feeling very frustrated
I'm trying to make sourdough bread with Tartine's method, and I can't seem to get past the "make your leaven float" part. I've been maintaing a liquid starter for a month now, and a dry starter for a week, and I just can't even produce a leaven that will float, so I haven't even bothered to warm the oven yet. So lots of flour and water going into the recycling bin, lots of time spent trying to keep my various colonies happy, and nary a loaf to even dislike. It's worse than bad bread. It's no bread. WTF do I do? I'm feeling exasperated. I've tried to track my leaven from start to finish, testing it regularly. It goes from sweet and floury to sour, seemingly without rising, and without every floting when put in a bowl of water. I fed my starter once a day for a while. Then I fed it twice a day. I've basically flushedd ten pounds of flour into my compost heap. Sweet.
I'm not a quitter, but I feel like I'm locked out of any gratification whatsoever from this bread thing. My garden is turning out lots of tasty treats. My cherry tree produced a dandy crop that's baking in the oven. We made the best home-made pasta-based lasagne you can imagine tonight.
But no bread for breakfast. Bummer.
Maybe I should just put "Tartine Bread" in the shredder, and pretend I never looked into making bread.
Comments
Hi Jaymo,
I don't know the details, but I'm assuming your starter is at least somewhat active after a month of maintenance (bubbling and so...). So, my first idea would be to try and make a bread dough from the starter even if it doesn't pass the floating test. This way, you'd at least have bread to taste -- and some place to work your way up from :)
In my experience, a 50/50 mix of water and flour has always resulted in a very active sourdough starter in about a week or two of daily refreshments. You might want to try with a different flour, or leaving the starter in a warmer environment for a while, but these are guesses... I'm sure there are other members on The Fresh Loaf who will have better ideas.
But don't give up. If this is your first attempt at baking bread, you might want to consider experimenting with some yeasted recipes first, to practice in short steps, and to get good results faster. While a lovely book (and one of my favorites), I don't think Tartine Bread is a good choice for your first bread book...
Good luck, I hope you'll have your loaf of Tartine bread in your dinner table rather sooner than later!
Jarkko
Thanks Jarkko, I think you're right about starting from a more beginner standpoint. I just got some yeast and Brother Juniper's bread book. I can't tell yet if that will be good for a beginner or not. Please let me know if you know a good one.
I haven't read Brorther Juniper's book, so I can't comment on it. The first two books that really got me going were Richard Bertinet's Dough and (especially) the followup, Crust. Crust also has a "chapter" on sourdough.
What flour do you use for your starter? At how much volume/quantity do you keep your starter at?
I'm new to SD baking, began growing my starter in early March from scratch. I maintain a rye only starter, refresh only 15 grams of starter with 15 grams of rye flour and 15 grams of water. 10 grams of each do just fine as well, I've done that too. This way I'm not throwing away much each time I refresh. I refreshed twice a day for the first two weeks and then put the starter in the fridge, refreshing once a week now.
When I plan to bake I take the starter out and refresh it a total of three times before using it in a dough. At the last refreshing I refresh 15 grams of sour seperately and put it in the fridge until my next bake. This works great for me. If I need to build volume of starter for a recipe, I calculate how much and how often I need to refresh to get to that point without throwing anything away, making sure I have 15 grams left for the fridge.
There is no clorine in the tap water in my country but yours probably does. That makes a whole lot of difference for a starter. Chlorine kills it. Do use unbleached flours as well. A rye starter is easiest to maintain. It I want lighter starter I feed it with 1/3 (5 grams) rye and 2/3 (10 grams) white flour to the 15 grams of sour and 15 grams water. I take care never to "contaminate" my rye starter with other flours so the part that goes into the fridge is alway rye only.
You can see my journey here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/28332/sourdough-bread-triology-1-2-3
I am very happy with the Vermont sourdough recipe. The dough is not very wet so it's easy to handle for a newbie.
http://homecookingadventure.com/recipes/easy-sourdough-bread-vermont-bread
I've baked bread from baker's yeast recipes for years but realized that sourdough called for different methods. I eased into the SD baking with a partically SD/yeasted recipe, this one http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/our-version-of-a-pain-rustique/
I used my starter already after two weeks with satisfying results which kept me going. I recommend you try an approach like mine to eliminate your frustration. I don't bother with seeing if my starter floats or not, I tried that once just for fun. It did float. But don't bother with that, just trust the starter. It will do fine at this age.
If you can explain exactly what you are doing when feeding (include the temperature) we might be able to nail down a solution.
Meanwhile try this:
If your culture experiment it is sour tasting at the moment: Take out a Tablespoon of it, add 2 or 3 tablespoons of water to it and then add enough flour to make a dough ball with the feel of a peeled hard boiled egg. Roll this in flour to coat and set into a narrow straight sided water glass (1/4 full or less) at about 75°F and cover with a glass bowl or plate to watch.
Run a piece of tape up the side of the glass. Mark the level dough. Take notes now and every hour. include temp, smell, shape changes, any cracks, poke it too so you can feel it soften as fermentation progresses. Do this for 24 hours or until it puffs up and collapses.
When collapsed, it needs to be reduced to a tablespoon and fed again. Depending upon the rise, the rest of the starter may be used to raise a small loaf of bread or elaborated (fed more flour and water and allowed to peak) to be added to a recipe to make a decent loaf.
I like your suggestion of the tall, narrow, marked vessel. With a small amount of starter in a small bowl, I don't have clear indications of the volumetric activity every talks about. I feel like I should work on sharpening my awareness in this area.
I almos tfell off my chair when I was first reading Tartine and how much flour he used! I develop a starter with 2 TBSP of flour-just as MiniOven describes! Because it is such a small amount, I don't allow a crust to form (as Tartine describes)-I cover it lightly (coffee filter with a rubber band) and stir it several times a day,at first. I have been known to take it to work with me in a tiny jar and plastic spoon and tend to it at work. No one needs to see it! Of course the baggie of white powder (flour) can look suspicious so I would probably recommend a little whole wheat in the mix.
He describes his starter as ready when some floats but makes his starter at a pancake batter consistency. I have that consistency starter but I'm not sure I could make it float,either, unless I added additional flour to make a ball and let it sit for a while.It is too liquid, I think. I know thicker starters/doughs float in water. I don't have any ready but I will try it next time and report back.
As long as the starter is rising consistently after feeding, I'd use it to build a larger amount for a recipe, floating be damned. After reading his description, I believe a newly developing starter may need more than 1 feeding a day (prob 2 feedings at 12 hour intervals). Especially if the temp in your kitchen is 70F or warmer. If it is cooler than that, it will be slower to develop and raise itself. Remember what's happening-Once it is fed, it is eating and producing gas (which rises the mix),then it is out of food, the gas bubbles break and leave the mix and the yeast is getting hungrier and hungrier. It goes into another kind of metabolism and produces hootch-a sign it's really hungry! It needs to be fed to produce more yeasty beasties and start the cycle over. So feed the little guys so they make more of themselves. The concept of consistently rising is important. There is a matter of the desirable lactobacillus that needs to develop in balance with the yeasts. The lactos get going first and can really act wild with fast,furious risings,tons of bubbles and a lot of acid production. This paves the way for the steady-eddie yeasts. Yeast loves the acid evironment created by the lactos and eventually takes over the rising as slow,steady,consistent rise after a feeding. You will see the difference.
Oh,boy, I'm going on and on. Have fun and keep trying!
Thanks for the fulsome reply! I have backed off to 15g yesterday's starter, 30g water, 30g 50/50 whole wheat/white flour, so we're on the same or similar page there, now. My kitchen has been warm lately, so I've moved my starter to the basement, where the temp is more constant, and about 68F, I think.
All of the advice above will help you.
You can also add a pinch of yeast to your starter to help it along. I have not done this myself, but I have read in several books that this can help activate the starter.
Also, you can add a little yeast to the final dough you are trying to make to ensure that your starter will have enough power to rise the dough properly.
Certainly don't give up and if you are concerned about wasting the flour, use a much smaller amount of seed starter when you are refreshing it so you don't waste your flour until you are confident you starter is vigorous enough.
Worse case scenario, you can either buy a starter on line or depending on where you live I'm sure someone on TFL would be glad to donate some of theirs.
If you live in New York, I would gladly give you some of my AP or Desem starter.
Good luck.
Ian
Ian,
Lamentably, I'm down here in Murland, so I can't take you up on your kind offer.
Jaymo
Persistence has its advantages (especially with the trial-and-error process of learning to bake bread), but when you have so much information available to you (Internet, The Fresh Loaf, many, many great bread books), why stick with a book or a method that frustrates you?
I mention it in this context because so many people post here so often with seemingly insurmountable problems with Tartine. It's not the only 'problem' book, but it's in the top 5.
(I don't mean to condemn the book: (a) I don't own it/haven't read it and (b) have seen many people on TFL produce beautiful loaves from its directions. I just mean that a different book from a different author could help you move forward. Once you progress, revisit Tartine.)
Obtain some organic whole-wheat flour. The sourdough organisms are in the flour - also a good test to determine whether a particular flour is truly organic...,
Wild-Yeast
For my liquid SD starter, I've been using a 50/50 blend of whole wheat and unbleached white from Bob's Red Mill, both organic, or so they claim. :-)
I also have a drier starter going, but am not sure how to apply it. This is from 10g starter, 25g water, 45g white flour.
Easy peasy, just cut it up or twist off little pieces and drop the asked for weight amount into the water of the recipe to let it soften for 10- 15 minutes. Stir up and add flour. Working in the flour and/or kneading will take care of the rest of blending in the starter.
"Dry" starter is also called a "firm" starter or also a "biga." Use the site search for related recipes and discussions. The hydration of your firm starter is 55% moisture. Many basic wheat white breads made with All Purpose flour are between 50% and 55% hydration. (water weight divided by flour weight x 100) If you want, you can just keep building the starter and add salt to get a basic dough. The trick is to work the dough and raise it, and bake it before it collapses. If you study your starter, you will have a good idea when this can happen.
I'd go for simplifying life - keep one starter only, bake a decent bread and when you get a hang of it you can cultivate other types of starters. I see no point in the hassle of different, multiple starters and no bread! You can always convert that one starter to different hydration levels and types of flour.
I think I was blessed with not a single bread book at hand about SD baking but the internet only. Pages that seemed too fussy or created too much fuss were deleted on my browser. I stuck with good reasoning and clear instructions and that got me started.
Olaf, you are too right. I'll pare down to a single starter. Which do you think is more useful for a novice? The liquid or the biga? Toad.de.b mentioned that the biga may be easier to track and manage...
Hey Jaymo-
My journey took me down the well-trodden path of starting way more starters than any sane novice could possibly need. At one time, I had (all liquid) starters going from every grain I could possibly imagine using in a bread -- something like nine. Insane. Now I just maintain the same starter in both 100% and 50% forms. Dave Snyder posted the info below from his SFBI course(s) and I follow these guidelines (except I use Rubaud's flour mix) for refreshment -- both maintained in 8 oz jelly jars. I really like SFBI's idea of refreshing your starter and immediately putting it in the fridge -- not refrigerating a 'stationary phase' (fully grown) starter. When you take it out to 'growing temperature' after a few days, they really take off. Reassuring.
Tom
A liquid starter or a biga? Well, I guess my starter falls into the category of liquid but because it's rye only it is not very wet, like soft pudding.
I just stick with the most simple way to do this: a very small amount of starter, 15 grams each of starter, rye and water. This comes up to less than 2 tablespoons and I refresh only one third of this mixture once a week.
As I understand the definition, a biga is yet another thing, not to be confused with "starter". A biga, as I understand it is something I prepare for a dough and it includes a portion of starter. I found this discussion which might help: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14521/confused-about-starters-bigas-and-soakers
I am a novice like you. I read quite a lot before beginng this SD journey and came to the conclusion to operate on minimum complexity, volume and waste to get a nice crust and crumb. When I have nailed the recipe which serves me well and I shared with you above, the Vermont bread, I'll start experimenting with other techinques. Biga, poolish and whatever, it's all in the future. There's no reason to climb every mountain right away. I just want to make a good bread and eat it.
your starter is fine. Mini Oven is right. Try to make a levain and mark the glass (I use a rubber band around the glass to mark the start level) and see what happens.
I have heard of taking a small ball of dough from the main one that is starting its final proof and putting it into a glass of water. When the little ball floats it means the bread is properly proofed and is ready to bake. I donlt see how liquid starter like Tartine's would float.
I'll chime in with the others and suggest that you forget about whether your starter floats and watch volume increases instead. My starter doesn't float but it makes great bread. If you feed it like MiniOven says- whenever it peaks/falls, it will get there. If the firm starter is tripling in twelve hours, you are ready to bake.
Your flour mix sounds nice. You could also consider feeding one of the starters (perhaps the firm one) with a mix of bread flour and organic whole dark rye (you only need about 5-10% rye in the mix, any more and you'll need to adjust the water).
I recommend getting Bread, by Hamelman, out of the library and making the Vermont Sourdough with your liquid starter and the pain au levain with your firm one.
Good luck!
I apologize for contributing to this thread so late. Busy time of year here with everything growing outside. Of all people, I should at least be providing sympathy, if not practical suggestions, as my struggles with Chad Robertson's method have been (perhaps too-) well documented here @ TFL. The advice above that you've received from the very TFLoafers who have helped me is, as always, superb. These are very experienced and generous people. Let me add some thoughts that I've been incubating regarding Tartine and its challenges to the novice baker. Warning -- this'll probably be long :-(
End of sermon. TFLoafers, comments welcome, as I am a novice still and these are lessons I've only recently learned and am learning still. Happy to help. Sorry for being so late on this one. I know how it feels. How can something that sounds so easy be so hard? Been there.
Happy baking!
Tom
Wow, Reverend Tom,
What a delightful response! Thanks so much for taking the time. Now, where to start...
At to ingredients, I can assure you that I'm happy to go with the best I can get. It's part of a general life philosophy for me: if I'm going to invest the time (my most valuable asset) why be penny-wise and pound foolish and use cheap ingredients? (Paint is a good example. Why spend days doing surface prep, then put on some cheap paint that will come back off so fast I'll spend the rest of my life scraping and re-doing it? Same thing with musical instruments. Cheaper ones are harder from which to get a gratifying sound, although like your spackle reference, I do know great musicians that can make crappy instruments sound awesome.) So far, I've been using Bob's Red Mill flour I can get at Whole Foods. I'm happy to use better if I can find it, buy it on-line, or whatever. I travel to France a lot, and have eaten lots of wonderful bread. I don't know that I can see my own perfect loaf in my mind's eye just yet, but I think your shorthand term "artisinal" is right on target. I can eat pre-sliced bread from a plastic bag if I have to, but I sure don't want to spend my time making that kind of stuff.
It's become clear to me that I need to follow your advice to find a less grueling way up the learning curve. I have to admit that I fell into the trap Robertson set for me, however unintentionally, of thinking that even though I'd never baked before, it sounded so easy... Doh! And while you call yourself a novice, I can tell you've made some pretty good inroads into getting a good grasp of the basics that I still lack. Being a scientist/engineer/musician, I like to understand things at lots of levels so I can improvise more gratifyingly.
I'm very grateful to have found this site and its very generous, very helpful bakers. Y'all have helped me remain hopeful and not give up the ship.
Ok, toad, I’ll bite.
Flours are differentiated by their protein content, amongst other things, most all purpose flours in the US are in the 10-under 12% range. King Arthur AP is on the high end and excellent for crusty breads. As I type, I am baking baguettes (Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough recipe—a superb recipe: straightforward & produces an excellent result) with a Meuniere Milanaise, how's that for name dropping ;) , unbleached white winter wheat 11% protein flour that would classify as AP. The Vermont sourdough recipe works with Whole Foods store brand AP, Pillsbury AP and Bread flours, as well as Gold Medal Brand, Ceresota AP and White Lily Bread flour, too (White Lilly AP is possibly the lowest protein AP flour and is better for pies and biscuits). And, of course, King Arthur AP or Bread flour is excellent--which should go without saying! In fact, King Arthur AP is my go to product except for a few breads which require a very strong flour. The fact that it has range is, to me, highly desirable. With all due respect, I don’t think one has to be Chad Robertson to make a good bread with AP flour.
Any mill supplying commercial customers, especially a very large one, will know how to produce consistent on-spec product day-in-and-day-out. The big boys do it by the rail car load. I've never worked for a mill or a food products distributor, but I know big companies and some process technology, and I am willing to bet that the protein, ash and starch production specs for a particular retail product, regardless of the mill, are tighter than what most of us would believe. Unless you are a multi-million dollar account or buying from a one mill operation, you probably will not get to choose your mill. I've also read that flours used to be formulated for regional differences (weather, i.e. humidity, taste, etc) but that has gone by the wayside years ago; we can attribute our observations and variability of results from baker to baker across the country not to product variability, but lack thereof. As they say: user error…
The key for any flour is deciding what kind of bread you want to make, determine its protein (ash, etc) requirement and pick a flour brand/product with good taste that meets your technical need, then run with it and learn it. Stick with it to make your life easier down the road.
I bought Meunerie Milanaise flour because it is organic, I wanted to see what the bakeries are raving about and it was $27/50lb. It baked fine on the first go round and tastes good. Someday, I’d love to do a blind tasting of one recipe and a multitude of flours.
I do agree somewhat about buying out of the bulk bin; one doesn't know if the same brand--or worse, same grade (i.e. AP, bread) was used to replenish the bin (nor at what point) when it was running low. That said, learning what your dough should look like at the various stages will make a lot of AP brand differences moot. My guess is that most coops buy the same thing and just dump in more when the level drops. I’d be more concerned about the composition of the last 6-12” of flour in the bin!
There is nothing artisan about most (all) commercially available flours, last I knew none of the mills were hand operated except for the pressing of some buttons and the pulling of levers. :) The artisan in bread baking is the baker. I think we sometimes get too hung up on brands.
Jaymo, have you ever tried the New York Times No Knead Recipe or one of its variants (they're all fundementally the same)? It produces a flavorful bread which, in my opinion, approaches a light sourdough loaf. The recipe is very forgiving and a good baking starting point. Practice with it, learn how to work a very wet dough and it’s downhill from there.
If you are a technical sort, Debra Wink’s posts on starters, yeast and bacteria are a must read. The pineapple juice method works. You can also try adding about a ¼-scant ½ tsp of vinegar to one of your bubbling starters that hasn’t taken off. It will acidify it enough to squelch the bacteria and make the yeast happy. I’ve done that and turned one around in a day.
Don’t despair, you’ll get it eventually, we all did.
PeterS
And, since I am a slow writer, the baguettes were done before I finished. Vermont Sourdough with some WW, retarded overnight.
Been offline for a few days. Nice loaves Peter! I'll have to try this 'Vermont' sourdough sometime -- assuming its a published formula somewhere (Hammelman?). And thanks for all the AP flour feedback. I think you summarized my point here:
The dough feel learning curve can be steep. My point was that novices can perhaps avoid an obstacle by stacking the flour deck in their favor: Higher protein flour will likely respond less grudgingly to manipulations aimed at developing gluten strength. Some APs are higher than others. When I get back to my kitchen, I want to try something I've never done: substitute some of the AP in my current favorite forumlae with bona fide bread flour (e.g., KA) and see if that will help me learn what gluten development should feel like it. After a year of bread baking, I still have no clue how dough with proper gluten development differs in feel from dough without. But I sure know what the latter feels like and how it misbehaves.
Tom
Jaymo,
I am late on the page here and agree with what others have already said above. I will toss in a link that you might check out on Sourdough. Easy to read and what you will see is that every baker - or at least all that I have read thus far - have their opinions on how to do sourdough. Can be confusing in the beginning but after awhile you will find what works for you - happens to all who stick with it :-).
http://www.sourdoughhome.com/sourdoughfasttrack2.html
What helped me the most when I transitioned into using sourdough in my breads was Peter Reinhart's book 'Whole Grain Breads'. I started off using a biga and a starter and baking through most of the breads in that book. Switching to sourdough was no big deal when the time came because using bigas was like having a set of training wheels on a two wheeled bicycle.
Good Luck and enjoy your self :-)
Janet
In the interest of simplification, I'll just say that regardless of the flour mix, hydration, or temperature, the goal with your starter is the same: feed it when volume has peaked and is just beginning to flatten/deflate/wrinkle. I prefer both the flavor and ease of use of a firm starter, but the same principle holds true for any hydration. The most important factor in determining when the thing will peak is temperature.
The other thing I wanted to say is, despite the appeal of Chad Robertson's book, it is not the only formula that will give an open crumb and rustic crust. This is a photo of a loaf I made yesterday with a firm starter and 69% hydration, quite different from the Tartine loaf's liquid starter and 75% hydration. Because of the lower hydration, it is much easier to work with, yet the crumb still has much of the same appeal. So feel free to shop around. :)
Jaymo, I churn out loaves of Chad Robert's Basic Country Bread week after week, using his 50/50 WW/BF starter blend (he says "white flour" which I interpret as bread flour since it has more gluten to feed the yeast) and an 80/20 BF/WWF mix. (He recommends 90/20.) The method is a pleasure to follow and the loaves never fail. It's a good practice to add water to your starter and mix it before adding flour because that does a better job of distributing the yeast, but I've rarely noticed any starter rising to the surface (and didn't worry about it). I suppose there is a magic moment where there will be enough carbon dioxide in your levain to offset the weight of the flour, but the starter will be viable before and after that.
I love "Tartine Breads" for the photography and the philosophy, but the recipes should be taken as a guide and there are likely some inaccuracies (especially his baguette recipe; you'll get much better results following the country bread recipe and substituting 100% APF). If you're trying something he recommends and it doesn't work, try something else.
Otis
Interestingly enough, I've had good luck with all the recipes in that book except the Country Bread. I love Chad's poolish+sourdough method for the baguettes and croissants (the brioche as well), and have adapted it to my own bread method, especally for sweet doughs.