March 22, 2017 - 1:02am
What would salt in the starter do?
Would there be a change to it's characteristics?
How much salt (I'm assuming the usual 1.8-2%) and is there an ideal % to bring out a different flavour?
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Would there be a change to it's characteristics?
How much salt (I'm assuming the usual 1.8-2%) and is there an ideal % to bring out a different flavour?
Let us know after you have done the split and salt (Y)
I actually misread a recipe and thought the salt also went into the starter but I used google translate. Re-read the recipe and the salt is definitely in the final dough. However I have heard of salt in starter and was interested to see what effect it would have.
Definitely split first :)
Salt in the starter might put a check on certain microbial activity, as salt has a tendency to hog water. I would imagine that the kind of salt one used (i.e. iodized vs. non-iodized) would also have an impact.
I don't use salt when doing my levain builds, but my levain always "starts" from a small pinch I take from the previous dough I made. Thus, it always has roughly 2% salt from the get go. This of course gets diluted over the course of the feeds, but salt is there.
Give a shot to the experiment and let us know how it goes.
but never got round to asking. I've seen recipes specifically talking about iodized or non-iodized salt. What are they and why one or the other.
I think I will give this a shot.
So your starter is always a pinch of the dough from the last bake. I'm assuming the original was a sourdough starter made the usual way before maintaining it by holding back some of the dough. Why do you prefer this way and not keeping a mother starter? Would this mean it always changes and you use the levain build to turn it into a starter you want?
Generally in the UK our salt is salt (optionally plus a free-flowing agent). It doesn't have Iodine added. This is added in some countries to make up a (possibly perceived) local deficiency in iodine intake.
There's some stuff online about Kosher salt, but it's generally the same from a make-up point of view - ie. salt without Iodine added.
I buy fine sea salt by the 25Kg sack and it's quite a different beast from the usual table salt - mostly due to the lack of anti-caking/free-flowing agents. These act as an additional drying agent. It doesn't pour as well and tends to clump - a bit like moist sand.
I've no idea what added iodine does to recipes using salt. I imagine very little, if anything - my guess is that it's possibly more to do with kosher than any real reasons to do with the actual process, but who knows. Possibly also due to cultural diversity, dropping the word kosher and using the term non-iodised instead when really it's just salt....
And I've no idea about salting the starter either - although I have read of some processes doing it.
-Gordon
I will just be using the SAXA salt. a quick google search has told me it is iodised. But as long as it's not another issue I have to think about in baking i'll just carry on using it. It's fine and pours easily. That's why I use it.
Now there's an old name in the salt world... :-)
A quick google suggests they have 100's of types though - rock, sea, pink, etc. I'd just check the label!
I used to buy bags of cheap salt out of Morrisons before I went bulk sea salt - the sea salt is much more expensive than the cheap 25p x 1Kg bags ... I use about a kilo a week.
-Gordon
My "starter" comes from a peasant-baker with whom I was working in the southwest of France . . . which is to say, I pinched a small piece of dough from a day's baking before leaving the farm and used that ever since.
I prefer this way for simple convenience. Since I bake pretty frequently, I never go more than 2 or 3 days without building up a production levain, so keeping a mother starter in the fridge is just a slow-down for me . . . a piece of mother starter come from the fridge after four weeks of rest doesn't activate as quickly as a piece of dough from yesterday's or the day before yesterday's bake. This way, I always have a relatively "fresh" piece of starter on hand and can get away with doing a 2-stage rather than a 3-stage levain build.
So before or after kneading (when I remember), I pinch of a small button of dough, put it into a small bowl and cover it with a linen towel. The top dries out but is easily rehydrated if left to soak in warm water for a few minutes.
Feed one half more water than flour , dilute the salt , the starter bug may come thru ok
I'm actually doing my levain builds as a dough.
Doing some reading up on Pane di Altamura and it was in Italian. Hence the google translate. I'm clear on certain aspects of this bread and I've had some successes but I'm working on perfection.
The starter is a piece of dough refreshed daily which leavens the final dough. So exactly how lepainSamidien uses his starter. What I misread was salt in the starter when it meant salt in the dough but it got me thinking.
= Koshering 'kosher' salt .
Why the stipulation in some recipes I have no idea , surely it will dissolve just as standard table salt does .
Using salt in a sourdough starter isn't unheard of. J Hamelman mentions the use of salt in his book "Bread" as a means of slowing the fermentation down for the baker's convenience when the room temperature is excessively warm, the starter is particularly robust, or for convenience in scheduling production. Use of as little as 0.2% can affect the activity of the starter and as much as 2% can be used as long as the quantity is subtracted from the salt in the main dough.
Mr Hamelman also suggests the use of a smaller quantity of mature culture when building the starter or to use cooler water in the final build.
Useful for timing but won't make a difference in the characteristics of the starter. So if I want to do a few levain builds but only wish to feed once a day then this would be worthwhile.
Thanks for the tip about the final dough.
From a chemical point of view all salt is the same: Sodium Chloride. Iodide may be added (it's always labeled) and is only useful if your diet is deficient in this substance as it is needed for thyroid function. It's level is too small to have much of an impact on baking. If you are weighing out your ingredients, it doesn't matter what the brand of salt as you know who much is going into your bread dough. Personally, I use sea salt for its mystical properties as folks who read the label of my bread think it's some really great new age stuff! I've baked with both sea salt and regular salt and there is no taste difference.
minerals? including iodine - where does that sit? I have been using it for about 3 months with no issues.
an interesting thread Abe
Leslie
... heavy in the pocket. It's expensive! Although we use it at home, but I never use it in bread - it's just too expensive.
-Gordon
" We also compared regular to iodized salt. In high concentrations, iodine is a potent disinfectant. In low concentrations, an essential nutrient blended into table salt to prevent diseases such as enlarged thyroid or neonatal cretinism. The level in table salt is a mere 45 parts per million, and iodine compounds (such as calcium iodide) are often mixed into commercial bread doughs as a conditioner. So you won't be surprised to hear that in our tests that yeast and iodized salt grew just slight FASTER than plain salt. In other word, trace amounts of iodine will not harm yeast. "
http://www.genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/saltyeast.html
The entire article is worth a read . The salted dough tests vindicate the humble grain . And the late kneading of salt into the dough is shown to be inefficient at best .
cheers , Pat
interesting. indeed
Google says that pink himalayan salt contains more than 84 minerals. Check out this wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_salt
Interesting conversation. All salt may behave equally when baking bread but there are definite differences. "Real" sea salt is pristine sea water that is dehydrated in the sun. Himalayan salt is an ancient rock salt. Both are unprocessed and full of minerals. Regular table salt (at least in my country) is rock salt that is stripped of all the minerals except for sodium chloride then some type of chemical anti-caking agent is added. Iodized salt has iodine added back in (may be synthetic). Regular table salt is the "bad" salt that can contribute to the health problems people associate with salt. Both himalayan and sea salt are "good" salts used as mineral supplements by adding small amounts to drinking water.
I use both sea salt and himalayan. Yes, it's more expensive but to me it's totally worth it. And I can buy both in bulk which helps with the price. But then I also only use organic flour and good filtered water....
plain , and iodized added table , are the two common salts used at home and in the food industry , and the ocean supplies all we need . Although some still feel the need to follow the advice of their foreign health food guides and buy expensive imported sea salt so as to keep up with the latest food fads .
We have no rock salt deposits in NZ , and I don't recall ever using it here .
No Longer a Member
used in bread in my country for as long bread has been baked here.
I hazard a guess that it has been used in parts of the world for eons , the 1950s -60s is as yesterday in the face of that :-)
is based only on the actual substances tested by the Mayo clinic . For instance , it has absolutely nothing to do with the salt that comes from the Grassmere Saltworks , a saltworks that produces many varieties of salt , iodized table , and plain cooking , included . It may be that many other saltworks do likewise .
So in terms of this discussion , the mayo clinic's opinion has no international relevance at all , and therefore not much of a place here .
8-(
Information , so incorrectly presented by that clinic, that it makes no sense . The problem with such material is that it can lead folk astray , and in the context of this forum , cause heartache when breads do not achieve the desired result .
The mayo clinic has fallen down on the job with this one
This blogger experimented with different concentrations of salt in his starter ranging from 0 to 8% salt. He concluded that 4-6 % salt in the starter yields the best flavor https://artisaniaeth.com/index.php/en/2018/08/27/salting-sourdough-secret-stimulant-or-salt-in-the-wound/ so if refreshing starter using equal parts flour and water, adding 1 g salt for every 25 grams flour gives the recommended 4%.
Salt does not really effect the yeast activity, but reduces the acid build up. Here is a pretty detailed article about the Monheimer Salzsauer:
https://www.baeckerlatein.de/monheimer-salzsauer-verfahren/