The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Should a healthy starter be able to feed on any flour?

likejehu's picture
likejehu

Should a healthy starter be able to feed on any flour?

I usually keep my starter fed on 50/50 rye/ap (or bread flour).

It generally is quite active. It doubles every 5 to 6 hours after feeding with 1 part starter, two parts water, and two parts flour. I bake with it every two weeks or so and usually refresh it three or four times before baking.

I've been having some trouble with gluten development throughout the fermentation process, (the dough becomes very weak and starts to lose structure somewhere in the middle) and I was wondering if my starter was causing the problem. The loaves are OK, though the crumb tends to be a bit tough.

I'm making this connection because I recently tried transitioning my starter to an all AP diet, and the starter couldn't survive.

 So two questions:

Would an unhealthy starter, which otherwise is active, hinder gluten development?

And would a starter's inability to survive on AP flour indicate that it is unhealthy?

Mic's picture
Mic

I was just going to ask I could use whole wheat flour for my starter.

likejehu's picture
likejehu

People use all kinds of flours to feed starters. The whole grain flours are said to have more nutrition for the bacteria cultures, which makes the starters more active. 

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

Mine varies all over the place depending on what I have on hand but I try to feed it whole grain or bran as much as possible.

mutantspace's picture
mutantspace

I have 2 starters rye and white and feed them rye and white flours however I have transitioned them with no problem - could it be that you’re over mixing at beginning leading to gluten breaking down 

likejehu's picture
likejehu

I don't think that would be the case. I'm generally following the Tartine method: at least a 30 minute autolyse; pinch and fold in starter and salt, followed by a 4 to 6 hour bulk fermentation with streching and folding intermittently. I've seen much more intense mixing regimens that build a dough that's visibly stronger than mine.

My suspicion is either the starter is too acidic (though it doesn't taste like it is) or there's something about the culture in the starter that is breaking down the gluten.

BakerBuck's picture
BakerBuck

Gluten development is a very complex subject and one post would not do this topic justice.  IMO, hydration, time and mixing/folding are the major determinants of gluten development, after the protein content of the flour.  Dough acid/base and other chemistry follows fourth,and starter characteristic seems to play a minor role.  Of course, the incorporation of CO2, the physical act of rising, is always important.  Poor rise=less gluten development.

Wild yeast metabolize starch, not protein, so AP is a better food for cultures that bread flour.  Pastry flour is therefore the best, but usually too expensive to waste as yeast food.

One overlooked aspect of feeding cultures is the avoidance of chlorine.  Chlorinated tap water is just as bad for yeast as it is for harmful bacteria.  Use water that has stood overnight, has been boiled and cooled, or melted ice from your freezer as chlorine-free sources of water for your culture.  If your community uses chloramine instead of chlorine, that is harder to remove and you might consider bottled water.

It may be that your starter is just not mature yet, no matter how long you have had it.  If it is a white flour starter, I would replace one-third of your white flour with rye flour for each feeding.  Do this for a couple of cycles, then go back to white flour and use it.  If still underperforming, repeat.

You must feed your starter twice per day.  If you need to take some time off from the feeding schedule and refrigerate it, you must replenish your starter for a couple of cycles, depending on the starter, to get it back up to activity.  Forgive me if you know any or all of this; perhaps this will be read by someone else who will need to know these things.

B.B.

DesigningWoman's picture
DesigningWoman

Hello again BB,

I was finding that my new starter was looking a bit sluggish, having gone from exuberant (4x) rises and falls to stodgy 2x (2:3:3 twice a day). So I thought I'd help things along by swapping out my T65 (you call it bread flour) for T80 (white whole wheat??). Reading you now makes me think I should have switched down to T55!

So I should make the swap for the next feeding?

Thanks so much.

likejehu's picture
likejehu

This is helpful. Thanks very much. I was unsure about the water quality aspect. There are times when my tap water has a very strong chlorine smell, so I'll do some experiments with bottled water to see how much that changes things.

 

BakerBuck's picture
BakerBuck

We all enjoy learning from our starters.

DesigningWoman, if you are in Paris, you probably have access to books on levain (sourdough to us Yankees) far in excess of anything printed over here.

Every feeding has the potential to alter our starter, even just a little bit. (So..."heirloom 100-year old starters" are just a bunch of bunkum).  Every feeding is a new opportunity.

likejehu, if we learn when the starter is at the absolute peak of activity by watching for or anticipating the "central collapse", then we will maximize the vitality of this animal.  It is like a pet. It must be fed regularly.  It schedules us but we can schedule it by changing temperature.  You know how easy it is to keep some of the discarded culture; you can maintain eight batches simultaneously in no time is you want to try something different with each batch!  Or you can go back to your old batch just by keeping the type of flour, the flour/water ratio and the schedule the same as it was.  The only limit is your time and your flour budget.  Cultures are robust - if you make a mistake, they will return. The only 'disaster' is having your culture go on strike - for one reason or another - the day you have set up to bake with it.  Settling in to a routine is the best way to avoid this.

Once you have the culture you want, keeping to the same feeding at the same times is the best way to keep it from changing.  All cultures change slowly and sometimes we have to treat them to rye flour all over again to regrow them.

By the way, the more liquid starters seem to be the more sour, the firmer seem to be more nutty; both can have the same rising power.  We are talking about only slight differences in hydration here.

Enjoy overcoming the "obstacles" and enjoy the victories.

B.B.