3 Questions on Starter Maintenance
I have been working my way through Ken Forkish's Four, Water, Salt, Yeast and made my first hybrid sour dough loaf this week. I think it was pretty successful.
Having read some posts here about Ken's method for maintaining the Levain, the prevailing view seems to be that it wastes a lot of flour. So what is the best way to adapt his approach to using less flour?
I have 1 kg of Forkish method levain. I have another container in the fridge with probably 400g that i haven't fed in a few days.
I have 3 questions:
1. preserve starter for the future in my fridge (i'm on a business trip next week and won't bake again till next weekend). If I ask my spouse to feed a little flour into my reserve every day or so will that do the trick?
2. I want to make just enough levain (360g) for my recipe rather than make a whole kilo and throw away most of it. Ken calls for a feeding of:
- 100g levain
- 400g white flour
- 100g WW flour
- 400g water
So if I am confident that my fridge starter will take care of me next weekend, and i only want 360g of levain, can i basically use these ratios to create 400g of starter? so 40g levain, 160g w. flour, 40g W. Wheat, 160g water = 400g levain for the recipe?
3. my starter is 12 hours off cycle. 2 days ago, i realized that i forgot to feed it before work and i fed it at night after work. I did that again last night. If i feed it this morning to get it on cycle. can i use to bake bread this evening?
Thanks for any assistance!
Josh
Josh, once you get your starter going, it is pretty durable. There are many different ways to maintain a starter. I refresh it nice a week and keep it in the fridge, in between refreshments, so yes , it can definitely last in the fridge a week without being fed. Second, as long as the ratios are the same, the starter wont care if you add 200 grams of starter, 200 grams of flour and 200 grams of water, and throw most of it it out, or take 20 grams of starter , add 20 grams of flour and 20 grams of water. I usually plan to make just enough so I will have some left over to put back in the fridge.
As to the third question, yes, but it depends. You can bake with it cold out of the fridge several days after you last refreshed it , 12 hours after it has been refreshed, or just after it peaks, it will work either way, though the timing of the rise will be different because the strength of the starter will be different..
I NEVER use commercial yeast. My starter began 10 years ago from an established starter. It is flour and water, period. Each time I bake either bread loaves, rolls, flatbreads, waffles, pizza dough, pancakes, et.al., I feed. I don't discard to feed EVER, I use "the discard" in whatever I am baking at the time. The rest of the time, the starter lives in my refrigerator. It is fed, on average, every 12-16 days, sometimes fewer.
(1) how 'old' is your starter? Is it well established or fairly new? My answer to your first question depends on it's age.
(2) I'd suggest doing 2 feedings b/f the dough. Something like this, in the morning the day before you mkae your dough: 45 g starter, 45 water 45 flour = 135. Let that sit for several hours. Then the night before you make your dough: 135 of your starter, 135 of water and 135 of combination of flours = 405 grams.
(3) Depends on how it behaves today. If it rises nicely, yes.
Good luck
hester
One your starter is established - that's more or less it. If it's in the fridge, then it will go into hibernation (mostly) and stay dormant for days or weeks. (some people claim years!)
I occasionally use my fridged starter directly into the dough - although these days that's rare as I need much more "production levian" than my 600g jars contain, so my mixing starts at 3pm when I take jar from fridge, remove as much as I need, add flour & water to that, mix and leave covered in a bowl. The jar gets topped up with the same as I removed and sits with the bowl - for 4-5 hours then it goes back into the fridge and the bowl of production levian is ready to be used right away.
So if I wanted 360g of production levian (and I wasn't using it directly from the fridge), I'd make it up by dividing that by 5, then it's one fifth starter from the jar, 2/5 flour and 2/5 water - that keeps everything at 100%, so 72g from the jar, 144g flour and 144g water - stir, cover and wait, (about 4-5 hours) and meanwhile, put 36g flour and 36g water into the jar to make up the 72g just removed.
There are 1000's of ways though - the key is to find a method that works for you.
Happy baking!
-Gordon
Thanks for all the responses. Much apreciated.
I just mixed a 75% Whole Wheat Levain (with a little bit of commercial yeast). We'll see how it comes out.
A comments/questions:
@barryvabeach: so you think it's ok to cook with starter right out of the fridge vs recently fed. As you say, the bulk ferment time will vary. So i guess judging the readiness of the dough for divide and shape is the key skill?
@hester: My starter is about 1.5 weeks old. I built up throwing away roughly 3/4s of the starter each day and adding flour and water. It seems pretty robust at this point.
i notice you're recommending a ratio of 1:1:1 starter, flour, water. Ken recommends 1:4:4. Any thoughts about how this difference in approach impacts results?
@Gordon: same comment as above, your ratio is 1:2:2.
Do you know of any text I can read that discusses how the build of the starter affects the dough and ultimately the bread?
thanks,
Josh
should ask your spouse to feed it, daily I think.
Also, I do 1:1:1 b/c it's easy for me. Everyone does it differently. the book that taught me the most, which I didn't get for almost a year after starting sourdough baking (btw, I also started w Forkish) was Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread. https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bakers-Book-Techniques-Recipes/dp/1118132718/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474754462&sr=1-1&keywords=Bread%3A+A+Baker%2...
I have learned a ton from that book. Almost as much as I learn here. lol
hester
So this 1:2:2 thing that I do ... because... that's what I've always done, and it seems to work for me.
So my thinking goes along the lines of (pick all, some or none :-) The arithmetic is easy... divide by 5, 1/5 is starter, 2/5 flour + 2/5 water. It's always 100% (see arithmetic being easy). It's "mature" in a relatively short time - well, 4-5 hours seems fine for me. That's a good balance between yeast activity and sour bacteria activity. (And incidentally, I typically use 30% starter to flour weight in the final mix, so for 500g flour I'd be using 150g levian) I have experimented with other ratios and other percentages of starter to final dough and for wheat based breads I've found that works well for me and the process I use. I use a bit less for spelt, but still 100% hydration starter and a lot more for rye (150% hydration starter).
I also think it's OK to use starter right from the fridge. Most of the time my spelts are like that ,and this is too:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/44111/easy-sourdough-part-1
-Gordon
Josh, you can definitely use it straight from the fridge, it will just take quite a bit longer to rise. Judging when it is ready is always the issue, whether you use if just after the starter peaked, or a week after it was in the fridge, because the rise depends on a lot of other things than just the how recently the starter was refreshed, including dough temp, room temp, recipe, etc.
Here's a Forkish 75% W Wheat hybrid levain/commercial yeast bread that i baked today. Any advice on how to improve would be apreciated.
A couple of notes from the bake:
1. i ran out of whole wheat flour and so i made up the difference with dark rye flour. so mix was 67% Whole Wheat, 8% rye, 25% white. These measures include what i fed the levain
2. when i measured the levain using the method found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-9D2Fs_qIU&index=11&list=PLWqTac5vy0cfmXcQgnMAZl6z69kpmUzBI, i probably got quite a bit of extra water so hydration of 82% per recipe was probably more like 85%
3. i stayed out longer than i expected, and my kitchen is 73F this time of year (ken says his is 68-70) so the bread bulk fermented for 6 hours rather than 5 and was much bigger than the recipe's 2.5X volume (more like 4X volume)
The bread has a stronger sour flavour than i would like. The crust is really tasty. One of the loafs is flatter than the other (not sure if this is due to the difference in dutch oven).
Any feedback welcome