January 23, 2010 - 9:12am
Commercial starter
There are several commerical starters for sale on the web. Is it worth to spent on getting them? After series of failing experiments I was finally able to develop my own starter wich works well - I have made Susan's simple sourgough and it was better when I could expect! Should Ii now go for a professional starter or just try to tune up my baking techniques?
Thank you guys for your advice
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don't fix it. There have been a lot of threads over the past six months about whether or not a sourdough starter will change flavors over a period time due to the local environment and flour used in refreshing the starter. There have also been threads about how to mellow a starter or to add pucker power to the starter.
So if your starter is healthy, then simply adjust the flavor to your liking and work on the other aspects of your baking. You can buy a lot of flour for what commercial starters and their S&H cost. Keep baking.
Why buy a starter when you have a perfectly valid starter already up and going?
Perhaps for the flavour of the region its from, but after time those yeast will be replaced with local ones.
Alan Scott for one recommended buying a starter from King Arthur or sourdo.com, his thinking being it was far more important to get experience baking with a live culture than messing around with a microbiology experiment for 3 weeks and experiencing a lot of non-bakng frustration.
That said, if your starter is growing strongly and tastes good then you have a starter; go ahead and use that!
sPh