Trouble with a starter
Hello all.
I just now joined this site. I've seen that there's a wealth of information but I don't even know where to start looking for answers to my questions! I'm not even sure HOW to ask my questions. I hope this is the right place for me to start. I'm new to bread making with starters, and have only ever used dried yeast.
I was given a starter by a woman I met at work and her starter is fed with 3 TB potato flakes 1/2 C sugar and 1 C warm water. I've been struggling with this starter since I got it and I'm at my wits end on even how to use it. She's had this starter for over a decade, she told me, so I don't want to let it just die!
- It's a liquid so I ASSUME that means it's 100% hydration. Is this true? I'm unsure of how to even figure out the hydration level and don't even know how to go about finding out with a starter that's already made.
- I've looked up recipes for 'potato flake starter recipe' and '100% hydration starter sourdough recipe' but none of them seem right. Most blogs are working from their own starter and if they aren't, they give you a link on how to make your own starter. I've looked on this website as well but I've been unable to find a recipe on how to make sourdough using a potato flake starter (at what I assume is 100% hydration).
- My first breads were overproofed (I think? I don't really know how to tell), but edible... but really, really sweet; the recipe I was given along with the starter had even more sugar added to it and the bread came out almost like cake.
- Other loaves I did I tried doing a bulk ferment in the fridge for 24 hours but it got weird, it was over mixed with a dough hook (I think) and almost inedible.
- I've done yet another batch of dough and it was incredibly wet; this recipe called for steaming and folding in bowl, etc)
-I don't have the tools like bannetons and lames, and don't have the money for any of them. At least not yet. I had a bread stone, an oven, a mixer with a dough hook - and it doesn't seem to work well (unless it's just me being an idiot), and various and sundry cake/cupcake/bread/ pans.
If ANYONE can offer me any sort of direction or advice or help me to navigate here on the site, I would be grateful. I'm just so overwhelmed.
Sorry, I have never used a potato flake starter, but I have a few answers.
Hydration is weight of Flour divided by weight of water. So if you add 200 grams water and 200 grams flour you will have a 100% hydration starter. If you added 200 grams water and 100 grams flour, you would have a 50% hydration starter. Actually, you would also have to count the hydration of the original starter, though over cycles of refreshing, that would gradually have virtually no impact.
Overproofing is not all that hard to see after the fact. If you could graph the volume of the loaf, it is overproofed when it is just shy of as big as it gets. Generally the goal is to get it into the oven when it is in the range of 90% of its greatest volume, it will continue to grow a little in the hot oven ( called oven spring ) , then set and not collapse.
Overproofing is harder to see in real time, unless you have made that particular recipe enough to know what it looks like when it should go into the oven, and I very rarely get it right.
Overproofing does not affect the taste much ,more the appearance and texture.
You don't need a banneton or a lame, but you definitely need a scale. I know nothing about potato starters, but you might want to try with the Handbook on this site -http://www.thefreshloaf.com/handbook/section-ii-bread-basics navigation is in the pane to the right.
is closer to a yeast water. High in yeast, low in bacteria. Very wet and practically sugar syrup until very fermented. Try looking up yeast water YW
How is the starter maintained? Fridge? Temperature? When do you decide to use it? How much?
Have you tried reducing the amount of starter used and then not adding sugar to the dough recipe to see if it will double in say... 12 hours ?
Try taking a basic yeast bread recipe and add a few tablespoons of the starter to a measuring cup and the fill up to the amount stated in the recipe for water and/or milk, stir well then combine with flour, salt and any other ingredients. I'm guessing you are using cups instead of a scale.
You may find this interesting...note the difference in sugar amounts.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/6677/sourdough-starter-i/