem to impact strength much. It just happily chugs along, gets a little bubbly, barely manages to double. I don't recall brand of flour, bought in bulk, organic, unbleached. Ingredients were simply wheat.
Ran out. Couldn't find same flour, so picked up some. Next morning I found my starter tripled, and was super frothy up top, with complete gluten breakdown in the top third. It was nearly liquid up there (not hooch).
Fed, relocated somewhere cooler, and same thing... holy bonkers! I read the ingredients and KAF organic APF purchased is malted. Is this possibly causing the hyperactive starter, or maybe the flour is fresher or.. ? I think I'll be adjusting ratio to 1:4 or 1:5... Any recommendations? I am going to see what it's like baking bread with it like this, should be interesting.
Hey, thanks for the reply. My original post was not detailed, an attempt was made to keep it brief with enough details to be useful. More details for you now :)
I've had the starter for last several months. The 8-12 hours feeding has only been last 2-3 weeks, as I wanted to make a "strong" starter and compare it to "weak" starter, and then see how each performs both from ambient and fridge storage, since my basic recipe has finally become consistent and the oven factor understood. Originally it was 1:1 and 1:2 feedings from the fridge after the starter became active. I have been trying to get to the 1:4 or 1:5 I read about. This new flour gets me there, albeit all the froth and sudden growth is totally weird, not to mention unexpected from a presumably small change?
By the way, for last few weeks with all the feedings, I've been collecting leftover starter in the fridge, then use it to make a big mutant ciabatta like loaf thing with no particular recipe: just add a little water and flour, slap and fold it a bit, let it warm up/rise, shape, proof, bake, bread, give it to the neighbor. I wish I had a waffle maker or the patience to make english muffins, but this is easier.
Thanks for that link! Great read, I'll agree with you, this malted flour must be the culprit. Now I'm thinking my other flour (internet bulk ordered) was less common, since I was at the store after my original post, and noticed pretty much all flours were malted.
It is fun playing mad scientist with my pet yeast, and I like to see what happens first hand. That's all. I'm not searching for the perfect or ideal loaf or anything. Please don't call the aspca on me.
I forgot to mention, a while back I was experimenting with adding diastatic malt powder in the small, recommended amounts (I forget now exactly how much it was, but this forum has plenty of examples). What I learned is that I do kind of taste it, gives the bread a bit of a mushroom-umami flavor that I didn't like. So now we'll see if this bread also has that flavor, it's in the oven as I type this. The oven spring was magnificent, pushed my stainless bowl up holy cow hahaha.
Adding the powder not to the starter, but the dough itself. Edit button disappeared on me, apologies for multiple posts.
Seriously? All the flour at your store is malted? That sounds a little strange to me (or maybe I'm not reading your post correctly).
At three local grocery stores, the organic bread and apf flours were malted across all brands.
That said, I discovered what caused my hyperactive yeast: I was setting the container on the cable modem, which caused the dough temps to go into the high 80F range. The starter is now on a shelf near the modem. It wasn't a problem before, so I've no idea what on earth changed, besides the malted flour.
Next issue to figure out why my bread stopped the dramatic scores + ears. Haven't changed anything, all I get now is the "pulled" look. Oven spring still strong. Bah. Silly flour!