Leaving starter without feeding it
Hi,
I was wondering what might happen if I took my dough and left it for about a week or so, without feeding it. Could I still use it? Could I use it the way it is to bake bread like the no knead method, or would the gluten bread down after this long. Would putting in the fridge help?
The reason I am asking is that I am currently using soyflour to make bread products, and it contains a lot of sugar which the yeast breaks down. I am fructose intolerant so this really helps me be able to digest it. However, I am finding that it is difficult to prepare 8 hours in advance which is about how long it takes. I am just curious if I could mix up one big batch and leave it in the fridge, and just use it when I need it. Sort of like the artisan bread in 5 minutes a day method.
starter in the fridge - no worries. It is in there for 4 weeks without feeding and I take 10-20 g of it a week to bake with and when it gets down to 10 g 15 g or so I feed it 3 times over 8 hours until it is 100 g and 66% hydration again . Once it rises 25% after the 3rd feeding about the 9 hour mark - back in the fridge it goes.
dabrownman,
Now that I have a mature culture and I am beginning to store it in the refrigerator instead of daily AM feeds (for the first 2 months of its young life), this may be a perfect question to address to you here.
I would also like to do what you do - maintain a mature culture in the fridge and keep drawing from it until it is time to do a refresh build.
When you do the 3 stage build what are your feeding ratios for each of the stages?
I keep my levain starter at 75% hydration with a feeding of 1:4:5 (st:W:F). This approximates the ratio used in FWSY when employed to do the first of his 2 stage build from refrigeration. His 2nd stage on day 2 is at 2:4:5.
thank you,
alan
I misstated (mistakes were made!). My feed ratio is closer to 2:4:5, and therefore approximates the FWSY 2nd day/2nd stage build. Math was always my weakest subject...
alan
a big fan of FWSY.s method for maintaining a starter or making SD bread. I suppose I was turned off when I saw if video of him building a levain for a bread and then throwing more than half of it away in the trash calling it 'Spent Fuel' and then using the exact same thing, only the smaller amount, to make a loaf of bread with a little less spent fuel:-)
the other thing is that these methods and those of Tartine (not including he whole grain volume 3) are designed to make white SFSD style bread that is mildly sour - because people like white bread that isn't sour. I say good for them and I like the bread too but if you have diabetes this isn't the most healthful and nutritious bread you can make to help control this disease.
I have to admit that for years I kept a liquid white starter in the fridge after having it eat me out of house and home trying to maintain it on the counter at room temps feeding it twice a day and throwing most of it away. It was eating more flour than I was using to make SD bread for heaven's sake :-) At any rate my starter regimen is suited for a much more sour bread and even my white SFSD breads have 20% whole grains in them and are more sour because they just taste better to me than plain SD white bread with a mild SD tang. But ti each there own.
My just refreshed starter is 66% hydration so it has 60 g if flour in it and 40 g of water. It is usually kept one of two ways - all fresh ground whole rye flour or all fresh ground whole wheat and rye flour in a 50/50 mix. To get there I use 10 of the remain seed and do a (3) stage build the first (2) on 4 hour increments and the 3rd stage dependents on when the starter rises 25%. I never throw anything away for starter or even levain builds for that matter. The first 2 stages I make sure that each feeding is twice the flour of the existing amount. When it rises 25% after the 3rd build It goes in the fridge as i bake out of it every week until it needs to be refreshed - about 4 weeks. I actually did this process today. For the first time and a while thereafter, I would shoot for 120 G of stored 66% starter instead of 100g and keep a little bit of your old starter around at first just to make sure the conversion goes well and you are happy with it. Here is the schedule foa 120 g build
For a 100g build the 3rd feeding would be zero water and 18 flour. This is exactly the same process i use to build a levain for a loaf of SD bread that had 1,200 g of flour and water. The only difference ius that that levain is only refrigerated foir 24 hours and it is allowed to finish it's 3rd stage doubling the next day before using.
All starter builds and levain builds are done at 92-93 F to promote LAB over yeast to improve and increase the sour in the starter, levain and resulting dough for the bread. You can do it room temperature if you want but the resulting bread won't be as sour which,for most folks, will be fine.
Happy Baking
Thanks dbm. I am not a fan of the vinegary tang of the SFSD that one gets down at the wharf, so I'm not looking for those flavor notes at all. But after two months my starter seems to be quite mature, and at this point, for a learning experience as well as flavoring, I would like to add a bit more tang to my starter. So I will take your lead the next time I do a build and see what's what and if it works for me too.
For the home baker, I'm kind of shocked that Ken would have someone discard huge amounts of starter/culture on a daily basis rather than teach a more economical refresh. In a production environment, where kilos of levain are being added to the FWS daily, the method has value.
Just to get started I followed his methodology but quartered the amounts so that I wouldn't have to do direct deposit into the Pillsbury coffers ;-) . I'm still new around these parts and just trying to get a handle on who contributes things that I pay attention to. Like you.
alan
PS as a quadruped lover myself, give Lucy a scratch behind the ear for me.
LAB like 5.5 ph the best and are less tolerant of 3.5 ph than yeast is, LAB outproduce yeast substantially, 3 to 1 at 36 F even though both are very slow at that temperature. Yeast love 82 F the best, the temperature where they reproduce the fastest and LAB reproduce the fastest at 92-93 F. At those high low 90's F temperatures the yeast are reproducing at the same speed as they do at 54F so the LAB are outproducing the yeast 13 to 1 at that temperature That said, it is all relative depending on the the quantity adn the right food available. If there is no food available or not enough of the right kind to eat, LAB and yeast slow down their reproduction rates.
Also noteworthy is that when you feed the starter or levain the ph goes up to about 6 because the acid is being diluted with much more flour and water at feeding and the acid remains the same at time of feeding. 6 hour after feeding the ph drops to under 5 and then goes down to 3.5 at 12 hours. This explains why the first 2 builds are on 4 hour increments and why they are refrigerated at about the 9 hour mark- about 1 hour after the 3rd feeding after it has risen 25%. This keeps the ph up at the 5 to 6 level as long as possible where LAB thrive but also assures that there is plenty of food for the culture to eat at 36 F for 4 weeks as the ph continues to drop as the LAB outproduce yeast at 3 to 1 at 36 F.
So this method is designed to give the LAB a leg up at all stages of starter and levain build, which also carries over to the dough development and ferment too, to get the bread to be sour. To promote yeast over LAB and crate the lest sour bread possible all you have t do is - the opposite. Do everything at 82 F, do 24 hour starter and levain feedings (to keep the ph low after the 12 hour mark where the yeast tolerate it better) where you throw away the bulk of the each before feeding. Next thing you know - hardly any sour.
Whole grains also give you mire sour than white flour too. So by keeping a really small sour rye starter in the fridge, you can take it anywhere you want to go in a normal 3 stage levain build. If you want white less sour bread take 10 g of starter and feed it white flour at 82 F and after the first feeding throw most if it away and continue with white flour feedings at 82 F. Do the dough development, ferment and proof at 82 F and bake it in as little time as possible promoting yeast all the way .
You want sour, then do everything you can at 93 F when out if the fridge; starter and levain builds using whole grains, dough development and ferment, and at 36 F for long cold retards of starter levain and dough proofing to extend the time as long as possible = sour bread.
Mixing any and all of these processes wil give you something in the middle between weak and strong sour flavor. The other thing to remember is that there are other flavors besides sour that, especially yeast but the LAB too, are developed over time. The longer the yeast can work on the mix and dough the more of these flavors will come out as well.
So anyone can create a designer bread exactly to their liking, whim or mood by playing with these processes. With a little bit of experimenting and baking to see what the changes do to the flavor the resulting bread anything is possible and why bread baking so much fun for me. Throw in the various gluten and non gluten flours available and the multitude of add ins and different liquids, millions of combinations of different tasting breads are there for the baking. - very exciting and so much tasty fun too!
Happy Baking
Ok, so putting it in the fridge slows down fermentation. So would I let it go for a few hours on the counter. Say around 8, and then put it in the fridge and then would that slow it down so that the yeast wouldn't be active enough to start breaking down the structure of the dough? Is that how it works?
Is that how it works? basically, yes. How the dough survives cooling depends on the degree of fermentation in the dough. It is easier to work in a long cool fermentation in the early stages of dough fermentation when yeast numbers are low. If however the fermentation has progressed too far when it is chilled, the dough is closer to final proof (lots of yeast action) then slowing them down in the fridge will have less of an effect.
(exception: high % rye dough, it keeps breaking down even when yeast slows down)
Thanks. I will give that a try.