September 21, 2015 - 2:14am
Puzzled about high hydration starter.
Hi.
So far for one year I have been using 1-1-1 rye flour sourdough starter. I am loving the texture of my bread and think that the bubbles are overrated especially when it comes to making toast for buttering and marmiting :)
However, having said that, I do want to make a higher hydration starter just to be able to achieve it and finally bake bread that is so revered by so many sourdough bakers.
How do I make a higher hydration starter out of my current 1-1-1 starter? I have read a few posts on forums but the maths is daunting.
Thanks.
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Being a newby, I'm also interested in the answer because I'm not sure I understand the question.
Here's my reasoning based on my little "knowledge":
- The starter's hydration is only important for itself. One just needs to take it into account when applying a recipe.
- Thicker starter is tastier but harder to use, runnier is less tasty but easier to use. 100% hydration is a balanced middle point for non experts.
- Most recipes use 100% hydration. To convert to other starter hydration levels one can use a simple tool like : http://joshuacronemeyer.github.io/Flour-and-Water/
- That same tool can be used to calculate what to feed the starter to convert it to a different hydration level starter. For example, to convert a 100% hydration starter to 80%, one would have to feed 50g of starter with 50g of flour and 35g of water
[edit: he presents his tool in this thread: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22944/dough-hydration-calculator ]
... and increase the hydration of your final dough.
So if your starter is at 100% hydration and you want a 70% hydration dough, then the sums are easy enough - say you want a large loaf and start with 500g of flour and 150g starter, then the total flour is 575g (500 flour plus half the starter) to achieve 70% hydration you need 575*0.75 = 432g of water. However there is already 75g of water in the starter, so you need to take that off 432 giving 357g of water to add in.
So 500g flour, 357g water, 150g starter plus salt = just over a kilo of dough at 70% hydration which will bake to about 900g. (one large or 2 good size loaves)
And so on.
-Gordon
Thanks a lot for your replies - I will start my calculations now :)
and flour and water combination for starter, levain or bread based on the total weight you want to end up with.
An 800 g loaf of bread at 73% hydration would be 800 g divided by 1 (for the flour) plus .73 (for the water)) So 800 divided by 1,73 = 464 g of flour and 800-462 = 338 g of water to check your work you can divide the water by the flour oe 338 by 462 = 73% hydration,
A levain at 120% hydration that weighs 250 g would be 250 g /2.2 = 114 g of flour and 250-114 = 136 g of water.
Happy calculating