Stiff rye starter?
Recently I was gifted 4 lbs of some beautiful freshly milled whole rye from a local mill. I've been wanting to try out freshly milled flours for a while but I have extremely little experience with whole grains so I've been reluctant to make the plunge; now that I know what fresh flour's like, I'm definitely coming back for more. Having never used rye before, I'd heard that whole rye flour was like candy for a starter so I decided to split my stiff starter in half and make a new 100% stiff rye starter. I usually feed my starter 1:1:2 with half bread flour and half whole wheat, so I started out just switching out the whole wheat for rye and feeding per usual at 68 degrees and at 12 hour increments. After about a week of that, I switched over to all rye and changed up my feeding ratio to 3:5:8 (37.5% innoculation, 62.5% hydration) as well as kicking up the temperature to 75 degrees.
Now from what I've read, stiff rye starters don't rise as much as wheat starters but...I mean, is it normal for them to not rise AT ALL? I roll the little doughball in rye flour to see if cracks form which they do, but they're not big by any means and they certainly don't fissure or explode or anything. When I crack it open the texture's exactly the same as it was originally. It does smell sour (not super strong though, I think I need to let it ferment longer or increase the innoculation) so at least there's something going on, but the complete lack of change is unsettling.
Granted, I've only fed it around 5 times now so maybe it needs longer to adjust? Or maybe I just went about this wrong and should restart? My other starter is still very active and I keep tiny little starters (~20 g) so I can retry as much as I like. If anyone has any experience with this, their advice would be greatly appreciated.
So you feed it with twice as much flour as water?
This is dark rye that absorbs more water then plain white flour.
I feed my starter 50/50 white flour and dark rye and 100% water and it is already a thick paste.
It’s at 62.5% hydration so not quite double the amount but yeah, still pretty stiff. My other starter is at 50% so I figured that the increase in hydration would yield a similar texture since I like to mix my starter with my hands. But then again, maybe I need to increase it more and just deal with the sticky fingers (or let it ferment for longer).
Why not inoculate 200 grams of flour with 40 grams of starter and see how it does. I'm not sure how much a low-hydration rye starter will puff up: it might be very active but just losing all of it's gas (because no gluten). When I was feeding my starter rye I kept it at 100% hydration and it did double. But without a test levain I think it will be hard to tell how active your little starter is.
Interesting idea, thanks! I’ll probably wait a little bit until I think it’s built up some more strength and then I’ll try it out! And yeah, I love my stiff starters but it’s definitely more difficult to troubleshoot them, not only because you can’t do to a float test or easily tell when they’ve “doubled in size” but also because very few people actually have them.
There are several threads but this one might be most interesting.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/6826/oh-please-oh-oh-oh-please-grow-me
http://www.thefreshloaf.com//blog/rainbowz
I don't know what happened to the photos but the descriptions may help. A firm starter takes a long time to first ferment and with consecutive feeds when ripe tends to speed up somewhat. But it is concentrated. A ripe firm starter will be soft and mushy inside when ready to use or feed. It looses it round form as it ferments and sags.
Thanks Mini. I was hoping you would chime in.
I gave up on the whole liquid starter/firm starter thing and I'm keeping mine at 70 or 75% hydration these days: same as the bread I usually make. It's easier to knead it in after the autolyse, and it seems to work just fine.
Those are actually exactly the posts that I was reading up on before attempting this! Your wisdom is invaluable, Mini. :D
I’m wondering if part of my trouble is just too low of a hydration. In the Audrey saga, both you and Yumarama were keeping your starter at ~71% hydration (3:5:7), but I’m not sure how you were able to get a “tennis ball” from that hydration; it’s still really sticky and sloppy. Even the 62.5% hydration now is sticky, but it’s probably just that I’m not used to rye flour. My other starter is also very stiff, to the point where it can be difficult to knead it thoroughly so I’ve kinda forgotten what more liquid starters are like lol.
AFT, whole grain flour is thirstier than white/refined flour, but it is slower to absorb the water. So until it does get absorbed, the dough mass feels sticky.
This is especially true of coarse-milled flour. "Coarse milled" is not "100% coarse". There are always tinier bits that break off during milling called "fines." The tinier particles "rob" or "get to" the water before the larger particles can get the water to absorb to their insides.
So.... to fully hydrate coarse flour, you have to add enough water so that initially it makes it look too wet or sticky, and then trust that the larger particles eventually suck up the moisture, and it all evens out. This is a hard concept to get across to people who switch from white flour to mostly whole grain. They expect it to behave the same, and can't conceive or visualize or understand that it doesn't, it shouldn't, it won't, and it can't. (To the newbie, "it's all flour, isn't it?") And it's even more so with home-milled flour that is usually not as finely ground as store-bought, and has more variation in particle size.
This is why whole-grain bakers say to give the dough a sufficient autolyse, so the flour can properly/fully hydrate.
Aaaah, that makes a lot of sense, thank you so much! I think I’ll try to increase the hydration back to 71% and just see what happens from there. I’m definitely not used to the coarse rye flour, but it still feels awesome and smells lovely.
In my experience, stiff rye starters, as in really stiff, when you have to force that last bit of flour in, prefer elevated temperatures.
My starter has been going for over a year, and I've gradually evolved it to 100% dark rye flour (organic), mostly for taste.
That said, it is very stiff (100g H2O+100g rye flour+100g starter). My bread recipe is:
After a 4-6 hour autolyse, I add 100g starter and 20g salt. It's tough to do add in that stiff starter! I get a great rise from it, but not as open a crumb as I'd like.
Bread.jpeg
On my last bake, I used more water in the starter several days ahead of time so it wasn't so stiff. I kept the bread % the same, as well as the procedure of a 10-12 hour bulk ferment, 6 turn-and-folds with a 30 minute rest between, then form the loaves, put them in bannetons, cover them with a puffed-up bag, and put them in the refrigerator for 8-10 hours, where they double in size. I bake them in (preheated to 450º) covered cast iron pots for 40 minutes, removing the cover for the last 20 minutes. Absolutely NO difference just making the levain higher hydration.
Is the next step to:
Are your figures correct @mthannigan? Your numbers indicate a 100% hydration wholemeal rye starter, which is what I use and I wouldn't call it very stiff, I find it a nice consistency for mixing and it forms a spongy texture when risen, just over doubling in size. My starter is also about a year old, but it has almost always been fed 100% wholemeal rye apart from spring last year when flour supplies were a bit erratic and it got whatever there was.
Your flour is spending a lot of time wet, with a 6 hour autolyse and 10-12 hours bulk (and a low pre-fermented flour % of around 5). Many folk would autolyse for an hour or so and use ~10%* pre-fermented flour giving a bulk proofing time of 4-6 hours depending on temperature (and I have been following the herd for the most part). So if you wanted to try somthing different, you could try that - basically decreasing rather than increasing things. There is a recent thread on open crumb which you have probably seen, I will give some of those techniques a try for my next "marmalade on the floor" loaf as some of them would not have occurred to me. But for the most part, big holes are an inconvenience for what we use bread for, so a loaf looking like your's or with an even finer crumb would be my everyday objective.
*Many formulae give 9%, which happens to be roughly where you end up if your added starter weight is 20% of the weight of the non-starter flour and it is at 100% hydration, probably not a coincidence.
@greyspoke Thanks so much for your response!
See how stiff my starter is?. I use a 1:1:1 ratio when I feed (starter:water:organic rye flour), which I get is 100% hydration. Dude! To me this is very stiff. If I turn it upside down, it doesn't budge.
When I first started making this starter–her name is Sophie–it was more liquid-y, even though the proportions were the same. I wasn't using rye because it wasn't available, I was using 50/50 uncbleached and whole wheat flour. Gradually I've switched to rye for the taste, and it yields a stiffer starter.
As you saw in my bread recipe above, I use 100:750:1000 (100g starter: 750g water: 250g whole wheat and 750g bread flour), which is about a 76% hydration, including the starter. Yes, with 6-8 hour autolyse and a 10-12 hour bulk fermentation, it's spending a lot of time wet, but my understanding is that whole meal flours require a longer time to hydrate and a longer bulk adds flavor.
When you talk about pre-fermented flour, I assume you're referring to the flour in the levain? Which, according to your calculations, my recipe is 5%? And your advice is to double the amount of starter I use in my recipe? This is very interesting. It would be super convenient if I could get similar results in less time!
I do love my current recipe for basic sandwich bread––I've stuck with this recipe for almost a year, and it's never failed me. It has a great flavor, great oven spring, and is light as can be.
I just want to learn how to make a ciabatta or Italian style bread with a more open crumb.
As recommended by the very helpful folks here on the "Open Crumb" thread, I watched some YouTube vids by Full Proof Baking and noticed that she does something very different than I do when building her levain. She starts 2 days before bake day, feeding the levain 3X day, using different ratios.
I've always just taken my starter out of the fridge the night before and fed it once! So, I'm gonna try her way next time–with a shorter autolyse and a shorter proof, much as you've suggested. Check it out, if you haven't already. It's fascinating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlJEjW-QSnQ
What's a "marmalade on the floor" loaf? Is that quaint British humor? LOL
Thanks for the helpful tips!
IMG_6649.jpeg
Well not so much advice as pointing out that your recipe appears to be at the longer autolyse, longer ferment time, lower amount of starter end of the spectrum so far as common sourdough recipes are concerned. Although it is all temperature dependent, I don't know what your kitchen temperature is or whether you use a proofer. (I use a proofer set to somewhere in the 23-28C range, but our house is cold at this time of year, 16-19C.)
I started off sourdough baking with Full Proof Baking's basic sourdough recipe, which worked well but as I noted, the type of loaf is not quite what I want for every day, so I then experimented with adding butter, skimmed milk, yeast kickers etc. and trying different flour mixes to get a softer, closer crumb, tasty loaf to spread my breakfast marmalade on without it falling through the holes. I prefer to experiment rather than make the same loaf over and over to get it perfect, ultimately it all ends up getting eaten. Good enough is good enough for me. My current favourite loaf type for breakfst purposes has levain built at 70% hydration and fermented at 28C to give a strong lactic acid tang, 40% pff with a 0.1% yeast kicker in the final mix. Doesn't look great, needs to be baked in a tin, just about holds up but tastes good. Works with a range of wholemeal contents and is nice with added seeds.
Yes "pre-fermented flour" as I use it means (flour in your starter/levain)/(total flour including that in the starter/levain). I think that is how others use it as well. It gives you a scale from 0-100% but at low innoculations there isn't much difference between that and (starter flour)/(flour you add for the bulk). So your formula has 50g flour (100g starter @100% hydration) in 1050g total flour (250+750+50) giving 4.7% pff in the final mix or 5% calculated the other way.
Anyway, happy baking, I will try your recipe out.