The Fresh Loaf

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Starting All Over Again

albacore's picture
albacore

Starting All Over Again

Starting All Over Again

I've been hit by a mystery starter affliction. The starter, levain and dough would rise well and in a timely manner. But when the dough went into the oven, loft and oven spring were poor.

I've no real understanding of why this has happened as my starter is well maintained. The only thing I can think of is a possible lack of calcium; I switched from a starter feeding mix of 90% BF/10% WG rye to using 100% high extraction wheat flour (home ground and sifted). In the UK, bread flour (well, nearly ALL flour) is fortified with calcium carbonate. Since I was using tap water and our water is very soft there may have been a shortage of calcium in the starter refreshes after I switched flours.

Anyway, I decided to build a new starter and see if that cured the problem.

I made the starter from 50g freshly milled high extraction flour (90% wheat/10% rye), 0.2g malt and 35g spring water. This was stored at 30C for 24hrs, at which point it was looking nice and active.

This is how it looked after after a couple more builds, 2.5 days after starting:

 

 

What I noticed is that the new starter is a lot more frothy than the old one - there seems to be more gas production.

And the bread has a much better, fluffier crumb:

 

 

Lance

 

Comments

mwilson's picture
mwilson

How soft is your water Lance, in ppm CaCO3?

albacore's picture
albacore

Michael, average hardness for our tap water is 32ppm as CaCO3

Lance

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Lance, I may be considered an odd ball, but the first crumb shot is much more appealing to me than the last. I am working to learn to consistently bake a crumb similar to the top shot.

beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Just recently my starter started to wane a bite. I am feeding it 30% whole rye now whereas before it was 100% strong white flour. It is only fed every 7days (kept refrigerated) so it mat take a while to see the results.

Question -
What is your reasoning for the malt?

albacore's picture
albacore

Danny, openness of crumb is a personal preference, and I know your preference. I agree that the crumb derived from the original starter looks fine, but it was somehow dry and "lifeless". 

Also look at the edge where the loaf side meets the base - there's not much of a curve. Compare that with the later loaf. And then there's the lack of height. I like to get about 95mm on an 850g batarde and I was only getting 80mm.

Interestingly, I was also struggling to get pH values down to the currently accepted norms (4.4 at end of bulk, 4.0 at bake). Things are looking much better now.

Regarding malt, I learnt the idea from Gerard Rubaud's starter creation process (Gerard is topical at the moment!). Click on the link in that post for his levain formula, although I didn't particularly follow his formula and didn't add salt.

Rus of Rusbrot also adds malt to some of his starter creations. I guess it quickly creates a bit of free sugar to get things moving.

 

Lance

Yippee's picture
Yippee

And give it some vitamin D/calcium supplement if your starter suffers from calcium deficiency 🤓

Yippee