October 7, 2011 - 11:04am
Why is my starter so sticky
I have switched to a 50% hydration starter . If I have 300 grams of starter I feed it 100 grams of water and 200 grams of flour. I t doubles in a few hours . Why is it so sticky? I thought 50% hydration should be pretty dry, after feeding and mixing I have to scrape it off the spoon or my fingers. I thought it should end up with a consistancy of a ball of fairly firm dough. Am I missing something.
Share
Now you have an idea of how dough behaves without salt.
Jim
Just want to make sure it was ok. I've seen pictures of other 50% sourdough starters they looked a lot dryer than mine.
They might have been using a different flour than you are, or perhaps the weather is more humid where you live? I've noticed that even with 100% hydration feeds, my starters have some variation in consistency just from the weather and time of day when I feed.
You don't say what hydration your starter was to begin with. Could there have been an inadvertent math error on that first feed when you transitioned to the present hydration?
Your starter flour absorbs less water than the photos you used for comparison. Generally the more whole grain in the flour, the more water it absorbs.
When my 60% starter is ready to be fed it much stickier after the activity of the 'bugs' than the firm dough was when it was mixed up. As you are using 300g (ie half the mix) of 'hungry' sticky starter in your mix, I am not surprised to hear that the result is sticky. Although a 50% hydration feed, the ratio you are feeding your starter, 3:1:2, is not one I have seen before. I think maybe you are starving your starter. I wonder how often you are feeding it? And where you are storing it between feeds. Also what did you feed your starter previously? Was that successful? Why have you decided to change to a 50% starter? How do you use your starter? Do you make up a levain? How often do you bake, and how many loaves are you making?
Sorry, the above sounds like an inquisition. It is my own experience that prompts these questions. I started off with a 100% starter at 1:1:1 in springtime on the bench and it was easy to maintain, but come summer it got hungry more quickly and I only wanted to feed it 12 hourly, so I tried increasing the feed to 1:2:2 and I also started a 60% starter at 1:3:5. I found the 60% starter much easier to look after. When it gets to the cooler part of the year I only feed it once a day. Here the days are warming up and I am going through the transistion to 12 hourly feeds. I want my storage starter to be ready to make up a levain so I keep it on the bench and only keep a small amount in a preserving jar. I feed 10g starter: 30 gram water: 50 gram flour.
All of us have different environmental conditions, life schedules, baking programmes etc, so we each have to work out a starter maintenance regime that works for us, eg many people store their starter in the fridge and bring it out and feed it a few times before using it. None of the methods is 'right', just as long as they work for our needs. Depending on your answers to the above, it should be possible to adjust the way you maintain your starter. I do think you are probably starving your starter, if so over time it will be less successful.
Cheers, Robyn
Still learning, thanks for all the responses. I wanted to see if there was a difference in sourness with a 50% hydration just experimenting, I am also retarding final dough in the fridge overnight. I keep starter out on counter usually bake on the weekends sometimes during the week. I was feeding my 100% hydration every 12 hours doubling amount of starter with each feeding. I have switched to feeding once a day with the 50% hydration . So maybe I am starving it Does 3-1-2 mean 3 parts starter, 1 part water and 2 parts flour? That is how I thought 50% starters were fed, I thought the idea was to at least double the amount of starter with each feeding and keeping 50% ratio. What would be a more common feeding for 50% hydration?
Easy to confuse! I hope I can help you understand it. 50% comes from the combination of water and flour meaning that the water is half the weight of the flour, you got that part down pat. Food is flour. Water can vary, the amount can influence the speed at which the yeast & bacteria feed (along with temp) and stays normally between 50% and 150%. This has nothing to do with the starter amount. The starter amount should be equal (or less) to the food (flour) amount for normal feedings or the starter is not getting enough food to sustain itself.
Does 3-1-2 mean 3 parts starter, 1 part water and 2 parts flour?
Yes. That would mean that the starter is not getting enough food for a 8-12 hour feeding at 75°F (or above) and will slowly decrease in rising power.
1-2-4 feeding ratio would be 50% or so would 1-1-2 or 1-3-6 or 2-1-2 or 1-.5-1
1-2-3 is 66%
and 1-1-1 is 100% so is 1-2-2 and 1-4-4 etc.
Does that help? Note that the starter amounts do not exceed the flour amounts.
You ask what would be a more common feeding for 50% hydration. You need to work out how much food to give your starter so that it doesn't get 'hungry' over the period between feeds and this will change across the year depending on the temperature on your bench.
At 600g you are maintaining a large storage starter. Do you need that much? You can work backwards from how much storage starter you need to have in order to prepare your levain and also have enough left to perpetuate as storage starter, to determine what quantity you need to maintain.
Say you decided you wanted 100g of 50% hydration storage starter and that you would start out trying to see if feeding a 1:1:2 ratio will be enough to sustain it between feeds then you would need to feed 25 gram of starter with 25 grams of water and 50 grams of flour. Or if you decide you want to have 100g of 50% hydration storage starter and that you will try a 1:3:6 ratio , then you would need to feed 10g starter with 30 grams of water and 60 grams of flour. And so on for the various 50% hydration ratios as explained by Mini-O above.
(If you do need to have 600 grams of starter on hand then at the example 1:1:2 ratio you would feed 150g starter with 150g of water and 300 grams of flour or for the 1:3:6 example it would be 60g starter: 180g water: 360g flour)
Don't hesitate to ask more questions.
Ok, so for example I can keep a storage starter in the fridge feeding maybe once a week (how often is necessary?) 1-1-2. If I need 300 grams to bake with, I'll can take out a small portion 37.5 grams and build up to 300 grams feeding once a day for 2 days 1-1-2. I guess with experience I'll be able to tell if it's being fed enough by how it looks and works. Does this sound like I'm on the right track.
Yes, this would be one way of doing it. But to achieve 300 grams by feeding once a day at 1:1:2 for 2 days you would need to start with 18.75g.
Let's use 20g as the example. First feed 20g starter:20g water:40g flour = 80g. Second feed 80g starter:80g water:160g flour = 320g
By adjusting your starter to 50% hydration, you would use less starter in your formula to maintain the same prefermented flour percentage as you were using with a 100% hydration starter, you would also need to adjust the final dough hydration to allow for the lower amount of water contributed by the starter.
In the end though coming up with a formula that makes the kind of bread that you like is what's important. You might find Susan's 'sour' formula of interest:
http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/11/05/more-sour-sourdough/
And you are right with experience you'll know when your starter needs to be fed, you can either feed more/less frequently or you can alter the ratios to get a feed cycle that suits you.
My math was a little off but I think I have the idea. One more question I have reasearched this a little bit but would like you input if I'm figuring this right. If a recipe calls for 280 grams of 100% hydrated starter, to use a 50% starter I need to keep the flour the same so I would use 210 grams of 50% starter and add 70 grams of water to final dough mix. Is this correct. Thanks for your patience in explaning all of this
Yes, that's it. Of course you can always experiment a bit too!