Questions about sourdough basics - from a new guy
Hi,
I'm new here, and new to baking in general. So I have some questions that may seem pretty basic.
I got a sourdough starter working very well by using home-milled wheat. Now I want to make some loaves, but I am a bit confused by the recipes out there.
The easiest recipe I found was Flo Makani's 1:2:3 recipe. I wanted a pretty big loaf, so I went with 217g:433g:650g, plus 13 grams of salt.
Seems simple enough, however, I couldn't figure out whether I was supposed to do an overnight sponge with the 217g of starter. Most of the recipes I find have overnight sponges with considerably less starter.
What I did was to put 217g of starter, 433 of water, and 325g of wheat in a bowl overnight. It made a lot of sponge. Then I added wheat to that the next morning before proofing. It was so-so in the end.
So questions:
1. Is an overnight sponge necessary for all sourdough breads? Or can you simply make sure your starter is working well, then add that to the recipe when you start in the morning.
2. If you do a sponge, does it have to be with the entire sourdough starter from a 1:2:3 ratio, or does the entire finished sponge constitute the starter ratio in Flo's formula?
Thanks for any replies,
Tom
One thing I have learned over the past year + (since becoming obsessed with SD baking) is that there are many options.
if you are new to baking I highly recommend following jmonkey's instruction found at the link below. He provides good explanation and instruction for each step of the way. Those bakes were my first ones that I really considered successful - something I was proud to share. It's a very basic loaf.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com//handbook/san-francisco-style-sourdough
The 1-2-3 method works well for me now that I get the concept. You can easily elaborate with the 1-2-3 method in to a much more complex loaf.
Most important is that your starter is ready for prime time - that it is refreshed and ready to go to work.
No all sourdough baking doesn't begin with a sponge. If I understand it correctly the sponge provides flavour first and foremost. Your sponge could have many ingredients such as grains or seeds. But so does manipulating your starter build provide flavor variation, or your bulk ferment times, or retarding the loaf in the fridge overnight or longer. Of course your flour choices play a major role too.
Another twist that really is part of the overall success of your bake is understanding of the need for steam In your oven. I use a cast iron Dutch oven usually instead of steaming trays - as do many others here. It does the job very very well. However if you are not using something like that you do need steam. Lots of options are outlined on the site. Just search for oven steam.
Probably one of the most useful concepts you can familiarize yourself with is the "Baker's Percentage". If you understand that you can build any loaf you want.
Have fun! SD baking and yeast baking is well worth the investment in time. Ask anyone here.
may be flawed since I'm still fairly new at SD, but with this caveat:
1. If you don't have enough active starter for the size of loaf you're going to bake, then you have to feed it and build enough. This would be the equivalent step to making a sponge.
2. The 1 part starter in the 123 recipe is the equivalent of the overnight sponge in a recipe that uses poolish or biga.
You posted this as I was writing the post below. Yes! The sponge would be the 217g you are building to go into your recipe. Most people keep much less so a build is necessary. Also it increases the yeast in your preferment when building at room temperature. In the fridge it'll be more bacterial then building at room temperature makes predominantly yeast. I've had a long discussion on this subject which you might have seen. Always thought it was necessary to feed before using even if you have enough but not necessarily so, it'll still work. If you don't have enough and need to do the preferment then its done like a sponge and given time to fully inoculate.
With your 1:2:3 recipe of 217g starter + 434g water + 651g flour the way to tackle this recipe is to create a sponge of 217g and this will be your starter.
What you did was create a much higher amount of levain and it wasn't a 1:2:3 recipe anymore.
You made a huge amount of starter and just thickened it up with extra flour.
Here's what I would have done...
Night before: create the 217g of preferment. For example 45g starter + 86g water + 86g flour (as an example only you have freedom on how to build your preferment).
Allow that to bubble up overnight. Then next morning proceed as follows.
Thanks guys. That pretty much answers my question. I was thinking that I did the equivalent of making a huge starter, but Arjon and AbeNW11 confirmed that. Although the resulting bread didn't look to stellar, it still tasted good, but next time I'll try it the correct way.
By the way, I live in Taiwan, where it is extremely humid and hot in the summer, which has basically already started. I began a sourdough starter by feeding it 1:1:1 for about three weeks to a month, twice a day, every 12 hours. I use whole wheat I grind myself. In Taiwan the wheat berries are imported, and besides being classes as organic or not, there is no other information about where it comes from, what type, etc. I buy it at bulk dried goods stores, and grind with a hand mill.
The starter worked like magic, took a long time, but I stuck with it, because I kept reading posts by people stressing patience. I had no idea how much wheat it was gonna eat through, though... these little bugs are voracious. The hand mill is giving me a hell of a workout.
So, I started keeping one portion in the fridge, and a smaller control at room temperature on the countertop. The room temp one I still feed twice a day. I prefer using the room temp one, actually, because it's always ready to go.
I was amazed when I made bread the other day how awesome this starter is. I used pretty much all of it to get my 217g of starter for the sponge. There was only drops of it left in the container. To rebuild it, I simply skipped the step of washing the container, and put wheat and water in it. The next morning, sure enough, it was a sponge starter again.
Not everyone keeps loads of starter. So one takes a little from their starter and builds a preferment (or sponge) for ones bake. When the mother starter runs low simply feed again to top up.
Allows you to build with a different flour and/or different hydration.
You can keep your mother starter in the fridge and don't have to keep feeding it everyday or everytime you wish to bake. I keep around 90g - 150g at any one time. Each time I bake i'll take a little off to build with. When my mother starter, which lives in the fridge, runs low i'll take it out, feed it, allow it to bubble up by 1/3rd and then return to the fridge. It can be a while between feeds depending on how much I build and how much I bake. Although I do find with this method that whole rye starters work best.
So for your recipe all you need to do is build 217g the night before by taking a little from your starter and building the preferment or sponge. Then proceed onto the recipe described above.
Best of luck.
do you wash the container your starter lives in each time? There's no need. You'll risk contaminating it by not washing it properly or not washing all the soap out or you might even contaminate the starter by putting it in a container which isn't perfectly clean while washing it out. I rarely wash the container the mother starter lives in. When I feed I'll put the water in first and use that to clean down the sides to incorporate all the starter then i'll add the flour and mix into a paste.
Quick question: what's the spincer method, as mentioned by AbeNW11 in step 2 above?
Also, when I make these doughs using 1:2:3, they are pretty wet and difficult to work. I do everything by hand, no kneading machines. I try to resist the temptation to add flour when kneading, but the dough sticks to everything.
Pincer method.
https://youtu.be/HoY7CPw0E1s
An effective way to combine the salt and levain after the autolyse.
I've been coming naturally to the conclusion that I was keeping too much starter. All that wheat grinding was making my arm hurt. I've still got one in the fridge and one on the counter I feed daily, partly because I haven't gotten over that initial excitement you get when you realize it really does work. But my countertop starter is smaller now, around 200g, and it looks like I can even decrease that.
When I "wash," I don't use soap. I just rinse in filtered water, till the container is clean looking. But I'm opting out of that as well. To gets the weights right when I feed it, I just dump everything into a bowl, put the unrinsed container on a scale, and put right amount of starter back in, plus flour and water.
So far it hasn't up and died on me for lack of laboratory cleanliness, but that's why I keep the other starter n the fridge.
..the freezer option. If you have a huge surplus, simply freeze it as a backup. The microflora goes into hibernation and springs back to life when thawed. Alternatively, give it as presents to potential sourdough bakers. Spread the word.
Sourdoughs are incredibly resilient. You can leave them unfed for many days (sometimes weeks) and they will recover after a good feed. So you don't need to worry about daily feeds, unless you're baking daily. As ever, Abe is correct about washing the container. Laboratory cleanliness can hinder your sourdough instead of helping it. All that dried crust is full of wild yeast and lactobacilli. Don't chuck it away, mix it back into the batter. The most important precaution you need to take is to keep your culture covered (but not air-tight), if only to stop accidental contamination.
There is no need to feed until several hours before you are ready to bake. I refresh my starter and let it stand at room temperature for 8 hours, then make the dough. It works great for me and I get really good flavor. Make a little more starter than you will use for the bake. The leftover starter goes in the refrigerator. No daily feeding, no pouring starter down the drain.
To the O.P.:
If you're grinding your flour by hand, you sure as heck don't want to be pouring starter down the drain.
Take it from me: keep a small amount of starter in the fridge, your inoculum, then make your starter/sponge/preferment about 8 hours before baking and I guarantee you will have wonderful bread. Make a little more starter than you need for the bake and put the surplus back in the fridge for next time. I never, ever pour starter down the drain.
If people (including certain cookbook authors) had to grind their flour by hand, people wouldn't go through these silly rituals of feeding their starter 6 times per day and pouring gallons of it down the drain, even on days they don't bake!
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Starter here
No Muss No Fuss StarterThere is no need to keep a bunch of starter on the counter. it will eat you out of hose and home.
Happy SD baking
I kind of enjoy it though. The reason I got a hand grinder instead of an electric one is because I wanted this to be closer to what people had to actually do back in antiquity... and I wanted to work for my food. It's definitely exercise, let me tell you.
I am cutting down the amount of starter I'm keeping, but I do keep one on my counter still, and just make pancakes with the starter I discard... for me discarding doesn't mean I throw it away.
On a side not, I tried a little experiment. I wanted to see what would happen to active starter if I just left it out and stopped feeding it. After it died, it started giving off a rancid, roadkill kind of smell. Is that because of all the dead yeast in there?
Did it smell like alcohol? Ethanol is a byproduct of the fermentation process.
No, it smelled exactly like putrefying flesh, roadkill that has been sitting in the sun a few days. The ethanol smell is pleasant in comparison.
I just fed the starter i'd been keeping in the fridge for a week. It has gone all week without a feed. It's whole wheat starter, I fed it 1:2:2 before throwing it in the fridge. The surface turned into a semi-hard, dark scum that I had to take off with a spoon. Underneath it looked, smelled and tasted fine. I fed half and put it back in the fridge and fed the other half and put it on the counter to see what happens.
You guys who are old hands at this, remember I'm still in the experimental stage. I keep trying to see what I can do to kill it, and making controlled experiments with it, varying the feedings, keeping some in the fridge, some out.
I'll have to freeze it all in a few days anyways because I'm going on a three-week bizness trip.
Sounds like mold.