The Fresh Loaf

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When to feed prior to baking?

enchant's picture
enchant

When to feed prior to baking?

I suspect that this is one of those things where everyone has their own method and it works for them.  So it's like asking "What's the best kind of music?"  But...   I'm making my first attempt at sourdough bread in a dutch oven tomorrow.  I'm going to need to start mixing everything with the starter around 7am.

My starter is about 2 months old.  I've been feeding it every morning at 8am.  It's very active in the afternoon, and has totally quieted down to a liquidy mass by feeding time next morning.  If I'm going to use it in the morning, should I give it an off-schedule feeding the night before so that it's more active?

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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enchant's picture
enchant

In the first paragraph, you say take some starter and build the levain in the morning.  In the second paragraph, you say do it in the evening.  Should I feed it tonight or just keep to the schedule and take some in the morning just prior to its normal feeding?

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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enchant's picture
enchant

Ok, I understand now.

I'm going with Jacob Burton's method that he outlines in a youtube video.  I've seen a few videos, and they're ALL different.  The resulting loaves all look pretty spectacular.

Although I'm going to use a standard dutch oven for this, I'm going to order a LL combo cooker today.

clazar123's picture
clazar123
When it comes to baking take some off and build a Levain for the recipe in good time so it has peaked and is ready to use at 7am

You want to have the levain be at its peak activity when you incorporate it into the dough.

 

 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Why do you feed it every day? Do you bake every day? If it is reasonably mature (and two months old should be good), then feeding it without using it must have resulted in a lot of starter or a lot of discard! I keep mine in the fridge (put it in there after it has been fed and has risen and bubbled), and take a little out to build my levain when I am ready to bake. If you want to make the dough in the morning, build the levain the evening before and let it sit at room temperature overnight. I usually make my dough in the evening so it can ferment and then retard in the fridge overnight, so I build the levain in the morning of dough-making day. Example - build levain (using refrigerated starter) at around 9 AM. Make dough around 4 PM (mix, autolyse, stretch & fold, bulk ferment) then put dough in the fridge around 9 PM. Take it out at 8 AM the next day and bake at 10 or 10:30 AM.

When the mother culture (the starter in the fridge) gets low I feed it at a 1:2:2 ratio, usually at the same time that I'm building a levain (so, in the morning in my case) and let it sit at room temperature until it is doubled and bubbly, then it goes back into the fridge. If I'm not baking at all (very rare), I will feed the starter every week or so, but I've successfully built levains from starter that has been in the fridge for weeks unfed.

enchant's picture
enchant

> Why do you feed it every day?

I think that if I ask 100 bread baking aficionados how to care for a starter, I'll get 100 different answers.

To answer you specifically, I feed it every day because as I've never done this before, I looked on the web for answers, and the couple places that showed how to create a starter from scratch said I should feed it every day.  They didn't go into specifics on what to do based on a myriad of different cooking schedules and plans.  And for that matter, I certainly don't know what my schedule will be from day to day.

The starter seems to be a precious thing.  People hand it down from generation to generation.  People buy specific strains of it online.  So it seems like something I don't want to kill.  Feeding it daily seems like a good way to not kill it.

I've heard instructions to "put it in the fridge if you want to retard it."  No, I don't specifically want to "retard" it.  I wouldn't mind being able to put it in the fridge and forget about it until some time in the future, but again, I've heard such a variety of instructions how to handle this that I'm nervous about doing the wrong thing. 

Yeast is alive, right?  It needs to eat.  My experience with life is that if you don't feed it for long enough, it dies.  I'm just having a difficult time determining how long that is.

There's also the issue about how much to keep around.  I've heard people talk about just keeping a tiny amount of starter.  Ok, so what if I have 20 grams of starter in the fridge and get the hankerin' for a loaf of sourdough that requires 300 grams of starter?  That seems like a lot of feeding cycles to get from 20g of refrigerated starving starter to a big handful of healthy levain.

I'm going to write down the baking schedule that you outlined.  Something like that might work for me.

Modern Jess's picture
Modern Jess

> I think that if I ask 100 bread baking aficionados how to care for a starter, I'll get 100 different answers.

This is not true. You'll actually get 150 different answers. :)

If it were me, I would just do an extra, off-cycle feed in the evening, and use what I needed directly from the starter in the morning. This assumes that the time between the off-cycle feed and your planned mix time roughly corresponds to the time it takes your starter to "peak", but the timing isn't as critical as you might think -- it's like horseshoes. You just have to be close.

As I was beginning the process of learning to bake, I was overwhelmed with all the different instructions (and how they differed from each other) and had trouble making sense of it. I also put too much emphasis on being exact with my starter -- exact proportions, exact timing, etc. As I came to understand the process (and my starter) I learned that some of the exactness was probably unnecessary. Certainly, to get consistent results, exactness and control of the process (including temperature) is necessary. But at this point, you're not interested in consistent results or even anything resembling perfection. You're looking for a loaf of bread made from your new sourdough starter. Preferably one that gets decent rise and tastes good.

So, my advice: do an off cycle feeding. Skip the levain build altogether. Just use the peaked starter straight out of the jar. It'll work great. Whatever benefits the overnight levain build offers at this point will be lost in the noise of everything else you're doing and all the other mistakes you're going to make. Relax and leave the levain for when you're close to perfection and need to make that last incremental improvement.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Good luck with your bake!

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Absolutely; no criticism intended. I just wanted to know if there was some particular reason why you feed it every day so I could tailor my comments and offer appropriate advice.

Yes, most instructions recommend feeding it every day for the first week or two while you are first building a starter. Yours seems to be fairly mature now, so you can go into maintenance mode. 'Retarding' it just means reducing the yeast activity to close to zero so you don't need to feed it every day. In my experience it won't die, it will just go into sort of hibernation. Some of mine have gone for months and then revived quite nicely when given flour, water and warmth.

As for how much to keep - you usually need only a day's notice to build a levain from your starter. If you have, say, 75 grams on hand you just need to use 60 grams to build your 300 grams of starter (which is a lot for one loaf, unless you make really big loaves!) Add 120 grams of water and the same of flour, let it sit overnight and in the morning you have 300 grams, ready to go. Then feed the remaining 15 grams of starter with 30 grams of flour and 30 grams of water and you have another 75 grams for next time!

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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enchant's picture
enchant

Thanks for that.  The more I look at, the more things will come together mentally for me.  (A successfully baked loaf wouldn't hurt, either.)  However, if you don't mind, I'm going to stick with the recipe I'd planned on for this first loaf.  I've watched the video several times, so I almost feel like I've got experience with it.

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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enchant's picture
enchant

I haven't started baking today's loaf yet.  It's in the final stretch of proofing, but I don't give this attempt much of a chance.  Things went poorly from the get-go.  The slap & fold method he uses didn't work for me.  For one thing, even though I used the exact same ingredients and the same brands, my dough seems to be a LOT stickier than his.  While his dough seemed very manageable and stretchy, mine was like trying to stretch a tire.  Also, while he got some specks of dough stuck to his hands, my hands looked like the creature from the black lagoon.  Several times I had to scrape my hands clean with a bowl scraper and wash them off.  Leaving it on the counter to bench rest, his held its shape, while mine puddled out a lot.

But I've put several hours into it so far, I might as well power through the final step.

My combo cooker and an 8" Banneton proofing basket will be arriving tomorrow.  I hope to take a shot at the recipe you posted.  Several things I like about it.  No slap & fold.  Let the mixer do the work.  Also, no whole wheat flour, which is probably a big reason why this is so sticky.

They say their starter is based on rye flour.  I'm hoping this isn't an issue, as mine is not.

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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enchant's picture
enchant

> You had no whole wheat flour So used all bread flour but kept the same hydration.

I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about.  I matched his instructions gram for gram.

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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enchant's picture
enchant

That was in the paragraph where I talk about using your recipe.  No slap and fold (mixer instead), and no WW flour, unless I overlooked something.  They specify "wheat (bread) flour", which I assume is regular Bread Flour.  I used whole wheat dough in today's recipe, and I suspect that might have contributed to the stickiness.  I've never seen that in recipes that only use Bread or AP flour.

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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enchant's picture
enchant

Yes, I'm totally familiar with the hydration considerations with whole grain flour, and yes, I've heard of plain white bread,  but I'm not thrilled with the insult.  So I think I'll back out and go the rest on my own.

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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enchant's picture
enchant

There's a big part of this science that I'm missing.  I'm looking at the yeast as a pool of creatures.  So let's say that if I have 100g of starter, it's a pool of goo with 1000 yeasties swimming around in it.  So if I add 50g flour and 50g water, what makes sense to me is that I've still got 1000 of them surrounded by a bunch of food.  So what happens at this point?  After a day of eating, do I have 1000 big fat yeasties?  Do they ingest all this food and split into 2000 yeasties?

Now let me be clear - I don't doubt anything you say.  I'm just trying to wrap my head around it.  Let's take two scenarios.  My daily regimen is to take my 100g of starter, throw half away, then feed it 25g flour and 25g water.  So if I want to have 400g of starter for a recipe I'm going to bake, I'd NOT discard any starter, but I'd add 50f/50w on day one (total 200g starter) and maybe 120f/120w on day 2 (total 440g starter)  Now on day 3 (baking day), I can pull off 400g of starter for my bread and feed 20f/20w to the 40g of starter that's left.

You're saying that I don't have to go through this buildup, but I can just take a tiny amount of starter and feed it a massive amount of food?  Will the two resulting starters be equally strong?  Is there any limit to how big you can grow your starter in one day?

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

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Jibsman's picture
Jibsman

I must be lazier than The Lazy Loafer! My starter sits on top of my fridge, in a glass bowl, covered with plastic wrap. Sits for days. When I want to use it I feed it up (240g starter, 120g filtered warm water, 120g AP flour), let it rise and use what I need. Feed it again and it sits on the fridge.  I also have the same starter in the fridge "just in case", and I occasionally swap that out with fresh starter, or refresh and use it along with the starter that sits out. As long as there is nothing yucky on the starter, it smells OK and rises in about 6 hours I'll continue to use it. Longest it has sat is a week. Haven't had a problem yet. My last loaves were a test using SourDom's Pane Francese recipe over at sourdough.com, and it was almost doubled in 2 hours for the rise.

I guess I'm saying as long as you have a mature starter that has worked in the past, you can abuse it for a bit and it will still work. I use the same bowl for my starter so I know when it is ready to use by how high it has filled up the bowl and has reached the "high water mark".

Guess I'm just a Bad Starter Daddy.

Happy Baking!

Jibsman

jimbtv's picture
jimbtv

My take on all of this is that if you are baking the occasional loaf of bread and you want to use a sourdough starter, you can be more casual about the care and maintenance of your starter. It is hard to kill a starter but your results may differ from bake to bake. You may also prefer the characteristics of an underfed starter, like maybe the sourness is deeper or the fermentation is slower. It may simply be what you are used to using and what you like in your bread.

Consistency is the gospel of production baking so variability can throw a wrench in the works very quickly. A starter that is sleepy and sweet one day then very active and sour the next, can disappoint your customers who want the same bread they purchased yesterday, or last week. It can also really mess with your oven schedule if you were planning the baguettes from 7 - 9AM but the just didn't feel like fully proofing until an hour later. Now they are jammed-up against another bread that IS on schedule.

As I strive for consistency I have come to manage my starter differently. I too had a phase when I would feed my starter once a week, then every other day, and now I am on a daily maintenance schedule. In this way my preferments, bulk fermentations, proofing and baking tend to follow a pretty tight schedule, and the flavor of my breads is quite consistent.

One way is not necessarily better than the other but if you are looking for consistency, then you should treat your starter consistently. Feeding every day at 8AM at a 1:0.5:0.5 ratio is very consistent, even though some might comment that it is a little light on nutrition. Your culture will likely produce the same results from bake to bake, although it might perform more to your satisfaction by upping the flour and water a bit. If you like the way it is performing now then don't change a thing.

One other point - sourdough starter is primarily bacterial with very little yeast, so you are not growing little yeasty things but instead growing bacteria cultures. Yeast can exist in a sourdough culture but the ratio is very low - like 100 lactobacillus to 1 yeast spore.

enchant's picture
enchant

I think for future feedings, I'll cut back on my starter, but keep the feeding amounts the same, so 1:1:1.  Last night, I kept 150g of starter and fed it with 175g flour and water.  This morning, it's looking very active, so I'm confident it should work well.  I've heard so many stories of people virtually abandoning their starters and they still recover.  So I probably shouldn't be so paranoid.  As far as consistency goes, I'm only baking for myself and my wife (who believes this is a monumental waste of time, but just wait till she has some!)  If the next loaf tastes differently from this loaf, that might be a good thing.  Also, since I don't plan on baking sourdough bread more than about once a week, keeping it in the fridge with sparse feedings would be a lot more convenient for me, so maybe I should just learn to love what it tastes like under those conditions.