September 15, 2015 - 4:57am
Is it possible to change a starter?
What happens if on an old and stable starter one pours:
- Fruit yeast water (raisin, pineapple, etc)
- Commercial yeast
What should happen if one mixes two different starters? Does the stronger yeast prevail? Or they coexist in a new starter.
Is there any advantage on having a starter that combines multiple yeast strains?
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To the commercial yeast question ... eventually "wild" yeast will take over unless the other is replenished. The LAB that are ever present in flour will eventually produce enough acetic acid to change the environment enough to favor the wild yeast. How many refreshes this takes is beyond me.
As to the mixing of two starters, in terms of yeast it is really not the stronger, but again the one that is better suited for the environment created. Plus there aren't a huge amount of different kinds of wild yeasts. Now if you are talking about LAB (bacteria), then that is another story.
So, eventually, whatever population you start will gravitate towards what you feed the starter with. Ok, it makes sense.
I believe if you are able to figure out the environment that best suits the current population then it can win out. But I have lived in several parts of the U.S. and find that my starters tend to end up pretty similar since I always feed King Arthur AP flour and tend to care for them the same way. I did experiment with some other flours last year and found there to be some differences. This could be the critters in the flour or the composition of the flour itself favoring different beasties or just different flavor profiles from the flour.
I have also played with different ways of caring for the starters which also changed the flavor of the starter and its vigor. I can't say the bread was much different because I didn't have them side by side. But things like pancakes, etc did taste different. Really the changes usually relate more to the LAB than the yeasts though. Although that is only from research and I couldn't tell the difference between yeast species by flavor or vigor.
Acetic acid is what makes white vinegar, vinegary. White vinegar is usually 5% acetic acid and plain water.
I jumpstarted my culture with a small dose, about 1/8 tsp in 100G of starter.