July 13, 2016 - 6:19pm
keeping small quantity of starter
Hello.
I started baking using recipes from weekendbakery.com They use to keep a small amount of starter, and aways use a "poolish" to build a preferment. So this is what I've being doing.
But I'm finding recipes asking for larger amounts of starter. So two questions:
1- If I want to build that amount of starter, when should I assume the new starter is ready? At peak rise? Or after it falls down? Why? Should I use 1:1:1 (starter:flour:water) to do that?
2- If the recipe does have a pre ferment asking for more starter than I have, can I just use less and wait longer? If so how should I calc the amount to use and time, or should I go by the look of the PF only?
thanks for any thoughts.
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and how large is large?
For my little microbakery the biggest I've needed so-far has been about 5-6Kg of starter and I've had to build that in 2 stages...
So to get to 5Kg, in 2 stages with 100% starter (100% target) then I divide by 5 to get 1Kg, so the last stage is 1Kg starter plus 2Kg flour and another 2Kg water.
The stage before that - to get that 1Kg starter, divide by 5 again to get 200. So 200g starter from my jar in the fridge then 400g flour plus 400g water.
How long to leave it - well my starters appear to be very active and it only takes 3-4 hours for them to be bubbly and lively.
What would happen if I simply started with 200g starter then 2.4Kg flour and 2.4Kg water... I think it would work but might take longer which might make it more acidic.
-Gordon
Wow, 5kg!! I'm talking about 300/500 g at most. But apart from that, the thinking should apply to my case.
So you build it using 1:2:2. That's faster.
I'm a newbie. I've home baking every weekend for like 2 or 3 months. I keep about 120g of starter in the fridge. This is the only starter 1've ever met, but I think it is pretty active, taking about 3 hrs (room temp /1:1:1) to double. But I've read somewhere that the peak of activity is after the rising peak. Is that so?
Thanks a lot.
Vk
To confess; I have never timed my starters and I have never waited until it doubles and never woried about "peak activity" either. If it's got bubbles, it's working.
I used to use starter directly from the fridge but when there isn't enough I bulked it up with 1:2:2 quantities, I just wait 3-4 hours which "feels right" and its starting to bubble. So my usual process is to get to the kitchen mid-afternoon - between 3 and 4pm, make up the starter(s), then start the mix/knead at about 7:30-8pm. My doughs sit overnight in a cool place (I aim for 18°C, but it's a few degrees warmer right now) then I'm up at 5-6am to scale/shape/prove and bake.
This is some of my starter doing its stuff:
Sourdough cauldron
I think that was the best part of 6 kilos...
So if I needed 500g of starter, then I'd take my 150g jar from the fridge, measure out 100g, add in 200g flour and 200g water and leave in a warmish place for a few hours until it starts to bubble then use it to make bread. And right after I took the 100g from the jar, I'd put back 50g flour + 50g water, mix, leave it out for an hour or 2, then back into the fridge.
-Gordon
Well, it's good to know that pros does make stuff without such big precision. I'm just starting to be puzzled by that.
When I arrived in this fascinating word of baking, I read everywhere that precision is a must. But after some baking I'm start to find that actually baking good bread is not that hard. Ok, I use scales and thermometers. I think they are the way to go, But the whole timing stuff looks now to be very flexible and forgiving. I mean, first breads I followed the timing very much precisely. When I start to get the feel of the dough, I started to do things in a more relaxed fashion, fitting the stuff in my schedule. So sometimes I retard the bulk, sometimes the proofing... I don't count and time the SaF very much. I go look at the dough, and then I see what it is needing and how developed/fermented it is and act as needed. I believe my bests breads so far have being done like this.
I guess the precision is a must if you have a bread store and need to reproduce everyday the same bread. But even so, I could say that my breads are very predictable. But again, I'm just a beginner starting to learn all that.
thx
:)