Ratio for Rye Starter Refresh
Most of the sources I've read suggest a 1:1:1 refresh for starters, wheat or rye. They consensus seems to be a weekly refresh for start in the fridge, or 3 feedings at room temp 12 hrs apart before building the levain or mixing the final dough.
The Bread Code guy recommends 1:5:5 and in the book "The Rye Baker" it says 1:10:10 (7g rye starter + 70g water + 70g rye flour).
My rye starter would double in size with lots of bubble in about 4-5 hrs with 1:1:1. After that it would start falling back and never triple. With 1:5:5 it took a long time grow in size at all, and with 1:10:10 it barley gets a little bubbly and does not grow much in 12 hrs.at room temp.
Is there a good reason to refresh at ratios bigger than 1:1:1?
BTW, so far my results using discard for pancakes, cornbread, crepes, muffins, have been better than the bread, so I don't mind having discard. But I would like to have a nice active starter for bread.
Thanks
It all depends on how quickly you want it and what the temperature is. Sometimes I need larger amount quickly and do 1:1:1. Sometimes I don't, and do 1:4:4 or leaner. Also, forget about tripling, it's a crock of bull, particularly with rye.
Thanks for the clarification. Probably best to stick to 1:1:1 until I get more practice
A 1:10:10 feeding is for yeast boosting. It may take 12 hours to start rising but if you're patient and wait for it to taste sour before feeding it again. The next 1:10:10 feeding usually goes faster. I rarely use the 1:10:10 except for emergencies relying on 1:5:5 or 1:6:6 instead. I don't recommend feeding 1:10:10 more than twice in a row returning to a more conservative feeding after the starter has peaked.
A 1:1:1 fed starter is usually hungry at about 5 hours in a warm environment. It needs to be fed again soon if you wish to maintain an effective yeast population at warm temps. Either chill it or feed it more. Naturally feeding every 6 hours with a 1:1:1 feeding will soon make you a slave to the starter unless you have some slaves to feed it regularly or find a way to slow it down. Seldome the fall with a new starter. Most double up on the starter feed or gradually reduce the starter temperature to fit into a 12 hour feeding schedule for home baking.
I use a 1:1:1 feeding when trying to wake up a sleeping starter, frozen, dried, or more than three months in the fridge without a feeding. Yup, I'm a starter abuser. They love me. Anyway. The more food one feeds a starter, the longer it takes (lag time) to build up enough yeast to show you that it is active. Take that bunch of little beasties and feed them, there are more of them this second time around, and they produce faster than the first feeding. And hopefully you have weeded out those yeasts that take longer to reproduce. The lag time will be shorter before one sees action.
There is some correlation between the amount of flour fed and the height of the starter. More food, more reproduction, more stressing the cells to give off gas. A larger feed before the rye matrix breaks down, will result in a higher rise if conditions are right (temp, flour type, hydration, speedy yeast.) Play with your starter with different amounts and find out the parameters.
I find the rye matrix, and the trapping of gas, roughly lasts about 8 hours. After that, the yeast can produce more gases but the dough just won't hold it. Your results may vary. So even a jar of broken matrix mature rye starter can raise a dough rather well if it was chilled after looking like the food was exhausted.
Those are great insights/clarifications; I appreciate your help. So if I want to take the starter out of the fridge and do 3 feedings each 12 hrs apart (all at room temp) before mixing the levain 12 hrs after the 3rd feeding, a 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 would be appropriate, keeping the starter happy for ~12 hrs.
Thanks
I've been following The Rye Baker method of 1:10:10. It does take about 12 hours to show good rise and I have been using slightly warmer conditions (23 °C) in the winter to get good performance. I usually use it before 24 hours have passed and store the rest in the fridge; Ginsberg recommends using it before 36 hours. I have gone 2–3 weeks without feeding without issue.
I suppose I could try a smaller ratio, but I figured his recipes were designed around the characteristics of his starter.
The ratio depends only on the kind of starter that you have, i.e. on specific microbes that you maintain alive and well in your starter. It also has to be something that suits you personally, something that you like and do not mind doing.
Some rye starters are fed 1:1 every 3 hours all day long, until they are refrigerated, yet others are fed 1:10 or 1:20 once a day and are never refrigerated. These are simply different starters, with different microflora that requires different ratios of feeding to sustain it. All of them make good bread, just different.
Jeffrey Hamelman keeps his starter at room temperature and feeds it about 1:3.5 once a day, except in hot and humid weather when the ratio is about 1:5. He has kept his starter like that for over 40 years and baked literally million(s) of loaves with it in his bakery and at home. People who have visited his bakery as his students tell stories about how different his starter is, how fragrant, unusual aroma. You can borrow his method, for his starter and his backup starter, if you wish. Then, for sure, you will have a great, active starter.
He described it here:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/68749/starter-maintenance
Thanks for the clarification. Stanley Ginsberg in "The Rye Baker" says that when Hamelman was teaching at the CIA, he was annoyed that the students' 10 day old starters were producing better bread than his 20 year old starter; the reason was the kids were feeding once a day and he was feeding 3 times a week.
I'm a once-a-week baker and I'm too lazy to feed every day. Maybe I'll try a weekly 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 with maybe a a 2nd feeding after building a levain.
If you want to avoid the nail-polish-remover smell you can add more mater, like 1:2 or 1:3. Currently I have one pretty liquid starter and one 2:1 stiff starter for milder breads.
You can always try something, and go back if you don't like it. Starter does not mind.