White and Rye Starters
a very good afternoon from a sunny Cambridge UK.
Well I have been recently been well and truly bitten by the sourdough bug, so the last few weeks I have had to endure sourdough dreams, early mornings, countless Youtube videos and confusion about hydration.
I've successfully got myself some starters nicely feeing away. One being white flour, another Rye and another a hybrid (A mix of white and Rye). when I feed the hybrid starter, it's always a 50% mix of white and Rye.
The first question I have is, is the hybrid starter worth it? I've not used it yet for baking with, so I'm not sure whether it will make a difference?
secondly, after a few successful loafs and a few less successful, after a 4 hour first proof the other day of my white dough, I realised it was way too wet, even for folding. will it do any harm to simply add more flour just to the right hydration? I ended up doing the final overnight proof in a loaf Tim, and whilst it did taste very nice, I didn't have the amazing crust I would have liked.
anyway, im sure these are very simple questions and any advice would be greatly appreciated.
here are a few pics of my first few loafs. The second picture loaf on the right is the result of the very wet dough loaf.
Happy baking!
One starter is enough, if you do not mind a little cross contamination of a different flour. Just use the one and build it with the flour that you want in your bread just before making your dough. If you don't bake very often you can keep the starter in the refrigerator and start the freshening the day before the bake.
Ford
Ok thanks, I thought that might be the case. It's happy retarding away in the fridge so I'll continue to feed it with white in future.
Many thanks.
in the fridge. A stiff rye one that required no maintenance for up to 16 weeks and makes great bread. Every time i see a new method for making starter i give it a go. and use it up on some kind if SD bread and fold the remaining bits into my starter in the fridge. Like Ford, I just build the levain to what ever bread I am making but since i usually put 10% preferment whole grain in a loaf, I just build the levain with the whole grains used for that week or if a larger amount f whole grins are in the mix I just sift out the hard bits of the whole grains and feed that to the starter to make the levain for that week's loaf
Like last Friday's bake, sometimes i put a white and a whole grain levain in the same bread made from the same starter to bring our different and more complex flavors Once your starter gets going. you can stiffen it up with whole rye and chuck it in the fridge for weeks and weeks with no maintenance using bit if it to make each loaf of bread. As the starter ages it get mire sour and after week 8 really states to make some fine SD bread of all kinds. here is how to do it.
No Muss No Fuss StarterHappy SD baking
thanks for your advice, it's now occurring to me that I can use a combo of 2 levain instead of maintaining a hybrid one. I'm only up to week 2 of my starters but i'm looking forward to them improving with age.
if anyone has any advice on the adding extra flower to firm up too wet dough after proving, that would be greatly appreciated.
I could probably just keep one - a wet Rye one would be my choice if just going for one starter.
The three are white wheat and white spelt at 100% hydration and "light" Rye at 150%.
Andrew Whitley in Bread Matters makes a case for just one starter (a Rye one) and I can see his point - I am considering it as it might make more sense to me as my bread volume production increases (I do the microbakery thing currently making 20-30 sourdough loaves a day)
-Gordon
Thanks for the advice Gordon. Sounds like your a busy bread man!
what is the benefit to the 150% Hydration with Rye? My current rye starter is (or I hope is) at 100%. My white is also at 100%.
would you/or do you add your rye starter to all white flour bread recipe? I read so much that some people always add a small amounts of rye or spelt with white flour , I suppose it's a personal preference!
I've not dome much Rye experimentation and a lot of the Rye stuff I read (I also went on a bread making course to do rye which is where I got my starter and initial ideas) when I started with Rye suggested a very wet dough and starter, so I stuck with that - it seems to make good sourdough bread - not too sour and very long lasting. My Rye doughs are almost pourable (except when I add wheat into them)
If I just had a Rye starter, I'd bulk it up with wheat when making wheat bread, and spelt when making spelt... So that the final percentage of Rye in the mix is very small. I need to ask the local spelt lovers if they would tolerate a fraction of Rye in their bread though.
-Gordon
I can think of a number of reasons why adding extra flour after the bulk ferment would not result in success, but if I found myself in a situation where the dough just seemed too wet, I'd try it anyway... nothing to lose! It probably won't be a major disaster, just somewhat suboptimal.
It's possible too that a slack dough behaves as if it's too wet, when in fact it's lacking structure due to insufficient gluten development (not enough stretch-and-folds). Ironically too, it could appear too wet if it's overproofed, and this adds to the difficulty of diagnosis.
The most essential skill to develop is to be able to "read" the dough. Mostly this skill is acquired through experimentation, so consider your "wet" dough to be an experiment.
Good luck, let us know how it turns out.
Thanks Les. I did try and get the gluten developed however it was way too runny. Saying that however, maybe I should have persisted longer as I had nothing to lose.
As you say, experience to read the down the is a big thing, so I'll be better prepared next time!
yeah I'll be sure to say how the next one goes.
Two starters, one white, one rye, both at 100%. My rye starter sees far more use as I tend to bake darker breads, though if I haven't got enough of one, I will dollop in some of the other to make up the difference. I'll also use my rye starter in white recipes - it gives the bread a nice nutty flavour. On the other hand, If I want something specific, I'll use one of my starters as a seed and build what I need for the bake. FWIW, my white starter was seeded using the rye one that I got going first...
You're not that far away from me, btw - am in Ely ;-)
I am with you in the two starter camp. I like the flexibility
yeah not far. I'm off to Wicken fen this afternoon, dowon the rd from Ely.
yeah I'll stick with 2 starters I think. Both have their own unique tastes, plus my missus hates any bread not white!
Hope you enjoyed Wicken Fen - it's lovely there... :-)
Would your OH notice it if you slipped rye starter into white bread? I find it enhances the flavour without appreciably darkening the loaf.
yeah it was great than you. Such a lovely place.
yep that's going to be my technique...start off with small amounts and build it up in time. She hopefully won't even notice!
Wicken is fabulous in the winter, especially when the washes are flooded and you get all the migrating birds. The swan feeds are fun.
Good luck with the sneaky strategy ;-)
There are 2 levians for this bread, Both are made from 5 g of 66% hydration.No Muss No Fuss Rye Starter. Both weigh the same, were 3 stage builds and are 100% hydration. The dark one was made with the 20% sifted hard bits of sprouted 4 whole grains (spelt, rye, wheat and Kamut) the white one was made with white AP flour. One came out very stiff and sour and the other one very runny and sweet - totally different in every way. You can't taste the rye in the starter in either one of them since there was only 3 g of rye in the 5 g of starter used for each.
You can build any kind of levain you want from one starter. For years i used to keep multiple starters on the counter and i was their slave feeding them ll the time. Now my starter is my slave and I don't even have to feed it but once every 20 weeks:-)
Happy baking
thanks for the info. The more I receive or read, the more questions I have.
will reducing the amount of starter simply mean the dough takes longer to rise? Or will it mean it won't rise as much?
is there a rule of thumb for more/less hydration? being you can get away with using less starter the lower the hydration? My starter would be 100%, so for a standard 500g loaf I'd use around 200g starter. Can I use less and get the same results?
Here in AZ where it is hot in the summer time, I use half the prefermented flour I do in the winter It takes longer to ferment and proof but the bread tastes so much better i would gladly give up some time to get better tasting bread. It rises just as much. Some commercial bakers put some commercial yeast in their SD breads to get better consistency on the rise side and make things fit their baking schedule - faster. Folks in the UK where,Hell had frozen over, use twice as much levain as I do because things are frozen and take forever otherwise :-)
My standard 500 g of flour loaf ((885 - 890 g total including salt at 2% and 75% hydration for white bread) would have 5 - 10g of starter and I would do a 3 stage levain build over 8-12 hours (depending on summer or winter) and would have 50 g of prefermented flour in the levain at 100% hydration or 105 - 110 g of levain total.- or about 12.3% of the total weight of 890 G - sometimes a bit less.
With less levain it will take longer but the resulting bread should be much better. if you don't over ferment or over proof it,
In the winter i would increase the levain from 10% prefermented flour to 15%. Some folks use 30% prefermented flour because it is cold and or they don't have the time i do to make a loaf of bread. i start on Monday morning sprouting grain, dry it and grind it on Tuesday. Build the levain to be done by Tuesday late afternoon, retard the levain for 24 hours, mix the dough on Thursday morning and retard it for 18-24 hours before baking on Friday. Few folks have 5 days to make a loaf of bread :-)
Happy SD balking
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