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My sourdough starter is rising faster than instant yeast, normal?

hongboy's picture
hongboy

My sourdough starter is rising faster than instant yeast, normal?

Yesterday i have taken a very small amount of instant yeast (less than 0.5g) mixed with 50g water and 50g bread flour. I want to see how the rise could be. The mixture had risen for almost 5 times in volume. 

 

This afternoo, after i have done the feeding for sourdough starter, I as well (for fun) feed the instant yeast mixture by scrapped of half of it and added 50g water and.50g flour. 2 hours later, i have found that the starter is rising faster than the instant yeast mixture. I am feeling very strange about it.

 

According to what i have read about sourdough starter, the rising is usually taking longer time comparing to those commercial yeast. Does anyone have any ideas how could my starter rise faster than instant yeast?

 

P/S: my starter (100g) is fed with 50g water and 50g flour. 

 

 

hongboy's picture
hongboy

None experienced or come across any sourdough starters with similar condition?

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

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Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

upon the amount of starter and the amount fed.  In this case 100g of starter is fed half its weight in flour so it will use up the flour fast and must be feed again sooner.

 Now if you take 50g of starter and feed it 50g of flour it will take longer to use up the food.  

The starter sounds like it is ready for larger meals so you might want to try 50g all around and see how it does.

hongboy's picture
hongboy

It's so great to hear from you. 

It's mean the starter is needed more food than before? Well will tty it out. I was surprised and never know  natural starter coild more vigorous than those commercial type. 

More flour will just slow down the rise? 

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

Well, it all depends on amount of starter, its activity, and of course amount of yeast! If you took double amount of yeast, it probably will be faster than your starter. Imagine taking one cell of commercial yeast, and comparing it to a starter.

And yeah, feeding more flour (and water) will take longer to rise, and the starter will be less likely to starve in between feedings - 1:0.5:0.5 ratio is not very useful for routine maintenance, unless you want to feed it every 2 hours or something like that.

hongboy's picture
hongboy

I have doubled the feed (flour), the peak is not as fast as before. Thanks for the idea. 

dpnync's picture
dpnync

I've been baking sourdough bread for about 10 years. As far as I know, sourdough starter are usually begun with water and plain unbleached wheat flour, preferably whole grain like whole wheat or Rye, and then fed anywhere over 4-8 days to create a viable starter. If you really started yours with instant yeast, you probably had to feed your starter very frequently the first 2-3 times. Depending on how many feed cycles you used before baking your bread, your bread might have been quite sour and probably sense.

Have you used your sourdough starter to bake a load yet? How did it turn out?

hongboy's picture
hongboy

My starter is begun and maintain with purely watet and unbleached bread flour. The instant yeast flour paste mixture was made to see the differences. 

I did use it to make wholemeal Sandwich loaf. The first time (starter age around 10 days old) the whole process (from mixing to baking) taken around 8 to 9 hrs. But now it needs around 5 to 6 hrs only. The volune, crust and crumbs are ok. 

gerhard's picture
gerhard

How many times was the yeast mixture fed? If it had a number of feedings the acidity of that culture would have risen and commercial yeast has a lower tolerance to acidity than a yeast culture found in sourdough so that may explain the performance difference.

hongboy's picture
hongboy

My sourdough starter basically being fed once a day. Noted your well explain. 

Sometime i just concerned if my family members simple add some instant yeast into my strater for fun. They don't know how serious i am with my starter. I want to ensure everything done in natural way.

dpnync's picture
dpnync

There are too many reason for what you see. It really doesn't matter if you want to make real sourdough bread with the nutritional benefits it brings. I don't think you can ever get a real sourdough taste when baking bread using instant yeast. I've read that if you put your bread dough prepared with instant yeast in the fridge overnight or for 8 to 10 hours, the final taste of the bread is richer, but I've never personally verify that. As long as the fermentation time works for you, there is no benefit I know of to shorten it as the long fermentation time of baking with sourdough starter is what given the bread its tangy taste and nutritional over bread baked with instant yeast.

Doubling your starter with 100% hydration flour has worked well for me too, especially with sandwich bread where your only need even distributed small holes in your crumb and hopefully the right amount of tang. It seems that your starter is working just fine.