October 3, 2010 - 6:27am
Sourdough Starter / Ingredient Question
Wondering, my starter is fed with milk and flour. Most recipes call for water. It appears that my crumb is not where I wish it to be as the texture is too dense. Should I substitute milk instead of water? My starter is quite healthy and is over 100 years old. Thanks in advance. ~ Cheers, Daniel
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of the exact nature of your question. Are you asking if you should use milk as the liquid in your final dough - or???
In general terms milk is an enriching ingredient (especially whole milk) that will make the crumb more tender (smaller holes). There are many factors that affect crumb, but all other factors being equal (and I'll admit they seldom are...) milk will tend to make the crumb more dense.
Hope this helps.
Pat,
The characteristic of 'tenderness' refers more to the degree of elasticity/tenacity of the crumb. It does not directly refer to the size of the alveoli.
SteveB
www.breadcetera.com
Fair enough. I'm willing to be wrong and admit it.
I guess most of my enriched breads have the goal of a finer textured crumb and I extrapolated bit too much.
Thanks for correcting me.
Why don't you take a couple of spoonfuls of your milk starter and make a second starter using water and flour? Then after it is mature, test it out.
As I remember it, the advice of using milk rather than water in starter was recommended by Sunset Magazine (their test kitchens were just south of San Francisco) in the seventies. Their opinion was the "right" beasties grew more easily, that it made the starter have more of the desired sour taste and stronger (more raising power) and more stable (same beasties next year?) and less susceptible to capture by the wrong beasties.
I haven't heard any mention of this advice at all recently though, and was thinking maybe I was just hallucinating. Hopefully various folks will crawl out of the woodwork and report their experiences:-)
was my starter of choice for 17 years. It required skim milk and was both reliable and durable. While it did produce a nice loaf with crumb that was soft and tender it was without the holes and texture (and flavor) I've come to prefer now.
Am currently using starter I began with rye flour and spring water and am much happier with the results.
Think SourdoLady has a good idea in trying both types.
Sue
Since my starter's base is milk and flour, I was wondering if I should use milk as a substitute for water when making my bread. My theory was that since the starter feeds off of the milk/flour that it is used to, using water may have not have reacted well. Kinda like feeding a dog an over-the-counter dog food, rather then a premium brand that it is used to. It's the crumb that I am trying to figure out since my crust is pretty good.
Thanks for all the suggestions. Maybe I should use yeast to help it out, rather than just the starter.