Basic sourdough questions from a newbie
Hello. I'm currently in the process of making my first starter and a few things have befuddled:
1) Does it matter what flour is used for the starter? The book I'm following now recommends a certain brand of whole wheat flour. While I have it on hand, it's quite expensive and not very practical to use for successive feedings. Does it matter if I use cheaper flour for the starter and the more expensive one for the rest of the recipe?
2) Related to Q1, does it matter what flour is used for feeding? Whole wheat vs. regular flour etc. I will be baking mostly breads with a high percentage of whole wheat flour.
3) How much of the starter do you need to maintain to be able to bake a loaf a week?
4) My raisin yeast water has become very bubbly but it's only been 5 days. Should I wait a bit more for it to mature before using?
Thanks!
Sourdough starter is a slurry of flour and water that contains wild yeast (which are different varieties than commercial baker's yeast) and lactobacillus (similar to cultures that are in yogurt). Those yeasts and lactobacillus are naturally in the wheat fields and in wheat flour. The wild yeast causes the bread to rise, but it is usually weaker than baker's yeast and takes longer to make the bread rise. The lactobacillus contribute elements to the sourdough starter that make it sour.
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Those wild yeasts and lactobacillus are dormant in the dry flour. You add liquid and warmth to wake them up. They break the flour down into simple sugars (like glucose and maltose), which is their food. They take a couple of weeks to fully wake up and make a starter you can bake with. It may take several months for the starter to develop a really sour flavor or it may never get really sour.
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You can feed any wheat flour to sourdough, all-purpose, bread or whole wheat. All of those types of flour are broken down into simple sugar, glucose and maltose, which is the food for the wild yeasts and the lactobacillus cultures that make up the sourdough cultures. It is probably best to feed a type of flour that you are going to usually bake with. I would feed unbleached flour instead of bleached flour. Bleached flour is treated with chemicals to whiten the flour and bleaching also weakens the gluten.
Usually sourdough starter makes up about 10% or 20% of the total sourdough loaf weight, depending on recipe used.
I have not used a raisin yeast starter. I've only used sourdough starters that were started with flour and water, using the natural yeasts and cultures in the flour.
Thanks for the reply. I think I will stick to whole wheat flour then, but the cheaper version.
I have another question - I realize there are different ways to maintain/feed a sourdough starter, but which is your preferred method?
I strongly recommend omitting the raisin yeast water. The yeast found on grape skins/raisins is not what you want for sourdough. All the yeast you need is right there in the flour. Would you mind sharing the name of this book you're following?
You do not need to use a specific brand of flour. For starter, I've had the best luck with white flour because it (usually) contains malted barley flour. Not to confuse you with too much detail, but all-purpose or bread flour with malted barley flour on the ingredient list works well for starter. In my area the best deal on flour for sourdough is Trader Joe's house brand "Baker Josef's" all purpose.
How much starter you need depends on your recipe and batch size.
Forget about raisins, grape skins, cabbage leaves, potato skins, etc. ALL of the yeast you need is right there in the flour. Flour and water are all you need, not even pineapple juice. Without going into great detail, the other sources of wild yeast cause problems for sourdough. If your flour contains malted barley flour you don't need to add rye flour, either, unless you want to make rye bread.
The way I get a starter going is a slurry of 1/2 cup flour and 1/3 cup water. Cover and let sit at room temperature for a week, stirring once a day. It will emit various odors during this time but that is part of the process.
I manage my starter differently than most. I keep a small quantity of liquid starter in the fridge. Anywhere from 8 hours to a day before baking I make a slurry of 1/2 cup flour and 1/3 cup water. I then add about 1/8 cup of the liquid starter to this slurry, cover loosely and let it sit at a temperature of 80 to 86 degrees F. An incandescent light bulb/desk lamp can be used as a heat source. There is NO discard. The starter is consumed when it is used to bake. Any unused starter from the newly-made slurry is added to the old starter and put back in the fridge. It is much less wasteful than pouring starter down the drain 2, 3 or 4 times per day. There is no point in "feeding" starter if you are not going to use it immediately to bake.
If you can't deal with starter or find sourdough too time consuming, there is no shame in making yeasted French bread shaped into a boule, batard or baguette. There are videos on YouTube showing this.
Thanks for your reply. I am using a Japanese book with recipes from a famous bakery called "KIBIYA BAKERY" in Kamakura, Japan. May I know why you think grape skin yeast is not suitable for baking?
The recipe I'm using requires a teaspoon of malt for making the starter, which seems in line with your preference of using malted AP flour.
As an aside, I prefer Japanese baking books because of the meticulous instructions with accompanying full-color photos, metric measurements, and just the right amount of yield/flavor profile (not too sweet) which means I never have to adjust the recipe. They are very easy to use and fool-proof, and as such I have a very high rate of success when using Japanese recipe books for cakes and other non-yeast breads.
I'm only about to start with yeast breads, however. I have used a KAF recipe using instant yeast with success despite my probably terrible kneading method. I'm using the KIBIYA Bakery book now because it was the only Japanese book I could find with recipes using mostly whole wheat flour (my preference). The sourdough-based recipes are a bonus.
As I'm very much a newbie with yeast baking, I expect to try many other methods in the future. But for the meantime, I prefer to stick with one method as I already have a very good map laid out.
Thanks for sharing your method of maintaining your starter. I will refer to it when I start mine.
The complicated answer to your question about yeast is as follows.
Classic San Francisco-style sourdough derives its tanginess from a lactobacillus which consumes maltose as its food. The yeast is special because it does not consume maltose; thus, the flavor-giving lactobacillus and the yeast exist in a "symbiotic relationship" wherein the yeast and lactobacillus do not compete for the available maltose. Baker's yeast, on the other hand, does consume maltose and so competes with the lactobacillus for the available maltose. This has a pronounced effect on the flavor and the resulting bread lacks tanginess. The strain of yeast on grape skins, raisins, etc. is the same strain as baker's yeast, (named S.Cerevisiae for short). Using wild yeast obtained from raisins or grape skins is, for all intents and purposes the equivalent of adding baker's yeast to your starter. It competes with the lactobacillus for maltose and there goes the flavor and tanginess for which San Francisco-style sourdough is known.
Malted barley flour is also known as diastatic malt. If that's the kind of malt your cookbook specifies, good.
Thanks for answering my complicated question. I was not aware of the differences in sourdough yeasts, and your explanation has given me food for thought.
I am actually not sure that I would like sourdough bread, as I am not even sure that I have tasted bread made from sourdough. I don't recall having eaten a tangy bread, although I have tasted on rare occasions bread that is so good butter or any other flavoring is unnecessary. I just assumed that the bakers used sourdough, as I heard it imparts the best flavor.
I think I will try a flour and water-only starter and compare with the raisin yeast sourdough.
The malt I currently have is malt extract/malt syrup.
I started with some dried starter that I got for USD1 from Friends of Carl, in Oregon. Very tangy and reliable. Dunno if they will send to Japan. You would need to send them a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) with the right postage.
I feed my starter cheap Gold Medal whole wheat flour, 1:1 flour:water. I've kept my starter going for years. Be sure to dry some starter and then freeze it, once you have a good one going. You can restore from backup :) with the dried, frozen starter.