The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Sourdough Questions

Baking Dad's picture
Baking Dad

Sourdough Questions

   Hello all, I've been baking bread off on on for years.  Started out in my teen years with a book by James Beard on bread, and have been using some of Jim Lahey's No-Knead recipe for a few years now.  I'm on the cusp of diabetes, so have been scaling back my bread intake.  However, I've been reading the sourdough bread may be a little better for diabetics, due to the fermentation.

 

    I'd like to start working and try out some sourdough recipes, but I'm not sure about getting the starter going.  I've been reading through the various posts here, and they all seem to take quite a long time to get up and running before you can actually use them.  While I'm not opposed to such, I'm wondering if there's any way to speed up the process a bit?  Can you create a starter using a bit of regular active, dried, or even live yeast, to kick start the process?

 

   I'd just like to get started attempting baking a few loaves in the next week or two, instead of the next month or two.  From what I understand, the starter will continue to evolve over time as it picks up more and more wild yeast each time it's fed and used, so the flavors will become more complex.  I guess what I'm asking is can you speed up the fermentation process by starting with active yeast, or does it really need weeks of accumulating wild yeast?

 

   Thanks in advance for any advice or tips...

Isand66's picture
Isand66

Sorry but you can't use yeast to make an actual starter.  Look up the pineapple method for your best chance at success.   

yozzause's picture
yozzause

You can speed the process by getting some starter off someone else , most folk are happy to give you some of their starter  to get you going sooner. Not sure where you are located as you haven't filled in all your details but im sure if there are any TFL folk close by they would be inclined to help you out. alternatively it is available commercially but can be quite costly.

regards Derek 

doughooker's picture
doughooker

The first thing you learn about sourdough baking is that there's no such thing as "hurry up" :)

Baker's yeast is an entirely different species of yeast from that found in sourdough. They are incompatible for reasons to do with the microbiology involved.

Yippee's picture
Yippee

and start baking with it.  No need to use commercial yeast at all. In my method, I  use raisins and water to make active yeast water in the first week. In the first few days of the second week, I use the active yeast water to build my starters.  My starters are ready for baking by the end of the second week. That's all.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Raisins have the same species of yeast as baker's yeast, so I would avoid them. Again, that species is incompatible with sourdough.

Water and flour -- the world's simplest recipe.

Ru007's picture
Ru007

I just used rye flour and bottled water.

It does go through a smelly bacteria phase (day 2 and some of day 3), and it'll look like its really taking off, and then ... it kind of just stops. Nothing happens at all for a few days. I kept feeding it very little once a day and stirring it twice a day, until it showed signs of waking up again.

Then it really took off around day 6. It started smelling nice and fruity and it was rising and falling like clock work.

Good luck!

Trevor J Wilson's picture
Trevor J Wilson

As others have noted, there really isn't any way to make a quick sourdough starter. It's gonna take as long as it needs. Bakers yeast can't survive the acidic environment of a wild culture and will die out after a few refreshments. Like Derek said, the quickest way is to get a starter from someone else.

Along the same lines, many artisan bakeries are willing to give or sell some of their starter to customers. So if you know of a nearby bakery you might want to just stop in and ask. 

Cheers!

Ttrevor

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

I love trying out all the different ones.   Here are 3 of my quirky favorites over the years that are the fastest and least work

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32665/mini-ovens-no-muss-no-fuss-starter-8-days-laater

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/29320/joe-ortiz-pain-de-champagne-rye-and-ww-sprouts

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/42120/finally-dark-pumpernickel

The pumpernickel one above I cut the mount of flour and water in half to make the rye starter over 4 days

All of them work great with the least amount of fuss.

Have fun making your starters

Doc.Dough's picture
Doc.Dough

The claim upstream is that you can't use commercial bakers yeast to make a starter.  I beg to differ.  Once upon a time I thought differently, but since there was no documentation explaining why (other than the typical anecdotes and hearsay) I thought I would just try it to see what really happens when you feed a baker's yeast culture with flour and water daily. Probably would just die off when the environment departed from its usual habitat. So after a few days of feeding and watching I began to smell something different.  It was no longer the sweet aromatic scent of bakers yeast coming from the jar.  So I tasted it --- and it was sour. So I just kept feeding it for a few more days until it was rising and falling in sync with my regular sourdough starter. Contamination?  Possibly.  But probably not. It turns out that the CO2 generated by bakers yeast acidifies the culture to a pH that is low enough to suppress the nasty, smelly competitors and allow lactobacilli to come out of hiding and propagate quite nicely. The bakers yeast then loses the survival competition and is succeeded by exactly what you are looking for.

The advantage of this technique (IMHO) is that you never have a day when there is no apparent growth.  You see something every day and it needs to be fed every day (but only once a day - for reasons that I can explain but will not waste your time with in this post).  I have repeated this experiment twice to convince myself that it was not a fluke.  And I baked good sourdough bread with the resulting starter and could not tell the difference between my five year old King Arthur starter (adapted to my kitchen and my cultural practices) and the newly created starter fed in the same way.

So don't believe it when you read that you can't create a sourdough starter from commercial yeast.  In fact what you get is unrelated to the commercial yeast, but the commercial yeast is an essential part of the process in that it acidifies the culture in the same way that pineapple juice does. And to the same end.

So there you have a fifth way to do it (in addition to dabrownman's three, plus Debra Wink's Pineapple Juice method).

Edo Bread's picture
Edo Bread

Disagree there is no documentation why bakers yeast can't be used for a starter. Also think it had nothing to do with your starter actually working. I think you would get the same results if you just used flour and water. Or for that matter if you added pebbles or corks.  I think the point isn't that it bakers yeast won't stop wild yeast from living, but it doesn't promote them either.

Doc.Dough's picture
Doc.Dough

I would be interested in reading more about why you can't create a sourdough starter if it is contaminated with bakers yeast. My personal experience is that I got 2 of 3 flour and water mixtures to go to a LAB culture without going through a phase were a stinky (leuconostoc ?) bacteria dominated for a while. And I am two for two with bakers yeast (I know, not a big statistical sample) and one for one with pineapple juice, I am convinced by the arguments of Debra Wink that early acidification is an important cultural step to success.

Edo Bread's picture
Edo Bread

Hey Doc - Let me clarify I think maybe we are talking about this slightly differently.  I was commenting on the idea that some people believe they can make a starter made exclusively with bakers yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and that is the starter. And it works in a couple days.  A true starter of course is a combination wild yeast and lactobacilli and that is very different.  Can you create a starter with bakers yeast in the initial mix? Your experience would indicate yes (I have never tried) But, it is also a question of did it make any difference? I don't dispute your idea it might make it more acidic, I don't know.  I am with you that Debra Wink and the acidic environment component is correct. But to me most methods that end up taking the same length of time as some flour and water could possibly not really be having any effect at all. Thus, my tongue in cheek comments. If someone claimed "I put corks in with flour and water and got a starter in a week" I wouldn't be surprised it worked, just would give no credit to the cork. To the question of the initial post while your method may eliminate some smell, it doesn't sound like it will turbo charge and process in any way.   Hope that all made sense.

 

Doc.Dough's picture
Doc.Dough

My experiment was just to confirm the claim that it could not be done (create a real starter from bakers yeast). So I was amazed when I found that bakers yeast produced a quite acidic mix.  After that it was all about trying to understand why it worked instead of simply confirming that it could not.  And yes it may take the same length of time that it does with pineapple juice or any of the other accepted methods that actually grow it from raw flour. My sense is that you don't get any speed up at all (though that was not my objective either so I have no data).

After running down a lot of dead ends, the following table seems to put it in perspective:

The CO2 produced by the bakers yeast in a closed container can raise the partial pressure of CO2 to near 1 atm (actually it can raise it much higher if you tighten the lid, which I do not suggest).  At that point the liquid can absorb sufficient CO2 to make carbonic acid at a concentration sufficient to drop the pH to  below 4.0. However, if you leave your container open, the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is only 3.5*10E-4 atmospheres and the pH will settle out at around 5.6 which is not enough to suppress the bacteria you are trying to keep out of your sourdough. So one key to making it work seems to be keeping the lid on. I am not surprised that people who might have tried it would not have had success. CO2 in solution forms carbonic acid very slowly (the vast majority of the CO2 stays in the water as dissolved CO2 while a minuscule fraction forms carbonic acid). The conversion of carbonic acid to CO2 + water is quite fast (~77x the reverse reaction).

Edo Bread's picture
Edo Bread

Interesting stuff. Thanks for nice dialog on this and information.

mwilson's picture
mwilson

I've had plans to reveal this information regarding CO2, carbonic acid and the shifting pH due to pressure in conjunction with an explanation as to how the Italian method of binding dough works to create changes in the fermentation.

Here's an amusing illustration

Italian bakers understand sourdough fermentation better than the rest of us!

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

acid or somehow acidify the culture so that the acid loving LAB and yeast in the flour can take over instead of acidifying the mix with an acid like pineapple juice or letting the wrong LAB in the flour produce acid and acidify the culture for other acid tolerant LAB and yeast.  How do you know it isn't the bad LAB, non acid tolerant,  making acid to acidify the culture?  I have seen science on how commercial yeast make tiny amounts of compounds that can acidify a poolish for instance by a very slight amount hardly worth noting -n over a very long time.

What also happens is that as the CO2 is produced by the yeast, some is converted to carbonic acid since water in the mix is a solvent but this too is quite small.  My feeling is that commercial yeast used from the start may add some acid component but it is negligible and that almost all the acid is coming from the bad LAB in the beginning .

We know that some LAB can produce CO2 and ethanol and, in some cases and environments in SD cultures, can produce as much or more CO2 than the yeast in the culture, so it wouldn't surprise me that some yeast can produce more acid than others.  In making beer, where the yeast run crazy for a week doing their thing making CO2 and ethanol, the mix doesn't become very acidic as a result because most of the CO2 producedescapes into the air and not trapped by a gluten web.  You would think the CO2 produced by yeast that is trapped in starters, levain and dough would make some carbonic acid as a result but I think it is relative and small.

I'm still thinking that adding yeast doesn't speed anything up when making a starter since the LAB in the mix are doing most all the work on the acid side.  Adding in pineapple juice keeps the bad LAB from making the initial acid but it provides it immediately saving a couple of days of bad LAB work in the process

Glad to  see you posting again Doc.

Doc.Dough's picture
Doc.Dough

Check out the table and rationale above and see if that makes any sense.  I don't think you get any speed advantage over pineapple juice but you should also not be penalized. The yeast doesn't produce acid, however it does produce CO2 which under the right conditions can form (with water) sufficient carbonic acid to drop the pH by a useful amount. Your notion that there should be some carbonic acid is correct, but if you don't capture and hold on to the CO2 the pH can't get much below 5.7.

There might be a time advantage if you account for the number of refresh cycles you have to run to dilute the leuconostoc to below detectable levels. That may depend on your nose more than anything else.

And it is nice to have time to read and post on this board again - even if I am not contributing much original knowledge at the moment. The bran water experiments are on hold until I get more time.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

and the bread just keeps getting better and better as a result.  Barn levain is one of those great things for an open crumb and great flavor.  Hope you get back to it soon.  I don't do anything else now a days - its just too good.

Doc.Dough's picture
Doc.Dough

I am glad it is working for you.  I have some pretty good quantitative data at some of the extremes where it doesn't perform well (or at least not as well as it does near the center of the envelope). I ran a bunch of experiments to test the hypothesis that phytic acid is the active element and got inconclusive results. As a result I still don't have a good explanation (or a viable theory) about the underlying chemistry, so that is what I think about even when I am not actively experimenting. I feel like there is something that I should be controlling and I am not.  Sort of like keeping the lid on the starter to retain the CO2. Who would think of that ahead of time?

PugBread's picture
PugBread

I recently got back into baking naturally leavened bread, and had to start from scratch. All it took was some rye flour (hogson mills in my case) and clean, chlorine-free water. I had nearly the exact same experience as Ru007 above - same stinky phase at the same time, same slow down, same take off.  I mixed up my first loaf on day 8 and it turned out very well, especially considering I took a 6-7 year hiatus. The process I followed it detailed here but my experience matched Ru007:

http://tartine-bread.blogspot.com/2013/02/9-days.html

Once you have a strong starter going, look into some of dabrownman's recipes because he aims for high-fiber, well-fermented loaves that aim to be gentle for blood-sugar level spikes. A fair number of his recipes seem intricate, but I'm sure you can find some easy ones to start with.  Hope this helps.

SylviaM's picture
SylviaM

I watched a Youtube video of Julia Child and Joe Ortiz. I liked the idea of how he made the sourdough starter. I made the  "Chef" yesterday and it looks like it is doing fine. I notice for the first refreshment he takes a small piece of the starter, but what do you do with the remaining "Chef" The second refreshment he also takes a small part but says you can freeze the rest. Do you just discard the remainder not used for the first refreshment?  I am just now getting into sourdough bread making - I used to make it around 20-30 years ago.

Doc.Dough's picture
Doc.Dough

You don't need to keep much starter (an ounce or 28g is totally adequate to do a refresh with 1/8t (300mg) and start a batch of bread with the remainder). So if you are not making a levain from which you will produce bread tomorrow, just toss the excess and let the refreshed starter propagate. There are lots of formulas around that work just fine. My procedure is to mix the remaining starter (26g after mixing, stirring, transfer, and cleanup losses are accounted for) with 228g water and 228g flour and let it sit (covered) for 10 to 16 hrs depending on room temperature.  From that you net about 472g of levain to which I add 378g water, 600g flour (a little more or less depending on protein level) and 16g (2%) salt. Autolyse 20-30 min, mix to 80+% gluten development, bulk ferment for 75-100 min, shape, proof, and bake.  As they say, your results may vary.

28g of starter is about 1/2oz of flour, so over a month you use a bit less than a pound.  I count water as free so the cost to have a viable starter is really the cost of <12 lb of flour a year and even at an absurd price for flour it is less than $10.  If you only bake weekly and want to refrigerate the starter in between, it costs even less (assuming don't account for the cost of electricity associated with opening and closing the refrigerator or the occupied shelf space or the capital equipment cost).

SylviaM's picture
SylviaM

Thank you :) As I said it has been 20-30 years since I made sourdough - the whole process was different then it seems. I did try a few weeks ago, making my own starter - just flour and water - actually made a loaf which turned out well, but have no idea what went wrong as I didn't have any luck after the first loaf and ended up throwing the starter out.  Then I saw the video of Joe Ortiz and Julia Child and decided to try it. I also got some dried starter from the Carlsfriends.net site which I am hoping will work out for white bread.

Doc.Dough's picture
Doc.Dough

I suggest spending <$10 and getting a mail order starter from King Arthur.  It is fresh, consistent, known to be good and arrives quickly.  After that you can make one of your own and see how it compares, but you will already have one that works in case you have difficulty starting from scratch. Starting from scratch is not hard, but if you have never done it you have no idea whether you are doing it right.  And there are many ways to do it wrong.  There is no need to start with the disappointment and delay of a bad starter.

SylviaM's picture
SylviaM

Thanks Doc.Dough - if the Oregon Trail starter doesn't work out for me I will definitely buy the starter from King Arthur Flour (they are the only flours I buy). I knew they had a starter but didn't know it was a fresh starter. Thank you :)

Isand66's picture
Isand66

If you post what state you live in you can probably get someone on this site to donate some starter to you as well.

I'm in Long Island, NY.

SylviaM's picture
SylviaM

Thanks Isand66, I am in Florida. The Oregon Trail sourdough seems to be working really well. I did make some bread with it on Friday.