December 1, 2014 - 5:34pm
Carl's Oregon Trail starter question
I received the dry starter and am ready to activate. The instructions says to use white flour, but I would like to use it for whole wheat bread. Will it start effectively using whole wheat flour? If not, is there a way to start it with white flour and gradually wean it over to whole wheat? Thanks
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Both should work. Whole wheat may help it activate more rapidly (and rye flour probably even more so). From my experience, I have noticed that some starters take some time to adapt to different flour than what it's initially raised with (pun intended). YMMV. If white is suggested to start with, I'd stick to white, and then convert.
as that simply gives you a wider choice of different breads to use it in. But by no means it is the rule. And even if you use whole wheat and choose to vary your breads you can always build pre-ferments with the desired flour. I'm not fussy when it comes to these things but some are.
According to the website:
"The semidry sourdough starter you will receive is composed of WHEAT flour, moisture, and sourdough organisms
You will get, imo, a faster and more reliable response by using whole wheat flour from the get go. Regardless, the website also states that the "teaspoonful" they send you is enough to innoculate a number of starters. Therefore it would make sense to make up 3 starters, one white flour, one wholewheat flour and one rye flour (if you have it). See which one flourishes best and then use that one. Most likely the wheat and rye will be the most active but I guess all 3 will do well.
Failing that just create your own starter with your own flour which should take about 4-5 days with little effort.
The type of flour recommended to activate Carl's Oregon Trail Starter is plain White All Purpose flour. The reason is that AP flour has fewer yeast and bacteria organisms than Whole grain flours. The assumption is that you want the 1847 culture and there will be less competition from critters in AP flour when activating the culture.
The AP culture will rise Whole Wheat recipes without a problem or you can start a WW culture with just a spoonful of the AP culture and WW flour and water. If you want a rye culture, I recommend a two stage switch to rye because once in a while rye will "stutter" when switching over. In any event I suggest that you maintain a separate AP culture because switching to a whole grain culture may be a one way ticket. That is if you try to go back to an AP culture you may not have the same culture as before you switched.
If you do not care about having authentic 1847 Oregon Trail culture, than you can activate it with any flour you wish.
Charles
The type of flour recommended to activate Carl's Oregon Trail Starter is plain White All Purpose flour. The reason is that AP flour has fewer yeast and bacteria organisms than Whole grain flours. The assumption is that you want the 1847 culture and there will be less competition from critters in AP flour when activating the culture.
The AP culture will rise Whole Wheat recipes without a problem or you can start a WW culture with just a spoonful of the AP culture and WW flour and water. If you want a rye culture, I recommend a two stage switch to rye because once in a while rye will "stutter" when switching over. In any event I suggest that you maintain a separate AP culture because switching to a whole grain culture may be a one way ticket. That is if you try to go back to an AP culture you may not have the same culture as before you switched.
If you do not care about having authentic 1847 Oregon Trail culture, than you can activate it with any flour you wish.
Charles