creating a pre-ferment or poolish using an active starter & knowing when a starter s ready !
Hi there, i have been a keen reader of blogs of this web site for some time now without actually signing up myself. So today decided to jump in !! I am a keen baker and have been baking with fresh / dried yeasts for a while now. Although im getting the hang of baking in general, i am completely new to the strange and wonderful world of sourdough . Last week i finally decided to start my own starter from scratch. I read up as much as i could (could handle) , and got going. I ended up taking quite a relaxed approach to my starter, opting for the " feel as you go " approach, as this as always boded well for me with baking in the past .
My hydration level for my starter was essentially equal quantities of flour and water ( 50 g - 50 g ) , adding the same amount daily for around three days. On the third day my starter was looking active and was smelling of a mix between a nice pear type smell, and a more nauseous paint stripper smell ! But as i have read up on, this i all normal so i continued. It is now day 5 and ive split my starter into two jars as i felt i couldn't just throw half of it away to accommodate more flour and water, thus i know have to starters to look after weighing a very approximately 400 grams each.
My real question/questions is/are , how do i practically really know when my starter i ready from today onwards ( keeping in mind this is day 5 ) , and when and if it is ready, what is the formula ( as apposed to a recipe ) for adding your live starter into any recipe you would want to add it in. If anybody has experience in this matter, i would literally be very grateful for any feedback , as i would really like this particular starter to work out for me. Thank You , craig.
It really depends...how long you intend to let your dough ferment....for me, it's been trial and error, but have settled on using 20-30%, by weight of the total recipe weight, e.g. if your total recipe weighs 1000g, you would use 200-300g of starter. Remember to consider the flour and water in the starter as part of the recipe.
Definitely experiment....for really long retarding in the fridge or room temp, try using less....if you want the rise to happen more quickly, use more....
Hi jak123, thanks for the reply. Generally i favour the long and slow technique, unless I'm doing something like a pizza dough. So i assume for say my basic white dough recipe i use around the 60 % hydration mark ( i.e. 500g flour , 300gish water ) , i would use say 100 g of my starter, and since my starter is of an 100% hydration then i would take 50 g of flour and water respectively out of my recipe ? Would that be correct ? I just want to clarify that point. Thanks again for the reply ! Oh and any extra tips on definitely knowing when its right to test the starter out, or if I've been making any big errors you can see from my post prior ?
If you're able to feed your starter at the same time every day and observe it rising and falling predictably, I would consider it ready to use.
Frank
exactly....i favor a 65% hydration, but whatever your recipe calls for should work. Its been so long since i built my starter, i'm not sure when you will know when it's ready, but i assume if you see action(bubbles) and a nice "sour" aroma, it should be good to go....i do a long bulk ferment at room temp, divide, rest, form and then at least 12-18 hour refrigerated retard, then straight into a hot oven from the refrig....getting great quality sourdough breads daily.
SD starter using sourdoladys method about 3 weeks ago or so. I used tangelo juice instead of pineapple. It was really going strong and I built it up over 2 days using 1: 4: 5 (starter water flour) a stiffer levain. I thought for sure it was perfect only to bake off a loaf that was 50% less what it shaould have been. It was just weak . Today I did the exact same recipe with the same SD starter and it turned out perfect. New starters are tough to judge from my perspective but once you have it 3 weeks old, it should do you wonders and will only get better and better as it ages. Welcome to you - your lurking days are over :-)
If you've fed it in the morning and it's tripled within six hours, with bubbles on the bottom and just breaking on the top it's ready!