This is getting to be too much work!
I love my sourdough bread, the taste is beyond words, but gosh I am finding it really hard now to keep making it.
I purchased my starter last year from a place called Hobbs Bakery here in the UK. When I got it I followed the instructions, which was to add some flour and water, leave on the side, wait a certain amount of time, use it, feed it, put it back in the fridge.
The first time I used it I only put the jar on the worktop in the kitchen, it was Winter so was cold, the starter was really lively and doubled with no problems and I assumed it would always be like that and that in the Summer it would probably double even quicker.
However I now find myself having to feed the starter 3 times before it doubles and I really don't understand why it's being so slow. This week the weather is glorious and hot and I thought the heat would really make the starter grow quickly. I took my starter out of the fridge where it had been since last week, fed it, gave it a good mix, put it in the airing cupboard for 12hrs to find it had only grown about half what it should. Fed it again, this time it only grew a quarter. Yesterday I fed it again and put it in the conservatory. After only 2hrs it had more than doubled and was at the top of the jar, so I know it works, just fed up with how long it takes and the random way it behaves.
It's now Thursday and I started on Tuesday and my loaves haven't even been baked yet and it seems a long time just to get a couple of loaves ready. I have two starters on the go as my husband likes a less sour taste so I have a white starter for him and my mum prefers the sour flavour so for her I have a wholemeal starter. As I use 200g of each starter for my bread I am having to feed each starter 100g of flour and 100ml of bottled water each feed to make sure I have 100g left for next time. The water is cheap but the flour not so cheap and I am throwing away a total of 800g of starter each week which seems very wasteful to me, apart from the mess of the stuff. I know some people use the starter they would throw away to make pancakes and stuff but I bake a lot of cakes and biscuits and don't really want to make anything but bread with my starter.
I've got to the stage now where I am thinking of just giving up and making regular yeasted bread :(
Lyn
I'm in the UK and my starter is loving the weather. Fed it last night at 9.30pm and by 5am this morning (I know, I get up far too early) it had doubled. Tell me a bit more about your starter? Is it 100% hydration? What flour do you feed it? How do you store it in-between feedings? How much do you feed it? I'll give you an example of what I do...
My Starter:
100% Hydration
At the moment 100% Rye
It's a lively Starter (been going for 3 months now). I bake once a week on a Sunday so only gets fed once a week as follows...
Saturday afternoon I take out of fridge / Saturday evening feed it / Sunday morning use it to bake
My Starter is always given big feeds. For example if i'm left with 60g of starter ideally it should be fed at least 60g flour and 60mls water. But then i'd be left with far too much. So I discard about 40g or so (but don't throw it away just yet) feed the remainder 20g with 60g flour and 60mls water (even higher % feeding now) and leave overnight. Once doubled I discard what I took off in the first place and use fed starter in my baking.
This is just an example. Feeding gets weighed and fed but I just eyeball the Starter when discarding. As long as it's a good feeding of equal amounts flour to water.
What container do you keep it in? Do you transfer your Starter and clean the container every so often? What do you clean it with?
Just to give us an idea of what's going on...
AbeNW11,for a rye starter that is not much of growing when it takes so long to only just double when it is at 100% hydration over a period of 7.5 hours.
I thought you had a Wheat Starter?
I have my 50% hydration starter but that is a wheat starter, I am not sure how that would work with a Rye starter.
It might have peaked and fallen by the time I get up after 7.5hours. I never mark it to check. I always use the term "doubled" but I mean at least doubled. Reason is if it's doubling "at least" it's healthy and good to use :)
I've never had a wheat starter. It does change every now and again. Sometimes it's fed spelt or khorasan. Each one has it's own characteristics. They bubble differently. Rye has larger air bubbles. Khorasan goes like mousse. Khorasan doesn't fall but crusts over if I don't stir it down.
Soon i'll have one 100% hydration and another 50%. This weekend is going to be good for baking and experimenting. Using Emmer flour for the first time.
This morning I stirred it down, covered and placed in fridge... It's at least doubled again! If not trippled. Thought it might have completely fed by now. Only gave it 54g flour and 54mls water.
I just re-read your question. Did I read correctly. 800g of starter!?!?!?!?!?
That's a swimming pool
Which hydration is your Starter?
I have to feed my 100% hydration Starter about 3 times to get it fully going when I store it in the fridge.
My 50% hydration Starter though is not that demanding.
I perfer my Starters on the counter even if it means I need to feed 2 times a day, but in this hot Weather they really are better off in the fridge to be honest.
How come that you have to discard 800g of Starter?
I do not mind discarding a bit but 800g is a LOT of a waste.
It carries on in the fridge sometimes and springs to life when taking out. My starter is a bit of an animal.
Sorry to hear you are finding sourdough such hard work - we all have difficulties and problems with our bread baking from time to time. Please remember it is meant to be good fun and you can stop doing it any time you feel it is becoming too much trouble without feeling that you have given up - you are merely having a sourdough holiday.
I think it likely that with the level of skill and knowledge you have already aquired you can make (What you call) regular yeasted bread which will taste fabulous, without the hassle of sourdough.
I suggest you put a small piece (Say 50g) of your well fed sourdough starter in the fridge, for a little while, in case you get the urge to return to sourdough baking in the future. There are plenty of posts on this site to explain ways to do this (dabrownman will be known to you - worth a look at his method of keeping starter)
Happy baking,
Brian
I keep 2 jars with 300g of 100% hydration starter in the fridge and bake once a week, usually on a Wednesday or Thursday.
I used to take the starter out of the fridge the night before, feed it, put it on a heat pad in the airing cupboard as the temp in there isn't as high as it should be, so with the heat pad it's about 24f.
However what I have found over the last few months is that by the morning the starter hasn't doubled and I know it hasn't doubled and fallen as I think I would see a line in the jar from that.
So this is when I am dumping 200g from both jars, so total of 400g and then feeding both again with 100g flour and 100g water. I put them back in the airing cupboard, or like yesterday in the conservatory, as it gets even hotter in there. When it hasn't doubled again I am having to dump another 2 lots of 200g, which is where I get the total of 800g a week that I am dumping, which seems a lot, then feed it again and hope that this time it will double!
I keep both starters in glass kilner jars and clean them out maybe once every month with hot waiter and just let them dry on the windowsill. When they are in the fridge they are on the middle shelf and the temp is set to 3c. The flour I am using for the white starter is Allinsons strong bread flour and for the wholemeal starter I am using Wright's wholemeal bread flour. I did try changing flours once and it made no difference to the starter but my actual bread was a disaster so I have stuck with these 2 flours.
I am wondering if I can find a way of keeping a smaller amount of starter in the fridge so that I can just build it up each time rather than keep throwing it away but I'm not sure if that would work.
Lyn
and how much starter does your recipe call for?
Hmm, I would not wash the Jars because that is your sourdoughs home and it will thrive in this * Enviroement * the best.
If you scrape the sides down after you took some out and before feeding that is perfect.
When you take your Starter out of the fridge, do you let them come to room temperature before feeding?
With my Starter, when I pull it out of the fridge I open the lid and make sure that it is not closed tight, than i let my starter warm up and grow and only than I discard.
I also weight my jar before using it for my starter so that I do not have to eyeball what I take out before feeding.
I never know exactly to the gram how much I have. All I know is I have enough to bake with and enough left over.
I only know exactly how much i'm feeding it and that it's equal amounts of flour and water by weight. Otherwise it only takes a little to "infect" a lot and the bigger the feeding the better.
So if want 120g of starter to use in my baking all I need to know is i'm feeding it atleast 60g flour and 60mls water. when I eyeball when discarding I might be left with 20g, could be 16g for all I know. But what I am sure about is i'm gonna get 120g to use in my baking and if it turns out to be 16g then even better. You can have 5g of starter and feed that. There's enough yeast in that and good bacteria to turn 120g into starter. To turn 1kg into starter (given time).
As for my "jar" and keeping it clean. I'm a very neat worker. Very orderly and no mess. As long as you don't have crusty bits going mouldy it'll be fine. If one does then good idea to wash out or transfer. The way I feed is add water first. Use the liquid to scrape down sides (the crusty bits are never more then a week old) then add the flour. I also keep in hard plastic containers (I know glass is better but this is easier and has worked for me very well). If I think cleaning is necessary I just transfer to new one and throw away the old. They are very cheap.
Hmmm, I rather know what I have and feed accordingly, but see, we all do it our own way at the end of the day.
When I had my 100% hydration starter I also always put the water in first and scraped down the sides, I do not need to do that with my 50% hydation starter.
There is no need to wash the Glass once a month or at all aslong as there is no mould growing.
Of course THAT is a reason to get a new Jar/ Container.
Forgot to say how much starter I use! I am using 200g of starter for both lots of bread, 300g of water, 500g flour and 11g of salt. I usually just mix it up in the stand mixer and then just do some S&F's over a few hours, then I take the dough out, shape it on the worktop, leave it uncovered for 30mins, then shape it again and put them in the bannetons. I put the bannetons in the fridge overnight and get them out first thing in the morning. I usually find they haven't done much overnight so I leave them for around 2/3hrs before I put them in the oven.
Lyn
So you need 200g of starter for a recipe
How about keeping 60g/80g of starter in a small jar.
Night before take off 20g (x2).
You'll be left with 20g/40g of starter. Feed that starter 30g flour and 30mls water. Leave to bubble for 12 hours. Stir down and return to fridge. You might be left with slightly more this time round but you can discard a little next time round. 20g or so at a time.
Now you have 2x20g for your pre-ferments and you want 200g of starter.
Take two bowls, place 20g in each. Then feed each one with 90g of flour and 90mls of water. Leave overnight to bubble. And voila 200g for each loaf.
Sounds a plan, I will try that :)
Lyn
You need enough starter for 1kg of flour and water.
200g starter
300g water
500g flour
So your recipe calls for 600g flour and 400g water (67% hydration)
Instead of using 200g of starter for each bread why not use 10% of flour for Starter.
So 60g of starter for each recipe.
600g Flour
400mls Water
60g starter
and 11g Salt
Method:
Keep 40g/60g Starter in Fridge.
Take out and feed 60g Flour + 60mls Water (there's your 120g for 2 loaves)
After it's bubbled overnight stir down and take off the 120g to use in your baking and return rest to fridge.
Now for each loaf...
Measure out 400mls warm water and add 60g Starter. Stir well.
Then add 600g with 11g salt already added.
Form into rough dough.
Cover and leave for 1hr.
Then do stretch and fold 3 times at 1/2 hour intervals.
after 3rd stretch and fold form into boule and do bulk proofing in basket.
Whole process from dough till ready to bake 6/8hours
Bake
everyone here has their own preferred method - even you but if you listen to all of them then you will just become confused. Your starter should be performing way better than how you've described so something is wrong somewhere. I have tried many different methods but settled on 'dabrownman's' technique whereby you make up a batch of culture (~120g with rye in my case) and that will sit in the fridge for weeks without any attention. You then just take out around 10g the day before you want to bake and make that up in 3 stages into your starter - which can be as large as you wish. It's so simple and so good a technique with absolutely no waste - my starter is going like the clappers in this UK heatwave - I'm bread-making right now.
Search for his technique on here - you won't go back once you've tried it
I fully agree with you, one can get confused with the different Methods left right and centre.
I am happy with my way, you are happy with your way and basicly everyone is happy with their way, just , when things go wrong ... that is where the confusion starts.
1000 different ways. All correct but very daunting at first. I was in the exact same boat till I found my way.
No Muss, No Fuss, No Maintenance SD starter. After years of maintenance and waste of tossing tons of starter away I just couldn't do it anymore and wanted a way, since I'm retired, to do as little as possible with as little as possible for as inexpensive as possible and still make as good a bread - even better. It changes my SD bread baking from work and waste back to fun and tasty :-) Having one starter to make every kind of bread also was the cat's meow. No more wheat, rye and white starter when one rye one will do it all.
I do keep a YW starter to bake breads where sour is not needed or wanted or to use as a booster in heavy whole grain SD breads - so no commercial yeast is needed around here..
Happy Baking.
I do find all the different methods very confusing, I'm the same with everything. However when I bake a cake I know exactly what amount of ingredients to use and most cake recipes use a formula that is pretty standard but just tweaked a bit. But sourdough! Gosh there seems to be no end of ways to make it and that does confuse me a lot.
I do agree there must be something wrong with my starter as when I first got it I stood and watched it bubbling away, now although it does bubble it is just so slow. I hadn't realised that maybe I was washing out the jars too often, guess I was using my normal kitchen hygiene habits with the jars without realising it could affect the starter.
I will have a look at the 'dabrowmans' technique and see if I can find a way of getting my starter to be more active.
I may also just go back to having one starter and my husband and mother will just have to eat what I bake!
If all else fails I guess I could just buy a new starter, but seems such a waste :(
Lyn
aroma is absolutely correct-a million ways to do this. His method sounds excellent but before you do that you might want to pump up the yeast population in your starter.
Take a small amount of your starter and feed it early in the morning- I use a 1:1:1 (starter-flour-water). Leave it at room temp- 26-28C is ideal for yeast reproduction. Make a note of how long it took to rise and fall, so you might want to start this in the morning when you are going to be home.
Feed it again that late afternoon without discarding. You are trying to increase the population of yeast present and discarding just cuts it down when you are trying to build it up.Make note of maximum rise time.
Next morning feed without discarding and note if rise is faster. If it is, then do a discard before the evening feed and keep it at room temp 1 more day.
After it is noted to be very vigorous, THEN you can refrigerate between uses.Refrigerate AFTER it has risen to near max or max and slightly fallen. Don't put it to bed hungry.
If you are doing this with a small amount of flour, there is very little waste. I keep about 1/3 of a pint jar of starter in the refrigerator and bake once a week. I take it out on Friday, feed once or twice that day before taking some to set up a preferment for using the next morning. After the last feed, I let it rise and then put it into the refrig to sit until next week. Any time it develops "hootch" it is hungry-feed it immediately.
Natural levain (sourdough) works best if it is used every day. It remains vigorous and well fed and there is never discussion about how to feed.
Don't give up. Your starter just got low in a worker population. It will be back in no time!
I know you've gotten lots of advice here already, some of it a little confusing. But, I thought it strange nobody mentions one thing that may be the ultimate culprit, so I will. I think you may be underfeeding your starter. What are the temps right now where you are? During the summer months here, it is quite possible to feed an outrageous amount of flour and water to a relatively small inoculation, and get better than triple height in 12 hours. But, if you underfeed the beasties, they run out of food before there is much rise. I think if it is really true that "the weather is glorious and hot" as you say, a feeding of 1:1:1 like you do is just not enough to get up to a double size before the food is gone! As an example, my house is around the low 70's Fahrenheit with the A/C doing its best on the hotter days. I can take 5 grams of starter and mix in 100g each of flour and water, and watch it rise right before my eyes! It will be nearly double in 2 hours, well over doubled by four and nearly triple by eight hours! This is with a white starter. With whole wheat, it is even faster.
I'm also wondering what state the starter is in when it goes into the fridge. Do you have a fully risen starter, or do you feed it some and soon after refrigerate it? If the latter, then you should let it warm up for maybe a few hours before feeding, like Petra suggested.
As for the waste, you can seriously cut that down by keeping a much smaller amount in the fridge. You know you aren't going to use the starter straight from the fridge, so why keep enough starter in the fridge to bake with? I try to keep a feeding and baking pattern that leaves no waste at all. Here's how you can do the same. It's very similar to what Abe described above, but requires no waste at all, if planned well, barring surprises.
You need 200g of starter to bake with. Figure out how much inoculation you need for that, which I suggest is way less than a 1:1:1 ratio. For easy math, let's say 20g. And let's start this after you've gotten this slump figured out and fixed. So, you've got 20g of good, strong, active starter. Feed 100g each of flour and water, making a 1:5:5 ratio feed, ending in a total of 220g starter. If the 20g is the right calculated amount, this mix should be at peak before 12 hours, or at worst, right at 12 hours. Take out the 200g to bake with, and put the rest in the fridge again.
If you are baking every week, it will be fine without feeding it again. If a week passes, and you see that it is not going to be possible to bake, take the starter out of the fridge, feed it, let it peak, then put 20g of it back in the fridge, and discard the rest. The only time you should have to discard is when you don't get to bake regularly. Alternatively, if you prefer to keep your starter well fed, put the starter back in the fridge just a few hours after feeding, instead of letting it peak. This is the better method if your baking regularly goes more than a week in between, because the starter will have more food and be fine in the fridge longer. Be sure to give it a few hours when you take it back out of the fridge before feeding again.
edit: Just thought of this. Don't forget to change your feeding ratio back as the weather gets cooler again. Overfeeding can lead to a worse fate than underfeeding!
The weather here today is 28c and may be 31c tomorrow, although it's not been this temp until this week. We don't have a/c as it's England and I guess we don't get hot weather enough to justify the expense of it!
As for how my starter is when I put it in the fridge, once I've got the starter risen enough I take out what I need, mix up my dough then assuming I have 100g left after taking out 200g I add 100g of warm bottled water, stir it, then add 100g of flour, then do that again to the other starter. I then fasten the lids down as I'm not expecting them to do anything, leave them maybe an hour and put them back in the fridge. Does that sound right?
One other thing I have noticed is that my white starter seems to rise much quicker than the wholemeal one, although it does tend to get a skin on the top. I usually leave the lids up a bit while I am waiting for the starter to rise and I guess for some reason the white one is drying out, but not sure why. Maybe I need to put a cover over the white starter that will still allow the air to get to it.
Lyn
Lyn,
Every single piece of advice you have received - Including the advice you received when you started in the first place - works perfectly for the person giving that advice so, how do you choose which piece of advice to follow?
Bearing in mind that you have no way of ranking the value of the various advice, in terms of knowledge and experience of the donor, and the fact that they may be using different flour to yourself, as well as in different continents under differing climatic conditions you may as well pick the method you like the look of most and just try it and see how it goes.
If that doesn't work, try another method till you find one that works for you.
Happy baking,
Brian
Hi Lyn
You've fallen into a classic trap I'm afraid of looking at the amount of starter a particular recipe calls for and trying to maintain that quantity of starter at all times so it is there on exactly the day you need it. As you have discovered it is an incredibly wasteful and costly thing to try to do.
The solution comes from understanding what you are doing when you feed your starter. From what you have said you feed 100g of starter with 100g of flour and 100g of water making 300g in total, then you use 200g of it to bake with and repeat the feeding regime with the remaining 100g. You must surely realise that in doing this you are turning 300g of "mix" into 300g of active starter i.e. the 100g starter is (over time) "innoculating" or "seeding" the 200g of flour and water.
It should be logically apparent then that you could just as easily take 10g of starter and fed it 10g flour and 10g water to make 30g of active starter in exactly the same way. Equally you could take 30g of starter and feed it 30g of flour and 30g of water to make 90g in total. What is vital to understand here is that the end result (regardless of the quantities used) is an amount of active starter which is just the same as the starter you started with.
So with all that in mind all we have to do is decide how often we will be baking and how much starter we will need on baking day and work backwards over a number of days to determine what SMALL amount of starter we will need at the beginning.
Let's say you will bake once per week, on a FRIDAY and you need 225g of starter. I'm going to assume now that we can feed a starter ONCE per day leaving it out at room temp. We can get to our required 225g in 2 easy steps as follows:
WEDNESDAY - we take 25g of mother (fridge) starter and add 25g flour and 25g water making 75g
We keep this 75g separate from the mother starter in the fridge and leave it out at room temp overnight. The mother just sits in the fridge until it is ready for its weekly feeding.
THURSDAY - we take the 75g of starter from yesterday and add 75g flour and 75g water making 225g
Again we leave this out at room temp overnight
FRIDAY - You now have 225g of active starter all ready to bake with
Notice that you didn't throw anything away at all. All you did was keep adding more flour and water to the quantity of starter (preferment) that you were building up until it got to the 225g we needed. There is no need to discard (except when first creating a new starter).
Obviously we must not forget the mother starter in the fridge. We took 25g out of it on Wednesday. At some point (usually once per week) you need to feed it so that there is enough in total for next weeks start of the building process. In this scenario I would be keeping approx 37g of mother starter in the fridge at any point in time. When we take 25g out of it on the Wednesday for our preferment that leaves 12g. So when it is time to feed the mother we add 12g flour and 12g water to it bringing it back up to 36g (near enough 37g !).
Using these "builds" or preferments is imo the best way to proceed because you can see how active and lively your preferment is day by day. If you find that the 2 days Weds-Thurs isn;t long enough for it to become active enough you can simply stretch the building process to a further day, starting on Tuesday. In this case you would take 8g of mother starter on Tuesday and add 8g of flour and 8g water making 24g in total which becomes your starting 25g (near enough!) for Weds.
This all may sound complicated but it is honestly a doddle. Just work in thirds. Use easy numbers to make life simple.
5+5+5 = 15g ====> 15+15+15 = 45g ====> 45+45+45 = 135g and so on or
10+10+10 = 30g ====> 30+30+30 = 90g ====> 90+90+90 = 270g etc
As for the problems you were experiencing with your starter, my suspicion is that you weren't giving the starter enough time. You were using large quantities (100+100+100) so it takes longer for that 300g to become fully active. My guess is you were discarding half of it too early when you fed it and thus kept knocking the process back.
Anyway, hope some of this helps. Please don't keep 100s of grams of mother starter in the fridge ! You really won't need to keep more than 50g in the fridge unless you are a production baker.
GL
EP
and I like it :)
I've found a way that works for me and i'm comfortable with it. I keep a little at any one time. I don't even know how much it is but I do know it's 100% hydration and it varies but don't know exactly. All I need to know is 4 things:
1. Feed it once a week for my bake
2. It needs a good feeding
3. It needs to be fed enough so I have some remainder
4. Has to be fed equal amount of flour to water
so if I need 100g for this weeks bake I simply see what I have, and it's never more then a small amount e.g. 25g left over from last weeks, and I simply feed it 50/50 and then take that 100g out.
I never need less than 60g for a bake so even if there is slightly more than 20g (at a guess) left over I only have discard teaspoons at a time and not too often.
It's easy when working with a small amount like this to eyeball it and see how much you're feeding it and if it's enough. I've been working like this for a while now and it works for me.
I baked last weekend and refreshed my starter in the usual fashion. I left my starter out at room temperature for a few hours. When I came back there was a big puddle of starter on the kitchen counter. The starter had expanded all right and overflowed its container. That's one way to discard starter!
How much starter are you keeping? !!
Or is your container too small ?
I've had some help from a fellow sourdough maker on here and managed to work out that there is nothing wrong with my starter, it is healthy, but perhaps I am keeping too much. When I fed 20g with 40g of water and 40g of flour it did indeed more than double in less than 12hrs, so I know that means it's doing okay.
Right now I have 2 big jars with 300g in each one and a smaller amount of just 40g in another. I think maybe what I need to do is get some starter going so that I can dry some and freeze it in case it all goes wrong and try to build my weekly 400g that I need from a small amount. I'm not sure what small amount to start with or how much to feed it each day to get to the amount I need, but at least it will mean I am throwing less away.
Lyn
As per my earlier post in this thread keeping 2 x 300g of mother starter is crazy and very wasteful with discards. Since you only need 400g each week for baking you can work with a schedule like this:
Mother Starter = no more than 20g kept at any point in time (1-2 teaspoonfuls)
Day 1
Take 15g of mother starter. Refresh the remaining 5g with 7.5g flour and 7.5g water making 20g again. Put back in fridge.
Preferment - To the 15g starter add 15g flour and 15g water = 45g total. Leave at room temp to peak
Day 2
Preferment - To the 45g starter from Day 1 add 45g flour and 45g water = 135g total. Leave at room temp to peak
Day 3
Preferment - To the 135g starter add 135g flour and 135g water = 405g total. Leave at room temp to peak
Day 4
You now have 405g active preferment/starter for your baking.
The above is for making 100% hydration preferment. Adjust as necessary for less hydration.
If you find that your preferment peaks too early in a 24hr period then you can adjust the schedule to do 2 feeds per day instead of 1 as follows:
Day 1 AM - 15 + 15 + 15 = 45g
Day 1 PM - 45 + 45 + 45 = 135g
Day 2 AM - 135g + 135g + 135g = 405g
Either way you are going from a miniscule 15g of mother starter to 405g of preferment in 3 easy steps.
I also recommend you only keep 1 mother starter as with such tiny amounts it won't make any difference. i.e. if you keep a rye starter (recommended) and you want to bake a white sourdough, then by the time you've added the 390g of white flour/water of the preferment to your 15g of rye starter, you won't know that it was a rye starter.
Hope this helps
ATB
EP
You are all so helpful on here and I've very grateful, thank you :)
Lyn