Starter not strong enough - create new or treat better?
I decided to write after a lot of "kind of" failures with my sourdoughs, where I think clue is maintaining my starter.It is capable of a little more than double, usually about 220% of feeding volume. When I give it more food, like 1:5:5 it grows barely 200%, when I give it 1:2:2 it grows about 250%. Tried different temperatures, different ratios, different flours. Tried two/three times to use your maintaining schedule by Kristen in order to create more strength, but after 2 weeks it still makes max. 220-250%. I am observing that my breads are growing similar volumes like starter which gives them poor (let's call it half satysfying) oven spring, no matter other staff (tried every other schedule, recipes, etc).I am feeding it mainly twice a day (tried three but have work issue) with 80% strong bread flour (12,5 g proteins) and 20% full rye. It grows 220-250% and then I feed it just before it starts collapsing. Starter was born by my friend in November. I am thinking about creating new starter from the same flour I use now but... It seems some kind counterintuitive to me :) Don't know what to do.Attaching a few photos which shows my breads - as you see starter creates fool's crumb or overproofed dough with completely no oven spring. After a few months I see there is no option to create more oven spring. Still flat, CO2 bubbles no satysfying, but every bread quite airy inside. 
I think and feel, that I quite mastered autolysing, a few mixing techniques, folding (strech and fold, coil folding), judging bulk level, pre-shaping, shaping. No matter what I do (and just lastly I did 20-30 breads with combining different techniques and timings) the oven spring is not what I expect. That's because I think starter strength could be the reason (I am adding it when it still has strength, when it's not so runny). No I don't know, create new starter and compare? Or try to heal the first one? Or maybe try to find problem in other place?
Your starter is doing better than you think.
Take a black marking pen and mark the level of your starter when mixed (the rubber band), then mark it when mature. Now clean out the jar, place it on your scale and tare it out. Fill the jar with water and note the weight in grams. Now add that weight in water to the jar, mark with your marker. Now add enough water to reach the high level mark that you put when you marked the starter’s max height.
You will be surprised to see how much it actually rose.
Try this-
Take 10 grams of your mature starter and mix 30 grams of water and 50 grams of flour. You will have to knead this by hand a few minutes. Then place the /all of dough into a small, narrow clear glass and mark the height. Let it mature and mark the height again. Post a closeup image of the matured starter.
Your starter looks good to me, bu5 with a little effort it will improve even more...
That is close to 3x.
Thanks! I will definitely try to do this. What kind of treatment will influence starter strength? I thought that feeding regularly in a peak with high ratio will do the job, am I right?
Basically to super charge a starter you want to feed it on the counter or warm spot n a regular basis for a while. If you want to introduce new microbes feed with all or part fresh milled whole wheat. To speed things (3 or more feedings a day, use warm (80-82F) temps. Don’t allow the starter to over-ferment. Re-feed once it begins to fall. To can adjust your feed ratios to suit your starter maturity cycle. Small feeds/fast maturity, large feeds/slower. Small feeds will have a better chance of maintaining your present starter’s characteristics. Larger feeds have the possibility of introducing new microbes from the feed flour. Not a big deal, but something worth knowing.
I maintain a 100% whole rye starter. 2:5:5 or 1:5:5 mainly depending on how much i had left from the last bake. i feed it once a day, sometime, once every other day. It stays very active for me. because it's full rye, it doesnt rise much and is like cement after i feed it. And i rarely throw out any since i bake regularly. i do get great rise in the levain when i mix it. if not cost prohibitive, i think worth giving a whole rye starter a try. (i know whole rye is not found in supermarket shelves easily these days. i do order a 25# bag of great rivers dark whole rye through amazon.) maybe spin off a bit or your starter to a different container to compare. i believe whole rye has a lot of nutrients that my starter loves and also somehow makes it very tolerant. i tried the same culture as a whole wheat starter or a mix bread flour and whole wheat starter. not even close in strength.
And I have to agree, starter looks fine. I'll also add, to strong a starter can be a detriment. I'm sure I'll have to explain - too strong would be a starter that works faster than expected within an expected time frame. The root issue appears to be oven spring, and there's are many factors that could influence that. Oven spring is a result of expanding gases trapped within an expndable network of gluten - gotta have gas, gluten, and just and important, the ability to expand. The starter shows plenty enough ability to generate gas I think that can be ruled out (not the starter but the ability to produce gas). Next - Gluten - is there enough gluten to hold the gas and form a bubble, and is it strong and (important) supple enough to expand a lot without breaking? And then - is there room for that bubble to expand - both before and during baking?
How does everything else look? Oven spring can be a tough one to figure out. Kinda like a golf swing, a few different things have to come together at the right time to get the desired result. Hmmm, also like a golf swing, when it's off, work from the ground up to find what went off. And I gotta go hit some balls - Enjoy!
Thanks for all clues. Of course I will work on every other factor causing not-good-enough oven spring. But first things first - wanted to make sure starter is healthy enough to cope with that task. I will try with regular 1:5:5 feeding and giving a little bit more of whole rye. Tommorow and next day will do some tests and will show you results.
Concerning oven spring -
Many sourdough bakers consistently over ferment their dough. I know for years, I did. I thought that in order to get open crumb and huge expanded loaves that the dough needed a lot of gas built up during all fermentation, both BF and Final Proof. I was wrong...
See THIS LINK.
Interesting, indeed. Thought rather underbulking, because not enough gas produced in fermentation. Next bake I will shorten schedule a little :)
Some of the bottom crusts look light. Maybe getting more heat under the baking loaf is an option worth trying. Lowering the shelf or switching to a darker baking surface, something along those lines.
oh.... I'd say the starter in the jar rose 3x. Repeated volume is double, it looks tripple to me. So if you are judging your bulk proof the same way, perhaps it is overproofed? With sourdoughs I don't let dough double during bulking. Folding deflates the dough and that can make the dough volume difficult to judge.
I am baking on pizza stone, with about 30-50 minutes of pre heating. Starting with 260°C. Bottoms usually got correctly baked, so temperature seems ok - but not sure if steaming correctly.
Steam would come under - room enough to expand during baking. It does make a noticeable difference.
I fed starter for a few days in greater ratios (about 1:5:5, sometimes 1:6:6) and gave it more whole rye to catch more wild yeast. Right before adding to dough it looks like this:
So still about 225% in rise. During this time I see that a little bit stiffer starter gives it better rise (around 240-260%).
I made a bread with shortening bulk and proof time. Recipe: 15% whole spelt, 5% whole rye, 80% bread, 20% pre-ferment, 75% hydration. Normally would wait about 4:30 with 25°C dough temp, this time pre-shaped after 3 hours, and shaped after 15 minutes. Typically I would retard for 8-12 hours, this time gave it 45 minutes on a counter and 2 hours in a fridge. There is a big chance that it is still overproofed - there was a lot of rise in a basket.
Result:
Crumb is moist, airy and tender, so wife is satisfied :) still, I am not with poor oven spring. Next time I will try with even shorter proof time. To sum up the topic - do you agree that starter is not the problem?
Starter is fine. Agree, ferment less next time.
Your starter looks great. I see evidence of slight overproofing, not very much but just a degree. Just under the crust you can see some evidence of gluten breakdown with some of the alveoli coalescing into larger ones as the gluten network fails to keep the expanding gases in.
I think if you were to shorten the bench time after shaping to zero and get it into your fridge right away it might not overproof. How cold is your fridge, it sounds like the dough continues to ferment while it is in the fridge. Try putting a glass of water the shelf in the fridge that you will cold retard your dough on. After half day check the temperature, if it is much above 38ºF then fermentation will definitely continue for some time. Typically my dough in my 2ºC fridge will not show any increase in size, sometimes it will seem to shrink just a tiny bit as the gases in the dough contract as they cool.
The bottom crust doesn’t look very dark to me, are you getting enough heat from the bottom? Are the upper elements coming on during the bake?
Benny
"I made a bread with shortening bulk and proof time. Recipe: 15% whole spelt, 5% whole rye, 80% bread, 20% pre-ferment, ..."
IMO, 20% is too much levain for a dough of 20% whole grain.
Additionally, spelt and whole rye are extremely fast at fermentation. They really speed things up with all their enzymes. Spelt is also a "sugary" flour. Enzymes make sugar out of starch. Sugar speeds fermentation. The bran of whole grains is where the enzymes are.
And... you put rye in your starter, so your starter/levain is now super powerful.
Try: a) feeding starter with only white flour. b) only 14% levain/starter in dough.
Bon appétit.
Thanks a lot for your help. I will do some experiments in next few weeks a let you know how it went!