The Fresh Loaf

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Back to S.F. Sourdough

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Back to S.F. Sourdough

Here is my dilemma:

I can definitely duplicate the ultra-sour flavor of the legacy sourdoughs we used to have in San Francisco back in the day. I can do this using a conventional sourdough culture (starter).

The problem is, in order to achieve this flavor I have to let the dough overproof. Like way overproof. Overproof to the point that proteolysis turns the dough basically to liquid.

Needless to say, it is not possible to get a viable loaf from this. Instead I get an unrisen sourdough pancake with a crunchy crust.

What I know about the bakery technique of the legacy bakeries is that they used a stiff starter which they rebuilt every eight hours. Inasmuch as they were baking 24/7, this starter ultimately gets used up. They can't afford to make starter and then throw the surplus in the garbage. That kind of waste would cost them money.

Could this explain why the old S.F. SD was so sour? The obvious question is, how did they prevent the starter and dough from overproofing?

Rebuilding a starter every eight hours is not practical for the home baker who does not bake 24/7. For this reason I no longer do much sourdough baking.

I've had the sourdough at Tadich Grill and did not taste the familiar lactic-acid tanginess I'm used to, leading me to suspect that they achieve their sourness by artificial means.

Thoughts?

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

I use a large preferment that I allow to get really sour, then add flour and the remaining ingredients including a little yeast for lift. That way I can get a very sour loaf that still has decent crumb.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

I use a large preferment that I allow to get really sour, then add flour and the remaining ingredients including a little yeast for lift. That way I can get a very sour loaf that still has decent crumb.

Could you please elaborate/explain in more detail?

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

I typically make WW sandwich bread but I believe the process will be similar for white.

I tweak the following parameters 

  • WW fraction (typically 70%)
  • preferment fraction (20 to 50%)
  • preferment inoculation (1 to 5% of preferment flour for my 100% hydration SD starter or 0.5 to 2.5% for my liquid SD starter that Mariana taught me to make)
  • preferment hydration (60 to 100%)
  • preferment salt (up to 1.2%)
  • preferment time (12 to 18 hours at 78F)

Baking tiny loaves I've been able to tune these to suit my taste.

For my tiny, 1 liter, pan I typically mixup the preferment (flour, water, starter, salt) in a small plastic beaker in the afternoon. It starts at about 125ml volume. I cover it and let is sit on the counter. The next morning I combine the now nearly doubled and very sour preferment with the remaining flour and other ingredients. 

I typically use 0.5 to 1% instant yeast in the final dough to get it to rise quickly. I am shocked at how quickly the sour preferment can acidify the remaining flour and make it fall apart. So I use instant yeast to get it to rise quickly.

The first rise takes a little over 1 hour, then I shape it and put it in the pan. The second rise again takes a little over an hour, then I bake. 

If I let the first or second rise go on too long, the bread begins to break down. I'm apparently operating on the edge here. It still tastes great but looks "rustic". 

The resulting loaf has good texture, just the crumb I want for sandwich/toast bread and varies from mildly sour to much too sour. 

Several times here on TFL folks have asked why we use preferments at all. For me the answer is I can overcome the problem you describe of achieving the sour I want without reducing it to a puddle.

Does that help?

alcophile's picture
alcophile

What would the parameters be for a "too sour" bread?

I tweak the following parameters 

  • WW fraction (typically 70%)
  • preferment fraction (20 to 50%)
  • preferment inoculation (1 to 5% of preferment flour for my 100% hydration SD starter or 0.5 to 2.5% for my liquid SD starter that Mariana taught me to make)
  • preferment hydration (60 to 100%)
  • preferment salt (up to 1.2%)
  • preferment time (12 to 18 hours at 78F)

My guesses(?):

  • WW fraction (typically 70%)
  • preferment fraction (20 to 50%)
  • preferment inoculation (1 to 5% (?) of preferment flour for my 100% hydration SD starter or 0.5 to 2.5% for my liquid SD starter that Mariana taught me to make)
  • preferment hydration (60 to 100%)
  • preferment salt (up to 1.2%)
  • preferment time (12 to 18 hours at 78F)

Have you tried this method w/o the salt? Your use of salt is similar to the Monheimer Salzsauer (not to be confused with Salzsäure):

https://www.baeckerlatein.de/monheimer-salzsauer-verfahren/

https://ketex.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Monheimer-Salzsauer.pdf

 What is your pre-ferment, a mix of WW and regular flour?

Thanks!

 

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

Time and temperature seem most important, the others much less so. If you let the preferment go until it is sour soup the loaf will almost certainly turn out really sour. 

The last loaf that I have noted as too sour used 1g of the liquid SD starter (it is loaded with LAB), 64g of WW, 6g of rye, 0.8g of salt and 51.5g of hot from the tap water (maybe 120F). It sat for 14 hours at 78F. Over that time it went from pH=5.8 to pH=4.71. Its volume increased by about 70%. In my experience everything happens in the last few hours. It will look like it is doing nothing, no pH change, no rise until the very end when it takes off. It can be tricky to catch it.

I then combined the preferment with 70g of WW, 60g of BF, 61.5g water, 10g olive oil, 10g honey, some seeds, 2.4g salt, 1g instant yeast. I failed to measure the  pH of the dough after mixing but it is usually about 5.7. 

I let it rise for 80 minutes in which time it doubled and reached a pH of 4.8. Then into the pan. I didn't note the time of this second rise but I'm guessing it was about 1 hour. I also failed to record the pH. 

When baked, it was my ideal 5" tall (the pan is 4x4x4). The pH of the baked bread was 4.5. 

I have baked loaves where the final pH was 4.3. Those were much too sour for my taste though edible as toast.

Yes, I have done the preferment without the salt. I got the idea from the discussion of "respectus panis". Not obvious that it makes much difference.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

You say the sourness varies from mild to "too much".

What accounts for this variation? What do we do to achieve consistent results so that one loaf isn't sour and the next mild?

We can't work with a range of measurements; need specific quantities.

viz.: preferment fraction (20 to 50%)

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

I would very much like to understand all the parameters so that I could make consistent loaves. I don't. 

I hallucinate that if I controlled the temperature and the timing I could come close.

I also wonder if continuous pH monitoring would be a substitute? But that would be very hard to achieve. 

There are a wide variety of sensors now available at low prices. I have wondered if monitoring the gasses in the fermentation vessel could serve as a reliable indicator.

Making tiny loaves with careful records and disciplined parameter adjustments is the path I'm following but I'm am a poor technician often varying more than one parameter at a time. 

alcophile's picture
alcophile

If I had taken that Design of Experiments (DoE) course at work like mgmt wanted, I might be able to cut down the time and number of experiments needed. The idea behind DoE is that you create a matrix of variables and then design experiments that change more than one variable at a time. The results are then analyzed to yield a possible optimized set of conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_experiments

DoE was hard to do for chemical reactions because the results were only valid for a particular scale. It was too expensive to run the experiments at batch scale, so they were rarely performed in our manufacturing dept. Because our raw materials are inexpensive and the scale small enough, DoE could work.

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

You can try to sneak up on optimum by starting small, or you can test whether you can get too sour by shooting high. I have done both feeling confident that if I could go too far then I could back off. 

Try taking 35% of the flour from your usual recipe and combining it with 5% of your starter and enough water to get to 75% hydration. Maybe add 0.35 * 1.2% of salt if you want. Let that sit for a long time until it starts to show some activity. We keep it about 68F in the house in this cool weather so it would take me maybe 18 hours. 

Then proceed with your recipe as usual except add 1% yeast. You need it to get pretty quickly through bulk and proof because it will breakdown if too much time passes. 

See how it turns out. Too sour? Great! Back off. Not sour enough? OK, let it go longer. Or increase the size of the preferment. 

So many adjustments, so little time...

I got the original idea from DanAyo who made the claim that any starter will make sour bread if left long enough...

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

I'm currently experimenting with using dried starter directly in the preferment. I reasoned that reviving the starter and building the preferment could be combined. I'll write it up after I get more results. 

alcophile's picture
alcophile

I'm also interested in any suggestions offered. I tried the Northwest SD method and while it was somewhat sour, it did not have the desired flavor of SFSD.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

In thinking over the Larraburu process

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17730/divine-inspirationfor-me-it-way-larraburu-brother039s-sf-sd-what-was-it-you#comment-176197

I'm wondering if the way they handled their stiff starter which was refreshed every 8 hours, if it effectively acted as a preferment. I've never worked with preferments so I don't know.

The starter sponge consists of 100 parts of clear flour (14% protein), approximately 50 parts of water, and 50 parts of the starter sponge. 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

at home. The dough is proofed for 4 hr at 105°F (41°C) and 96% relative humidity Among other things that are head scratchers.

SassyPants's picture
SassyPants

How very exciting though. I'm going to play with it a bit for the next several days and will report back. I can't get the conditions entirely right but the idea of using higher temperatures to jumpstart the Lactobacillus instead of cold temperature to control the yeast is intriguing.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

at home. The dough is proofed for 4 hr at 105°F (41°C) and 96% relative humidity Among other things that are head scratchers.

There is another SF SD formula which has a more moderate proofing time: 8 hr. 86°F.

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17730/divine-inspirationfor-me-it-way-larraburu-brother039s-sf-sd-what-was-it-you#comment-177563

SassyPants's picture
SassyPants

I'm by no means an expert but hopefully this gives some direction. I've never met a sourdough that is too strong for me...so I share your interests here!

If you are looking to create a very sour sourdough, you are going to need to balance the yeast in your bread with the lactobacillus (lab). Yeast are the workhorses that build structure and lab provide flavor. The problem is that yeast doesn't know when to quit and it just keeps on working until it destroys the dough. Lab work slower so by the time they can really create flavor, the yeast have exhausted themselves. So you need to create environments in which lab thrive and, simultaneously, keep the yeast in check.

Lab thrive in whole grain flours (particularly rye), love moisture, work slower and they keep working in cold environments while yeast takes a nap.

Cold is your friend in the flavor business!

You need to develop that lab and it can be done early with a riper starter or later with a retard. (Or both)

Some ideas:

Use a higher hydration starter with rye in it. It gives the lab space to roam and their favorite food makes them work faster! 

Use your starter after it has peaked and starts to fall a bit. The lab will have time to grow. And if the final rise is a little slower because the yeast isn't as active, just remember time equals flavor. So that's a good thing.

Consider a multi-stage starter. Go from a liquid starter to a firmer starter, giving it a day in refrigeration each day to develop flavor.

Mix your starter or dough with warmer ingredients. You'll have to control the yeast growth.

Retard your dough overnight after shaping. It puts the yeast to sleep while the lactobacillus keeps working hard.

For example, one of my favorites is Reinhart's Naturally Leavened Rye Bread from Crust and Crumb. You convert a very ripe barm starter to a rye barm starter with a night in the fridge. Convert that to a firm starter. Night in the fridge. Make the final dough. Shape and retard. Bake the next day. It has an impressive depth of flavor.

You can take any dough and hold it for extra days, as well. Each day you add in retard will add extra flavor. While I've heard that you can't keep it very long, I've personally baked 4-5 days after placing the dough in retard and had good results.

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

I've run into issues when the dough gets so sour the yeast stops working. Been researching beer yeast that is known for very low ph tolerance ;0)

Some sourdoughs may already have yeast that can tolerate cheek puckering sours. luck of the draw.

SassyPants's picture
SassyPants

I'm tempted to delete all my babbling after reading about Larraburru. How very exciting. So basically they used the opposite approach to create the same result? That is a long warm rise of a stiff starter to create flavor. And then a warm rise of the final dough to reinforce it.

I'm going to have to play around with this one and will report back.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

SassyPants:

Have you successfully tried any of your suggestions and made an actual extra-sour loaf, or are you simply throwing out untested ideas? Given the proofing times involved I'm not inclined to go the try-this-try-that trial-and-error route, but would like to hear from bakers who have succeeded in getting actual sour loaves.

There is no indication that rye or whole-wheat flour was ever used by the San Francisco (Oakland) bakeries. AFAIK it was all made with white flour.

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Note that the starter sponge was made with clear flour, which is not white flour. It has a higher ash content (0.80–0.90%) than bread (0.48–0.54%) or AP (0.45–0.50%) flour. The higher ash content can facilitate a higher TTA through a buffering effect, and possibly assist with minimizing the proteolysis in the dough structure.

Clear, or first clear, can be hard to find; Bakers Authority may be the only mail order source. I will get some argument on this, but it is similar to a high extraction WW flour (German Type 1050, 0% moisture). It could be approximated mixing in a little WW to mimic the ash content.

Storage of the starter sponge overnight refrigerated may have also increased the acidity.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Storage of the starter sponge overnight refrigerated may have also increased the acidity.

Yes, and when you think about it, since they are rebuilding the starter every 8 hours, what is the oldest starter that is in the sponge? There has to be a small quantity of sponge that is > 24 hours old.

I realize the sponge was made with clear flour which is hard to come by. Maybe mix a little WW flour into the starter which can be found in any supermarket. I actually looked into this to increase the ash content in the starter.

[Some time later]

It pays to be a pack rat. I still have my calculations for ash content. At the time I concluded that 80% white flour and 20% WW flour would get you close to the ash content of clear flour.

Let us know if you get different results.

https://www.insidethejewishbakery.com/wheatflour.php#:~:text=Clear%20flour%20comes%20in%20three,the%200.80%2D0.90%25%20range.

alcophile's picture
alcophile

The cold storage of the sponge may be similar to the cold retard of dough frequently used by SD bakers. Even though the sponge is rebuilt, that overnight storage probably leads to some acidity increase.

What we really need is a flux capacitor and a DeLorean to head back to Larraburu's bakery to see for ourselves what they were doing.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

All refrigeration does is slow down the reproductive rates of the microorganisms. The reproductive rate tops out at about 30 C.

Forget about "overnight storage". They were baking continuously, 24 hours per day, with the sponge being refreshed every 8 hours. No "day" and "night" per se.

clevins's picture
clevins

I've noticed that starters get more sour with more time in the fridge, presumable due to what you mention above, that yeast slows and LAB does not as much when it's cool. So how about doing the bulk in the fridge? 

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Let's see if we can reduce this to proper recipe form.

Liquid Starter:

80% white flour

20% whole-wheat flour

Add water until milkshake thick

Ferment for apx. 1 week @ room temperature until ripe

 Preferment:

AP flour: 100 bp

Water: 60 bp

Liquid starter: 2 bp

Salt: 0

Mix ingredients and proof 8 hours @ 86 F

 Dough:

AP flour: 100 bp

Water: 60 bp

Preferment: 50 bp

Salt: 2 bp

Mix ingredients and proof 8 hours @ 86 F

Bake 1 hour @ 375 F

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

When I say "liquid starter" I mean flourless starter that is really liquid. 

doughooker's picture
doughooker

How can you have a starter that contains no flour?

That's what a sourdough starter is: fermented flour and water.

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

Read the linked post. It isn't truly flourless but it is really close. 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

As a general rule I use my taste buds to gauge acidity of dough and additives. I just finished a 30% rye (see post about home made pickles) that turned out quite sour. In the end it was sour enough to slow down the yeast.

My flours were sprouted rye and first clear flour (I bought a 50lb bag of FC earlier in the year for $30 - my  mother in law almost had a cow when she saw it delivered. It’s almost all gone now)

Granted, rye will make the LAB lot happier, but time and temperature can compensate. LAB likes warm temps, If you want sour, you want warm 50-55C. at some point in the ferment.

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

I get very sour breads by simply waiting at 25C, even 19C if I wait long enough.

The loaf I made on 3 October took 48 hours at average room temperature of 19C beginning with dried starter. The pH of the baked loaf was 4.37.

I mixed the dried starter with flour and water and left it for 48 hours. I think it was ready at 36 hours but I was sleepy so it had to wait until the next morning.

I'm sure higher temperatures make the LAB happier but given time they will do the job at ordinary room temperatures.

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

Ph of 4.37 yields a sour tasting white flour baguette? I agree that, time and temperature will produce lower PH dough (within limits) of increased time or temperature each has advantages and disadvantages.

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

I've read that the official definition of "pain au levain" has a pH of 4.3. https://bread.blog/enzymes-and-ph-matter-troubleshoot-my-loaf/

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Here is a clue from the alternate sourdough formula:

Starter:

Final pH = 3.8 to 3.9

Dough

Final pH = 3.9 to 4.0

Maybe we should be checking the pH of the starter and dough?

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17730/divine-inspirationfor-me-it-way-larraburu-brother039s-sf-sd-what-was-it-you#comment-177563

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

I'm routinely hitting those numbers and lower.

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

Timing the fermentation based on PH and not rise is something I was watching a youtube video about the other day. Interesting concept, especially for rye where too much or too little acidity can ruin your bread.

Abe's picture
Abe

The diversity and function of sourdough starter microbiomes, and while it is a long article (well worth the read), something stood out about communities showing consistent patterns particularly in older starters. L. sanfranciscensis is not unique to San Francisco and can be found in starters all over the world. What seems to make certain starters favour a yeast or bacteria over another is how a starter is maintained. Communities, and its bakeries, will prefer a particular flavour profile and their starters will be maintained accordingly, and consistently, over a long period of time encouraging the yeast and bacteria associated with the results they're after. That's the best I can explain it not going into too much depth. Home starters which aren't kept in the same way, lacking the timed feeds with certain flours at a consistent temperature, won't be able to maintain a consistent flavour profile. We keep our starters in the fridge for the most part and try one pre-ferment slightly different from the last and expect a vastly different result. It just won't happen. 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

I would think it would be easier for a home baker to reproduce those conditions with CLAS, acetic acid and an appropriate beer yeast. My thinking is these are things that are much easier to control on a repeatable basis in a home kitchen. At some point I am going to put my theory to a test.

GaryBishop's picture
GaryBishop

That would be a very interesting experiment.

 

Abe's picture
Abe

Since you're trying to coax out a flavour that comes from a sourdough starter? If you're experimenting and going through all that work and in essence creating a faux sourdough you can just as easily concentrate on starter maintenance for the real deal. I would find it very interesting if you could change your starter experimenting with maintenance alone. Just adding in acetic acid anyone can do to a yeasted bread.

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

"Home starters which aren't kept in the same way, lacking the timed feeds with certain flours at a consistent temperature, won't be able to maintain a consistent flavour profile."

Abe's picture
Abe

But I see that as a challenge :)

I won't home in on one particular flavour however what i'm thinking of doing is picking a new schedule and maintenance, feeding it consistently and seeing how it changes over time. 

As a side note not everyone thinks acetic acid makes a flavourful bread. From what I understand San Francisco bread is just very acidic. Other methods around the world keep their starters less acidic for a more complex taste. Something too hot or too cold spoils the flavour. Same here... if it's very acidic other flavours can't come through. I don't chase tang, I chase flavour. Everything in the right balance. 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

CLAS is lactic acid biased; a small amount of Acetic Acid might be helpful to round out the acid profile. I don't remember the ratio off the top of my head, but most of the acetic acid comes from slow, low-temperature fermentation, while the LAB is from warmer fermentation.

My wife complained a few weeks ago that the yogurt I was making wasn't sour enough, so I wanted to see how sour one could make yogurt. Turns out you can make it so sour you can barely eat it. Sourer than lemons. No idea what the final PH was, but it had to be low 3's high 2's. I used some to make bread, and it stopped my yeast dead in its tracks and ripped the gluten to shreds. Wound up, splitting the dough between two loaves to salvage the flour. Getting LAB to make something sour isn't the hard part. Controlling it is the hard part.

As for flavor, most of the flavor comes from the LAB. Since I'll still be working with the primary flavor engine I'm hoping to retain the flavor, otherwise what's the point?

Abe's picture
Abe

"...a small amount of Acetic Acid might be helpful to round out the acid profile". 

That's the balance. I was more commenting on San Francisco bread being very sour. Or true San Francisco bread. Tartine might be made in San Francisco but his style and maintenance is more like that of a French Sourdough. It's made in San Francisco but doesn't have the profile of a super sour sourdough. So we see the maintenance plays a big part, not just the geographical area. 

"Controlling it is the hard part". 

I look forward to your results. 

alcophile's picture
alcophile

The Larraburu SD was actually analyzed for several characteristics, including organic acid composition. While it may be sour, it was dominated by lactic rather than acetic acid, by a 3:1 margin:

Acid Content of Larraburu SD

Cereal Chem. 1978, 55, 461

Lactic acid is generally perceived as tart or a smooth sour, unlike the sharp sour of acetic acid.

Abe's picture
Abe

Will be dominated by lactic acid. Its just the nature of sourdough starters. 

alcophile's picture
alcophile

As a side note not everyone thinks acetic acid makes a flavourful bread.

Your statement implied the Larraburu SD had the flavor of acetic acid. I'm sorry I misunderstood.

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

3:1 is the ratio I couldn't remember. Interesting how cooking effects the acetic acid more than lactic.

alcophile's picture
alcophile

I was commenting on this (boldface mine):

As a side note not everyone thinks acetic acid makes a flavourful bread. From what I understand San Francisco bread is just very acidic. Other methods around the world keep their starters less acidic for a more complex taste. Something too hot or too cold spoils the flavour. Same here... if it's very acidic other flavours can't come through. I don't chase tang, I chase flavour. Everything in the right balance. 

 

Abe's picture
Abe

Not everyone thinks the 'presence' of acetic acid (or too much acetic acid) makes a flavourful bread. 

Sourdough starters are mainly lactic acid. San Francisco starters too. LAB are lactic acid producing bacteria. Although I think in certain conditions they can produce acetic acid. So we're back to conditions the starter is maintained. 

alcophile's picture
alcophile

I did not have the pleasure of tasting Larraburu SD, as they had closed before I lived in the Bay Area, but I did have Acme and Semifreddi's in the late 1980s. So I can't describe from memory what the Larraburu flavor is.

I believe we will all agree that SD flavor production is a complicated microbiological process. We don't completely understand it, and scientists spend careers studying it. We are fortunate that some scientists studied the SFSD process in the period of interest of @doughooker. We know the conditions of production (possibly difficult to replicate), and the characteristics of the sponge, dough, and bread. Now, we have to figure out a way to reproduce it to our satisfaction, using materials and equipment that are not necessarily the same and difficult to replicate.

Starter maintenance is a factor. But it is probably a minor factor. Otherwise, how we use the starter to make bread would be inconsequential. It is how the starter is used to favor the LAB and yeasts: We can make stiff or liquid sponges (levains), and then ripen these at cool or warm temperatures to favor homo- or hetero-fermentative bacteria. Then, some bakers will use different conditions for BF and proofing, including the fan-favorite cold retard.

There wouldn't be a 3-stage Detmolder, a Monheimer Salzsauer, etc. The Germans describe no less than 10 different methods of Sauerteigführung:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauerteigf%C3%BChrung

Then there are other practices: French, Tartine, Forkish, Reinhart, Hamelman, Respectus Panis, etc.

Which of these processes will yield a SFSD bread that has the flavor that @doughooker seeks? We may need to think "outside the proofing box" to achieve that elusive flavor.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Acetic acid is basically vinegar.

The last time I had Boudin sourdough (a S.F. bay area bakery) it had a strong vinegary flavor. I suspect they actually add vinegar (acetic acid). That may reduce their proofing time and improve the overall throughput of the bakery.

True old-school SF SD did not have a strong vinegary flavor, but instead the sour flavor came mainly from lactic acid as alcophile notes.

I'm not sure what is meant by "beer yeast". If you mean active-dry, instant-dry or fresh yeast, there is a definite reason you don't add that to a sourdough made with traditional starter. It competes for maltose with the naturally-occurring yeast in your starter.

Note in my original post I said I was able to duplicate the flavor but this involved overproofing the dough to the point where it was basically liquid. It was nade with a traditional starter and no added ingredients such as "beer yeast" or acetic acid (vinegar).

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous
  • You must have missed the 1:3 ratio in the analysis post and my explicit small and balance comment?

Yeast is used to brew beer. the variety of yeasts available to brewers is much greater than to bakers. Some have been used to make bread with excellent results. 

Among the attributes of some yeasts used to brew beer are: relatively low alcohol production, ability to ferment in much harsher conditions (acidic, hot, cold)

If one does not explore with an open door (mind) one will never get out if the house.

Abe's picture
Abe

While this is true they can produce acetic acid, more efficiently, under certain conditions but will always favour lactic acid. Which I think is the superior taste anyway. I also read somewhere that acetic acid was often added. 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

is where LAB is happiest producing Acetic Acid ... See my post about mouth puckering yogurt for verification ;0) or you can just google it.

Abe's picture
Abe

Hence the cooler ferments for more of that puckering taste. And warmer for lactic acid (which is the superior taste imho). 

I would like to make a starter from scratch again but with a very controlled temperature to see the results. I'll either need to buy something or get creative for temperature control. 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

Or, you can replicate my pickle dough, all you need to do is ferment some veggies and use the yeast and bacteria from that ferment to kickstart your sourdough. Byproduct is some homemade sauerkraut or pickles. Pickled carrots are tasty and cheap. You can throw in a bit of cabbage just for fun!

Abe's picture
Abe

I've kefir (made from kefi grains!) to make a "sourdough" bread. If it's the real thing (not just cultures added to milk as it doesn't work like the grains) then you can make a starter by mixing it with flour, allowing to rise and using it to leaven the dough. Kefir is like yoghurt but more complex and has yeast. 

Sauerkraut is something i'd like to make someday. For now it's mainly sourdough with dabbling in wine/mead making. 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

Yea! Kefir or kombucha would be another great source to start a sourdough.

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous
doughooker's picture
doughooker

If you want to discuss kefir starters and pickle dough, please start another thread.

alcophile's picture
alcophile

I enjoyed the link to accidental discoveries. As Louis Pasteur said, "In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind."

With the upcoming National Chemistry Week (16 Oct 2022), and as a retired industrial organic chemist, I would be remiss if I didn't clarify the description of Sir William Perkin's synthesis of mauve (mauveine).

Perkin (no "s" in his name) was conducting experiments in an attempt to synthesize the antimalaria drug quinine, which at the time was isolated from tree bark. He used chemicals derived from coal tar, but he did not use coal tar itself nor tree bark in his synthesis. What he got in his flask in one of his experiments was a dark sludge. Upon rinsing this flask with alcohol, he noticed that a purple solution formed. (Side note: virtually all organic chemists have made a dark sludge in a flask; virtually all of these really are junk!)

Perkin then found that the material could dye fabric and the modern synthetic organic chemistry industry was born.

The discovery of penicillin also is inaccurate. Sir Alexander Fleming had been studying staphylococci bacteria, not the flu virus. He was observant enough to notice that some of the bacteria had been killed by the mold on the culture. Antibiotics are generally ineffective in treating viral infections.

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

You're confused about how kefir and pickle dough might tie into your quest for SF sourdough. Since you didn't seem to follow the logic of the subthread that prompted those posts, I figured I'd spend the time to expand the thought chain enough for you to catch up.

In my post about Acids, you will notice that Acetic acid is described as "tasting" much more "sour" for a given PH than Lactic acid. Given the deleterious effect of low PH on Gluten below around 4.0, it is essential to try and keep your final dough close to that number. If the desired taste is "sour" and your dough chemistry doesn't have enough Acetic acid, you would never get enough sourness in your dough without turning it into a gloop ( which you have already discovered) since Lactic acid on its own is not sour enough to get you where you want to go at a PH at or above 4.

While some have suggested extremely long fermentation times to get AA (Acetic Acid) into the dough, Abe and I were talking about different types of sourdough cultures that might produce those desired results and ways to quickly establish new sourdough cultures to quickly and effectively get them up and running. When using only water and flour. A typical sourdough starter can take anywhere from a week to a month to get up and running, depending on the flour, temperature and native beasties.

Since different LAB (and other potential bacteria) are your primary flavor drivers with the yeast there (primarily) to provide them fuel and CO2, concentrating on the bacteria and different sources for it makes sense in the context of trying to replicate a taste in a given bread.

There is also something to be said about starting with different ingredients in a starter to produce different outcomes - and it is a different outcome we are looking for here, is it not?

mariana's picture
mariana

The answer to your question is their ingredients were different from yours. Specifically, their starter. By that I mean that their starter was making bread sour. And your starter isn't. Some starters are mild by their nature while others are very sour by nature.

Once you get yourself an appropriate starter, your bread will be very sour as well even if it ferments and proofs only for a few hours, not for several days or in the fridge, etc.

It is much easier to bake bread starting from the appropriate ingredients.

Refeshing every 8 hours is not necessary for starter maintenance. It is only done in bakeries and bread factories with high volume of baking, for continuous bread production requires continuous starter production.

Starter cultures do not require it for their maintenance. Specifically, a genuine SF sourdough culture that makes sour SF bread in about 9 hours of fermentation (total, warm bulk + cool proof) is sold in Germany as bricks of very stiff whole grain dough that are kept refrigerated for one month. You just take some as needed to bake bread.

https://sauerteig.de/en/products/boecker-starter/

Sourdo.com from Idaho also sells as San-Francisco culture a liquid starter that makes superbly fragrant and very sour bread within hours. It can be kept refrigerated for months both in dry and liquid form and nothing happens to it.

https://edibleidaho.ediblecommunities.com/food-thought/getting-cultured

Most likely, at Tadich Grill their baker now uses a different starter, that's all. 

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Are these starters stable? That is, will they maintain the same flavor profile when fed different flours and possible contamination of other exogenous microbes present in the home environment?

 

mariana's picture
mariana

That German sourdough culture that has Lb. San-Francisco and the corresponding sourdough yeast in it is not possible to perfectly reproduce and maintain at home. It will change, most likely. They say on their webpage that you can propagate it at home though and they tell you how to do it.

I have never heard of anyone maintaining a genuine Lb.San-francisco starter at home, although it is very typical of and commonly found in bakeries all over the world. The reason for it is that those two microorganisms are very sensitive to cold and at home most starters do see the inside of the fridge, sooner or later. So other microorganisms from the flour, more cold resistant, will outcompete them.

You just buy a new brick of that starter, just like you would buy a block of compressed yeast that would last you a month or two refrigerated. No one reproduces commercial strains of yeast for baking at home, because they will change, will get contaminated with wild yeast strains and lose the commercial yeast's leavening power. We just buy more.

The cultures from sourdo.com are very stable, and, frankly, quite unique. I have never seen anything like them elsewhere.  With a few exceptions, like their French starter which is exceptionally mild and Italian starters which are rather mild, they all give sour and very sour breads with unique and  different aromas. And they are fed with white bread flour which is not that contaminated, clean. I tried them at different times over the years and they are both stable when kept at home and are reliably the same when purchased from that seller, i.e. their packets give me the same flavor profile over the years. 

You are only supposed to feed them white bread flour with ash about 0.5%. That would be your mother culture, the motherdough. For baking, you can prepare a variety of daughter starters or levains fed with other flours at other hydrations, but the motherdough culture, the backup starter, should stay liquid and white. That guarantees its stability. And, judging from the photos from the article, the seller himself keeps those cultures for up to 6 months and longer unrefreshed if the turnover is low.

clevins's picture
clevins

Get a culture from sourdo.com. Build it up over a short amount of time (a few days) with recommended flour. 

Take most of that and dry it. Use some for one's baking. If the baker perceives the flavor to have drifted too much, set that starter aside, grab some of the dried starter and reconstitute that. That *should* be close to the original starter one received. 

As one gets close to exhausting the dried starter, build it back up, dry most of it and start the cycle again.

 

PS: The book at sourdo.com sounds interesting too https://sourdo.com/classic-sourdoughs-book/

 

mariana's picture
mariana

I have never tried drying it, because I was always able to buy a packet of their culture from them if needed. I do not know how exactly they dry their cultures. They do not sell flakes or crumbs of dried sd starter in a pouch, they sell you a tbsp of silky white flour with microbial culture in it. So if needed for long term storage, I would buy several packets of dry culture from them and store them in my wine fridge at 12C long term.

However, someone else gave me a portion of their starter bought from sourdo.com which was restored into such a beautiful liquid white flour starter that I was tempted to preserve its divine aroma producing culture by drying it.

Well... it did not survive that process. When restored later, the amazing aroma was not there. It was a good starter, but not the same heavenly smell. Either those microbial strains did not survive drying and reconstitution process or I suspect it was due to this man's flour. His bread flour was way too different from mine, he was buying it from a small local mill that milled local organic wheats. Normally, I do not use such flours in my baking but when I do, they do change the aroma of the starter drastically.

clevins's picture
clevins

Their recipes talk about using unbleached AP flour. I'm tempted to try this with that as an experiment, just for the heck of it. 

Abe's picture
Abe

I have read that while starters kept in the fridge for extended periods of time without being fed will live but the flavour will be affected. The problem with sourdough is too much conflicting info. Two bakers three opinions. Questions like this will never truly be answered fully. Hamelman disagrees with you and i'm sure other bakers disagree with Hamelman. I bet after long periods in the fridge they are nursed back to health, hence "nothing happens to them". 

At the end of the day... one has to learn what's best for their own sourdough starter. 

clevins's picture
clevins

is accurate but it's not really that complex. The issue comes when people aren't precise. A very stiff starter in the fridge will develop differently that a more liquid one. A starter that is fed weekly even if it's not baked with will develop differently than one that is the same hydration etc, but fed irregularly.

I think it's a fool's errand to try to replicate precisely what a commerical bakery gets for its bread. If a sourdough bakery feeds their starter every 8 hours and you do as well and if you both use the same kind of wheat in the same proportions and maintain t he same temp, you'll probably be close (if you start with the same starter). 

But most people don't do that since most of  us don't bake daily. A given person needs to experiment, find what they like and tailor it to how they bake. 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

https://www.ingredientsnetwork.com/boecker-direkt-25-prod649345.html

Mmmmm.

This link has been shared before 

http://robdunnlab.com/projects/sourdough/

really good research of starter diversity.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Mariana -

Which brands of San Francisco sourdough have you actually eaten?

mariana's picture
mariana

Boudin bakery bread each time I visit San-Francisco and SF airport and, of course, Tartine bakery, although they do not bake the traditional (sour) SF sourdough. 

doughooker's picture
doughooker

The answer to your question is their ingredients were different from yours.

Can you back this statement with specifics? How do you know what ingredients the S.F. bakeries used and what ingredients I'm using?

mariana's picture
mariana

Performance of the ingredients is the answer to your question about how I know. If you and them follow the same process but the end result is different, then one or more of the ingredients are different and are responsible for the sour taste or its absense. In sourdough, the starter (its microbial culture) is the souring agent. It must be an adequate one. Different white flour, water hardness or different table salt would not affect the sourness that much.

Their ingredients and processes are fully described in literature, scientific articles, etc. Accessible since 1970s.  I have used different starters myself and know from experience that some of them will effortlesly give me a sour or even too sour a loaf while others will never, unless I am willing to change the recipe, the process, etc.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Boudin bakery bread each time I visit San-Francisco and SF airport and, of course, Tartine bakery, although they do not bake the traditional (sour) SF sourdough.

Then I'm sorry to say you've never had real, old-school S.F. sourdough.

As I commented earlier, a few years ago I tried some Boudin. It had a strong vinegary taste which leads me to suspect they are adding vinegar to make a fake sour flavor. It's not the real thing.

The gold standard used to be Larraburu which I grew up on. My mother used to keep loaves of Larraburu in the deep freezer. It was quite sour with a strong lactic acid flavor. Unfortunately the Larraburu bakery closed in 1976.

You are correct. Chad doesn't do traditional sour sourdough at Tartine, but he trades on the reputation of San Francisco sourdough.

clevins's picture
clevins

This thread gives you a ton of options. At some point it's up to you to try some of them and see what's closest to  your goal. I think you simply need a starter high in LAB so it doesn't need to proof so long that the dough breaks down. In your shoes, I'd buy the SF SD starter from sourdo.com and see if that works. 

mariana's picture
mariana

I understand you and your nostalgia and your efforts to reproduce that taste and that bread. Half a century ago it WAS number one SF bread indeed! Even Parisian which dominated the field afterwards closed 15 years ago.

Parisian, another Gold Rush-era baker, closed its doors in 2007, and the selection of amazing sourdough bread options in the City of San Francisco just isn't what it used to be.

https://www.outsidelands.org/larraburu.php

 

May you succeed! I hope that will happen soon and you will share with us your journey and what worked for you.

Very few of us were there, more than half a century ago, before Larraburu Brothers went bankrupt along with several other old time bakeries that baked Gold Rush era bread(s). Today, many people say that San-Francisco sourdough is not as sour as it is used to be. And by that people mean both things, the sourness as in low pH and the character of that sourness - mostly lactic, not vinegary. These two are as different and far apart as South and North poles. 

The new documentary about Larraburu Brothers bakery is about to come out. You probably know about it. You can track it here

https://www.facebook.com/LarraburuBrothersBakery/

 

doughooker's picture
doughooker

This thread gives you a ton of options.

Some posters seem to be pulling untested ideas out of their *sses who don't have a handle on the problem, especially if they're not familiar with the "real deal".

I can't go down every rabbit hole, but Gary Bishop's idea of using a preferment is the most logical, especially since he says he's had success at making a really sour loaf.

clevins's picture
clevins

You asked for help. You're going to get opinions based on people's experience. If you want to deride that  as "pulling untested ideas out of their *sses" then maybe you should do your own research and solve it yourself.

But don't ask for help then pull attitude and crap on people who are trying to help you. No one here owes you a thing.  

 

 

alcophile's picture
alcophile

I also like the idea of Gary's pre-ferment, especially a large one—maybe 50% pre-fermented flour. Even Hamelman says the degree of sour can be modified by adjusting the amount of pre-fermented flour (at least in rye breads; see 66% SD Rye).

I think it's worth trying out temperature and inoculation levels that might be different from the Larraburu process.

Just like with hot peppers, the only caveat I have is that one person's "really sour" might be another's "mild sour."

alcophile's picture
alcophile

What I find most interesting about the Larraburu process is the combination of conditions that (supposedly) produce different acid concentrations:

  • Stiff starter, sponge, and dough—Acetic acid favored
  • Warm temperature (28 °C)—Lactic acid favored

The very warm proof conditions (41 °C) also seem to favor LAB acid production and eventually would shut off yeast activity.

Is it possible that as the yeast activity ceases, LAB acid production continues until baking?

Is that responsible for the very sour flavor?

I don't own a B&T proofer, so I can't easily try out the Larraburu proof conditions.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

Somewhere I have a graph showing the reproductive rates of LABs at various temperatures. Larraburu's very warm proof is a mystery because at that temperature the LAB reproductive rate slows way down. The reproductive rate tops out at around 86 F.

I've tried proofing at 104 F with no improvement in sourness.

if you look at the other sourdough formula, they proof for 8 hours at 86 F. Why the difference?

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17730/divine-inspirationfor-me-it-way-larraburu-brother039s-sf-sd-what-was-it-you#comment-177563

I should resume my experiments with using no starter and adding vinegar and liquid lactic acid to the dough. It's somewhat laborious because you have to do test bake after test bake, trying to dial in the correct amount of lactic acid. Figure about 5 hours per test bake with a 3-hour proof time.

The USDA patent recipe with acid whey obtained from straining yogurt worked exactly once and has been a bust ever since. Another mystery.

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

LAB @86F, you might want to check the basis for your experimentation. You could start with the published ratio of 3:1 lab to acetic.

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Here is a graph from a journal article (https://doi.org/10.1128%2Faem.64.7.2616-2623.1998) modeling the growth of L. sanfranciscensis and C. milleri. The experimentally observed rates are the circles. Topt for the two strains of LAB are 32–33 °C and 27 °C for the yeast. Tmax (growth stops) for the was LAB was 41 °C and 36 °C for the yeast.

The Larraburu process therefore seems to hit Topt for yeast growth in the in the sponge (27 °C), and then LAB is maximized in the proof until the dough warms up to Tmax and stops the LAB growth. The yeast stops earlier during the proof. Almost like a two-stage Detmolder.

Fascinating!

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

The LAB I use for yogurt is happiest around 40C to 45C and commercial yeast is 25 to 38C. Beer yeast has a huge variety of environments that make them happy - depending on the strain. Just goes to show you there is a lot of genetic diversity.

Abe's picture
Abe

Usually my breads aren't overly sour. Enough to know it's sourdough and with a lactic acid profile. I don't aim for sour for sour sake. I want to bring out the flavour of the grains and compliment it with the nice flavour that comes from a lactic acid ferment. 

My most recent bake has brought out a more pronounced acidity and definitely acetic which is normally not present (or not forward in the tasting profile). 

I'll explain my process (which wasn't done to bring out tang but turns out it favoured it) and hopefully you can gleam something from this. 

My starter was 125% hydration and I wished to follow Forkish's recipe for a Walnut Sourdough. He uses an 80% hydrated starter with 20% wholegrain. So over two feeds I turned mine into a typical starter he uses but with 20% whole rye instead of whole wheat. I wasn't ready to bake so I refrigerated it. 24 hours later I decided to use it but deviated from the original recipe. The recipe went as follows...

  • 450g strong bread flour (15% protein)
  • 50g dark rye flour [very nice rye flour - has large pieces of bran giving it a speckly look]
  • 350g water (+ extra)
  • 10g salt 
  • 18g of this mature starter straight from the fridge

Method: 

  1. Autolyse the flour, water and starter for 1 hour. 
  2. Add the salt plus extra water, to make a nice dough, and kneaded till full gluten formation. 
  3. Bulk fermented overnight for about 12 hours (give or take). The dough had almost tripled in volume. It was a relatively cool ferment. Autumn night and probably dropped below 68F. 
  4. Shaped and final proofed for two hours. 
  5. Baked. 

The sourness was a bit of a surprise. Quite a bit more pronounced than usual and definitely more vinegary. Not very usual for my breads at all but an interesting result. Whether it was a stiffer starter, the longer cooler ferment or the tripling in volume or all three who's to say, but interesting all the same. My starter is capable of producing a more sour loaf with an acetic flavour profile just by switching the method. 

Cliff's picture
Cliff

 I've been doing the overnight ferment differently. It works for me. I get a nice strong piquant sourness. The SD starter inoculation is very small.

For two boules I start with 1500 grams of Dry ( salt and flour) of 12% protein flour  I use KA.

I ferment overnight at 86Fegrees with any given hydration, Wetter doughs tend to proof out a little faster.  Lately, I have been hydrating at about 68%.

The Starter inoculation is very small. About 10%.   I mix that with the water I'll be using. I count it as part of the wet for hydration calculations.

I mix the whole dough with the inoculant and water and salt in a mixer for no more than one minute.

I divide it into two even doughballs.  20 or so minutes later  I do a stretch and fold. Then  I  put it in the 86 F Degree Fermentor This is about 8:00 pm.  In the Morning around 9:30 am, I pull it from the fermenter and shape it with a session of stretch &  fold. 

Then I pan the two loaves on a heating pad and let them rise for 4 hours covered.

The oven is 450F,  there is a 3/8" thick plate of aluminum that I bake on. I add water to some ceramic Briquettes in the oven and turn the temp down to 375 F and bake for 30 minutes before taking the temperature.