Hello,
I'm building a sourdough pizzeria and need help deciding on a sourdough maintenance schedule.
The requirements are as follows: all starter feeding and mixing should only be done in the morning. It must be very simple to follow and starter temperature must remain consistent throughout the year to avoid changing feeding ratios.
I'm currently considering between 2 options and would like some insights on which method you would choose and why.
Option 1: Controlled Fermentation (using a Wine Cooler Method)
Buy a wine cooler and set it to ~60°F. Feed the starter a ~1:10:10 ratio each morning.
Adjust ratio and/or temperature as needed until the starter reliably peaks the following morning. Use the starter at its peak for mixing, then refeed the remainder and put it back in the wine cooler.
Option 2: Two-Stage Fermentation (Room Temp + Cold Retard)
Feed the starter at a 1:1:1 ratio and leave it at room temperature for about 3 hours. Transfer it to a walk-in cooler set to 38°F overnight. The next morning, remove it, allow it to return to room temperature, and use ⅔ of the starter for mixing. Refeed the remaining ⅓, let it sit at room temperature again, then return it to the cooler until the next day.
Which method is better for a high volume pizzeria and why?
I'm not sure, how many users here have relevant experience with (high volume) professional bakeries or pizzerias. Me for sure not.
Based on what I've learned from Ian Lowe and my very limited home baker experience never managed to contradict Ian's affirmations, I can only say that when it comes to taste and fermentation both options are not optimal.
Option 1: 60F -> 15.5ºC is too cold for a good fermentation of your continuation starter. The predominant LAB strains in the majority of the sourdoughs around the world produce more acid and less CO2 (ratio to each other) bellow 18-20ºC (??? to be verified) than above this temperature.
Option 2: There is no fermentation at 38F -> 3.3ºC. You will have good fermentation at room temperature (assuming it is in the range 20ºC - 28ºC) and when the starter cools down until its temperature reaches ~8ºC. Probably better than Option 1, but still not ideal.
The best option would be to keep the continuation starter at temp. between 20ºC - 28ºC and maybe use (part of) it to create a starter for the main dough a few hours before production starts.
On the other hand, there are always limitations and the perfect fermentation is probably the least important success factor in a pizzeria. It's enough if the fermentation is good enough.
That being said, I'd go with option 2 with a few optional changes:
Change 1: "cold fermentation" at 10ºC.
Change 2: a warm refresh (27-28ºC) 1-2 times a week until the starter peaks.
Change 3: reduce hydration of the starter to 60-70%. This should buy you more time (not quite sure how much) because stiffer starters ferment slower than liquid starters. The volume increase it also easier to measure. The gas holding capability of your starter / flour is less important if you have a stiff starter. It doesn't collapse so easily. A collapsed starter is not necessary a sign, that the fermentation already reached the peak. It means only, that the starter / flour exceeded its gas holding capacity.
Thanks for the response! What you said makes a lot of sense and you're not the first to say that both of these conditions are not optimal. The idea for option 1 came from a pizzeria I know who told me that's what they did, and option 2 is from Michael Kalanty's book "Bake more Bread".
Even though you haven't worked in a high volume bakery (neither have I), what do you think would be the ideal holding temperature for the starter, frequency of feedings, and feeding ratio? I know this will be different based on different flours etc. but I've been asking lots of people this and want to find the similarities between responses.
The goals to keep in mind would be simplicity and using some type of temperature holding device so the feeding ratio does not need to change seasonally.
You can also extend the fermentation cycle by salting the starter. I've been using 1% salt. Using a lower hydration and salt both extend the window of time during which the starter is good to use. I would think that would be desirable in your planned operation.
If you could feed your starter last thing in the evening, that would help with having the starter ready in the morning when you want to use it. I've been refreshing my starter at about 1:3.6:4, 90% hydration, 1% salt, bread flour. This starter is usually good to use about 10 or 11 hours later (at overnight temperature about 70 deg F, daytime 75). By the end of the evening it of course is well past its prime and may even be thin, but the cycle is stable from day to day. I use bread flour to reduce the tendency to get soupy late in the cycle. This starter doesn't seem excessively acidic or sour. You could get it ready sooner by common measures: higher hydration, no salt, lower feed ratio,warmer temperature, etc.
I'm making tiny quantities for home use, so perhaps not very applicable here...
TomP
Get the starter first. What that does will determine the rest. Enjoy!
If you follow Ian Lowe on Insta, he is opening a pizza shop in Tasmania and is talking extensively about his SD maintenance schedule. It seems to be feeding every 12 hours and maintaining at 28C with no cold cycling.
Will do, thanks for the tip!
I started following his stories thanks to this comment but man, he just blew up everything I thought I knew about bread and fermentation and mixing. I'll need to spend quite a bit of time trying to understand if he's right.
What do you think? Is he right about lack of autolyse? No stone milled flour? No cold fermentation? These were all things I thought were important which I've been doing.
Yes, I stopped doing autolyse (mostly) because of Ian. Though, I still find it useful to do a mix to combine, then a 10 minute autolyse, just to wet the dough thoroughly, then continue (for certain doughs). Don’t know whether I will continue to do this though, as Ian is saying that autolyse reduces to total amount of gluten that is developed under any circumstances.
I think he is more concerned with roller milled flour in Australia, due to damaged starch. A couple of days ago he was talking about how “bread flour” is less good than high extraction flour for starting a SD culture. With a lot of very technical justifications. However, this is something that is obvious and everyone knows, without the gel-solution-enzyme level of understanding.
Which leads me to the assertion: bakers have not historically been academic scientists, but are scientists in the broader sense of forming hypotheses, theories and experiments/proofs. Bakers apply continuous improvement principles. It’s tempting to go down a technical rabbit hole to gain confidence in an approach, but not all baking knowledge resides in academic circles. There are things they do not know or can predict from their studies. Bakers discover these things on their own.
For instance, Ian has stated that you cannot maintain a sweet stiff starter over time, that it will destabilize and fail. He cites technical reasons. I know this to be incorrect, as I have maintained this particular starter for over two years and it has only improved. It is more stable than my “regular” stiff starter.
So, it is good to pay attention to technical citations, but balance those data points with your own experience.
Probably most of the things that happen in baking cannot be predicted. It's too complex. You can only explain them after they happened.
When you follow Ian (or listen to his reels, etc) just keep a few things in mind:
It's good to remember that all processes are compromises. It may be true that cold fermentation improves flavor but for your production cycle it won't work because of the time needed to warm up the dough balls. Or cold fermentation may be a godsend since it gives you great flexibility in scheduling. Or maybe you can't afford the refrigerator space.
A rest after rough mixing - I won't call it an "autolyse" - may (I'm not convinced) lead to slightly less gluten development. But the rest could let you mix for 3 minutes - rest 20 minutes - mix 5 minutes, which will lead to less wear on the mixer (and lower electricity bills) than mixing for 15 minutes straight with no rest. OTOH maybe you need to use the mixer for something else during those 20 minutes of resting.
Every step of the way involves tradeoffs. It's easy to forget this with home baking, but you can't ignore them when you have to run a business. Most likely there are some tradeoffs that must go one particular way to provide something you can't compromise on: crumb, flavor, that airy, raised ring around the pizza, whatever it is. You have to find out about those things. There's no one way.
TomP
Option 1 sounds good to me. Better to have consistent and controllable temps.
I have recently nailed down an excellent Neapolitan style formula using my SD/LM starter. What I do:
My pre-ferment/levain/leaven is 1:6:6 + ½% (baker's%) salt at 15C/59F for 16-18 hours. It consistently begins to fall at about 17hrs.
Leavain is 44% in the main dough, 18% pre-fermented flour.
Bulk: Mixed dough lives in the fridge at 3C for approx. 30 hours. Surprisingly it does still ferment at this temp, just very, very slowly!
Proof: Dough balls proof at 15C/59F for approx. 12 hours, then 4-6 hours at room temp. They are very puffy by that stage.
Whatever you decide, I would advise that your pre-ferment is fed at a high ratio not a low one.
Thanks for the advice, your neopolitan looks amazing by the way. I think I'll end up scrapping both options and going back to the drawing board. The deeper I've gotten into this the more I'm realizing I don't know enough yet. Will reeducate myself and then build a new system.