December 3, 2014 - 5:48pm
pros and cons of differing sourdough starter techniques
I'm wondering if anyone has any insight/experience/opinions on some variations I know for starting a sourdough culture. I first learned from Reinhart's BBA, and have also used some of Reinhart's later techniques, but have recently been reading Forkish's FWSY.
Specifically, I'm interested in hearing thoughts on the wildly different amounts of flour used in each recipe. Forkish's recipe uses 500g of flour as a base and then adds another 500g of flour at each stage, whereas some of Reinhart's recipes use as little as 28g of flour to start and others of his in between the two.
Is there any kind of specific advantage to developing your starter culture in such a large volume as opposed to a smaller one?
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to start off with a very small amount and build. Reason being is for the first week it's going to need daily feeding/s and while creating a starter there's going to be some discard otherwise you'll end up with a swimming pool. As it is even if you start off with a very small amount you'll have to discard some. But starting with 500g is far too much. I've heard about these large volume ways of creating starter but never understood it. I've had success with a method something like this...
Day One
5g flour
5g water
Mix into paste
Day Two
Add... 10g water (stir till distributed)
Then add 10g flour and mix into paste
Day Three
Add... 30g water (stir till distributed)
Then add 30g flour and mix into paste
[you'll now have 90g]
Day Four
Discard 2/3rds (you can eyeball this)
Add... 30g water (stir till distributed)
Then add 30g flour and mix into paste
Day Five
Same as day 4 and carry on till your starter can at least double in 12 hours
All the way through we are feeding it 1:1:1.
Started off with a tiny amount and ended up with a normal amount with little discard.
I prefer to use boiled tap water cooled down to room temperature.
Some say feed every 12 hours but I have success with every 24hours but you may stir it at the 12 hour mark.
No.
I totally agree:)
In the beginning fo baking with Sourdough it is daunting and most do not know about poolish and build the amount before baking.
You do not need such a large amount, in the beginning I always kept 300g as my fav. recipe asked for 250g, so I used a lot of Flour.
I now have 100g Wheat Sourdough Starter in my fridge , feed it once a week and also have 50g Rye Starter which lives on the Counter which I feed 1x a day.
I only use 1tbsp of Starter and use 20% of the the Flour the recipes asks for to use for my preferment.
Say the recipes asks for 500g flour
I use 20% which is 100g , divide it by 2 which is 50 g and to my 1 tbsp starter I add 50g flour and 50g Water, let it sit over night and can use it the next day for bread baking.
Forkish is nuts when it comes to starter maintenance and levain builds. His video where he tosses 3/4 of the levain build claiming it is 'spent fuel' and then uses the remainder to make a loaf of bead says it all. My granny said 'waste not - want not' and she was way more right about SD bread than Forkish too :-)
You reference this a lot, but I wonder what it means. I haven't seen the video, but if he is taking the levain and making a dough with it, and discarding the "spent fuel" which is the levan he is not using, his statement makes perfect sense. It is "spent fuel" unless you are going to feed it more flour and water, in which case you can propagate the starter of make more bread with it. But you can't just put it in the fridge and expect it to be of any use.
ETA: Of course, this is reason enough not to make extra levain if you don't intend to propagate it or bake with it.
I agree on the apparent waste and odd use of the term "spent fuel". To me, the only way you could call it "spent fuel" is if you had a way to separate out the yeast that you've grown up. Otherwise, you're throwing away a lot of yeast too.
I've done a couple of loaves from the FWSY book, and I've just taken the final amount needed and scaled it back to not have any waste.
Then he should tell his audience about propagating it and making more starter with it, rather than simply pouring it down the drain and being done with it.
I've seen some of Forkish's videos and the guy, to me, seems to have a couple of screws loose. I wouldn't spend money for his book.
of Forkish's method of feeding the levain. Gotta say I agree with you 100%
He built up a bucket load of levain and is now dumping it all. All this to feed it another ridiculous amount of flour to use a fraction of it only to dump the rest again.
What is he doing? Or WHY is he doing this?
More than a couple of screws loose.
Does he build a brand-new starter from scratch for every sourdough loaf he bakes? Does he even know how to propagate an existing starter? These are legitimate questions.
I think many of us on TFL know more about starter management than Forkish. No wonder people get confused about starter.
I know something about starter which is going strong and it's 8 months old now. Gotten it down to good maintenance with no (or very little) wastage. And watching this video has only left me with more questions. Mainly... "what is he doing"?
I dread to think what somebody will think who is just starting to learn about sourdough and starters. Will confuse them to no end. I'm glad I came here first to learn and not by buying his book or watching his videos.
are we talking about creating a starter from scratch or building enough levain to go in the bread?
Either way why would one build so much? Isn't it better to increase to the desired amount rather than build many times the amount and only use a fraction of it?
I've heard about Forkish but never looked into his method/s or recipes but from what I've heard it has never made any sense to me.
His book is excellent and as I've noted before, he does instruct how to keep proportionately less starter. I think there are two reasons he uses so much (and, heaven forbid you follow his double fed levain where you wind up discarding twice as much if you follow his formula to the letter). First, the larger the mass, the more slowly the mass will fluctuate with the room temperature. This could make a difference in the final dough temp. You can probably adjust for it by changing the temperature of the water.
Second, while he recommends weighing ingredients he also includes the cups and spoons measurements and I believe that it is much more difficult to give the cup equivalent if you are building the "correct" amount of starter for his formulas. Again, he obviously could have noted that in the book. And, more importantly, the fact that he happily throws away so much starter without explaining why he does this suggests either the loose screw people are supposing or simply not caring to explain why it is that he is doing what he is doing. (Theoretically, the characteristics of the starter may very well differ when propagating a larger volume of it and maybe he's decided through experimentation that his loaves are best when mixed from a starter that was born in abundance).
They are following. It sounds like they are creating a starter from scratch with large amounts and discarding when proceeding onto the recipe. Can they skip this step if they have an ongoing starter?
His formula is always pretty much the same.
Take 100 grams of starter fed 24 hours ago and create the levain with it. The levain you use winds up being 216 grams. But you've made more than 4 times that much if you follow his instructions. Hence, I use 25 grams of starter and divide everything else by four and that gives me enough with the residual that gets left behind.
Learn to make bread, not to follow recipes.
By following recipes but his are confusing. I create my own breads and every so often follow a recipe to learn something new.
thanks for all the input and ideas here. I was suspect of trying a starter with that much flour, but was curious about the reasons for the different methods here. I didn't pay money for the Forkish book, just borrowed it from the library to check it out and see. I've eaten bread many times at his bakery, some loaves of which I thought were great, so figured it was worth looking at his book.
With flour prices what they are these days, I think I'll stick with the method of creating a starter from small amounts of flour.
Let us know how it goes. Best of luck.
here is my 15g process - always easy to build it up. I also really like the short, wide-mouth half pint jars with the plastic screw on lids...(screwed on v. loosely)
bubbly, mature starter
scrape out nearly all of the jar's contents (either saved for crackers, etc., or down the drain/into compost)...
I figure the starter left ends up being between 10-20% of the flour weight added
15g flour (50/50 white/whole-wheat)
15g H20
mixed and set for either storage, or to mature for using in a levain build.
I've considered going down to 10g/10g, but this is working well without what seems like too much waste to me. It is also easy enough to just eye-ball the whole process, w/o weighing
Suntunnel means to create a starter from scratch. My feeding technique depends on mood, how much I bake, what flour i have and ideas from this site. Continually evolving. Thanks for another perspective which is always welcome.
The same idea applies to creating a starter...using smaller amounts
Create 30g each time at 100% hydration. If creating a starter from scratch at each feed dump most of it out, about 4/5ths, and feed again same till starter is fully active. Then continue process and build more if you need to.
Sounds like a good idea with minimal throwing out.
I thought you have your starter maintained so that you have NO throwing out?
I don't bake for a while but need to feed my starter. Otherwise almost never have to. And even if I do on the rare occasion we are talking about 30g - 50g ish.
What is unique about Forkish's recipe that you must follow his cookbook recipe? What more is there to it than flour and water at x% hydration?
I should have been clearer in my previous post.
What is unique about Forkish's starter that one must follow his cookbook recipe? What more is there to his starter than flour and water at x% hydration?
There is nothing "unique" about a formula consisting of flour water salt and yeast. Yet, PLENTY of bakers, professionals and hobbyists, make bread that is inferior to the bread I make following his book or Tartine.
On a lighter note, I solved the mystery of why he uses so much extra starter. He is severely math challenged. And so are his editors.
As I noted above, he has you make 1000 grams of levain and use only 216 grams. For his Pizza he has you make 500 grams and use 180. But here is the kicker. He has a note that says if you are going to bake bread and pizza on the same day you need to double the levain. Even though if you made the pizza as instructed you would have over 300 grams of levain while needing oly 216 to make the bread. Alas he says you must double it so you make 1000 grams, use 180 for the pizza and 216 for the bread and get to discard nearly 600 grams of levain instead of merely 84 grams of it.
You would think the light bulb would flicker on in Forkish's mind when he finds himself pouring such large quantities of starter down the drain, or telling his readers to do so.
Loose screws indeed. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
At least one reviewer on amazon.com takes note of the excessive discard in making starter.
I have written before that his process can be improved. He has you make the levain and then, to measure it out, he has your remove it and put it in a separate container containing a fingers' depth of water in it, and then to carefully remove the 216 grams of levain while minimizing the transfer of the water.
That is a bit ridiculous unless your scale does not have a tare function. I just put the container on the scale, zero it out and remove 216 grams of levain without worrying about putting it in a separate watered container and then removing it while minimizing the water.
Wow. This is not a resounding recommendation of this book. David Esq, would you say it is worth buying apart from this issue with huge discards, or are there other flaws? I had been getting the impression it was a good one to have, but now I wonder - and there's another thread somewhere casting doubt on the proving times.