Wild yeast compared to standard starter
Hi! I'm new to this forum although like most I've been using the site for som time (about a year) prior to joining. I'm glad I did, there's a huge amount of knowledge and skill here from what I can tell :) I've been baking sourdough breads for about two years and gotten really hooked on it.
Now, I have a question for the more seasoned and theoretically informed bakers:
What is the difference between a typical starter (around 100% hydration) and a wild yeast starter made from dried fruit when it comes to acidity and overall taste?
I ask because I've gotten the impression (don't remember the source) that a wild yeast starter is less prone to sourness and produces less acetic acid, which I believe is what affects the sourness of the finished product. This is of interest to me because I'm dead set on learning to bake sweet doughs with natural yeasts only - without sourness. I've managed to eradicate the sourness almost completely on a regular basis now, but if there's more to learn I'm eager to know. Nowadays I never bake with more than about 1-2 grams of yeast but still I think the sourdough is superior it terms of crumb, crust, depth of flavour, etc. As a side note, I've found a freshly fed firm starter to be good for minimizing or even eradicating the sourness, though I'm not completely sure if the lower hydration is to thank for that.
Anyway, I'm babbling, but I would appreciate your input greatly!
and SD starter does. I use YW to replace the commercial yeast in recipes. If you add flour to YW and cultivate it like a SD starter, it will eventually turn into a SD one in a couple of weeks
Happy baking
Thanks a lot! Scanning through your YW primer I found that exact information. It might even be where I heard that factoid from in the first place. Judging from that post, I guess one would first make a YW starter (either firm or loose) and then use that in the usual manner (adding it to main dough etc etc).
A follow-up question, if you don't mind: is there a difference in the depth of flavour between YW and SD, aside from the acidity?
Again, much appreciated :)
Sourdough has much more flavor due to the sour component and the YW is more like commercial yeast bread only perhaps a tad sweeter. You make a levain with YW just like you do with SF only no sour results.
I had a feeling that this was the case. I'll make a load of YW sooner or later, but I think I'll keep experimenting with reducing the sourness of my sourdough starter. The thing is that I've been able to do so quite a number of times to the point where it's completely gone. I suppose it's just a matter of finding out which factor(s) are the most important to accomplish this with my particular starter. I've tasted the firm starter (50-60% hydration) I've been cultivating as of late, and it seems very mild when it comes to sourness.
Anyway, thanks for weighing in once again!
is that when a YW levain is combined with a SD one in one bread the SD flavor is greatly reducedand if used together in a very heavy whole grain bread the crumb is gretly improved over just a SD one, Also some folks don't like SD with 100% whole wheat and this will mitigate their dislike.
I think janetcooks makes fantastic whole grain breads using this method for her daily bread to open the crumb and tone down the sour. i'm also using it for this Fridays 100% whole wheat bake,half sprouted, at 100% hydration.too.
Happy baking
Search for the "Pineapple Juice Solution" in the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page, This is the quickest way to start from scratch making a sourdough starter, The necessary yeast and lacto-bacteria spores are already in the flour you use! This does take patience: about two weeks to get a starter you can use, and about two months before the starter can be said to be mature. Patience and 75°F to 80°F are the keys!
If you are using sourdough starter, don't add commercial yeast, unless you are impatient and don't really care about the flavor.
Ford
I already have a live, happy sourdough starter but that's an interesting method! I quickly switched to organic flours once I started baking more often, and like you say: all you need is in the flour (if the flour is good enough!).
Thanks for your tip :)
I was unclear in my post and my reply, I never use commercial yeast in a SD recipe. I do use 1-2 grams of commercial (preferably organic!) yeast to start a poolish now and then, but it's getting rarer and rarer. Like you say, if one cares about taste a lot, then yeasted breads tend to be a bit disappointing. It's not always easy to work out the schedule with SD breads but it's a huge advantage to be able to retard the dough in the fridge if things are not lining up. I do that with both pre-ferments and bread doughs..
Thanks a lot! Scanning through your YW primer I found that exact information. It might even be where I heard that factoid from in the first place. Judging from that post, I guess one would first make a YW starter (either firm or loose) and then use that in the usual manner (adding it to main dough etc etc).
A follow-up question, if you don't mind: is there a difference in the depth of flavour between YW and SD, aside from the acidity?
Again, much appreciated :)
Ive been using sourdough starter for a while now and I'm a newbie to fruit yeast water. Sourdough starter has a tangy taste that can be manipulated to be stronger or weaker depending on a few factors. The crumb is more chewy, or can be, and open depending on various factors. I think sourdough has a lot of room for expression. The rise is good (if done correctly of course) and timing is longer than commercial yeast.
Fruit yeast water (another type of wild yeast) works slightly differently. You're basically cultivating the yeast from the fruit in the water. It is not at the starter stage but one stage before. You then create a starter from it by making a sponge then the rest of the process is like a sourdough albeit even longer. The taste is sweeter and the crumb more cake like. The rise is very good! Makes heavier doughs/flours lighter.
I've actually made YW (though not quite like dbm's) before and like you say, the rise was both quick and big. (Moderately) funny story: quite recently I made an SD bread (2/3 wheat, 1/3 rye) with soaked figs. The fruit had been soaking for 6-7 hours or so, and I thought I'd simply keep the water to use for the next bake, but instead opted for taking a little and making a firm starter (no SD added). It actually worked, and it more than doubled! I didn't have the guts to bake with it as I don't want to waste precious flour, but I'm pretty sure I could've...
Like you say, sourdough has a lot of room for expression and I'm going to keep searching for the one I want in sweet doughs. I've managed it a good number of times now, but I'm still not sure exactly what the recipe for success was. A fresh starter, lower hydration and a pretty high amount of starter in the dough seems to be at least three important factors... On a side note; I actually love the long rise and timing aspects of baking with SD/natural yeasts. The satisfaction of making a bread that is exactly what you wanted (flavour, crust, etc.) without the aid of commercial yeast is almost unproportional IMO :)
Thanks for your thoughts!
the starter you already have. Add to one sugar or honey as food for a few days at room temps. Revert back to full flour and see if that makes one for you. At the same time reduce the inoculate and increase hydration.
Not for the panettone itself, but for the starter maintenance regime. It produces a "sweet" starter, more accurately a low acid starter, that can be used in sweet breads.
Paul
I know I read one of his posts because I actually made a panettone from a recipe he provided. I had the good fortune of actually getting really good rises in both stages. I was less fortunate in that it was hella sour, partly due to underbaking/collapsing and partly due to using a levain that should've been refreshed a couple of times first - but I'm still pleased with getting it to rise at all. The dough was basically chocolate custard + fillings, shaping was impossible. I will try to find the post about maintaining the levain and see what I learn from it.
For anyone who bothers their soul reading this:
If you want to use wild yeast to leaven sweet dough, or just bake non-sour bread of any kind, the italian firm starter (lievito madre, I think?) is the shit! Pardon the french, but I've hardly had any trouble at all with doughs not rising or tasting sour since converting my starter. The only thing I haven't dared to take on without the help of commercial yeast is laminated dough. My croissants have a long way to go, so using my starter as the sole leaven is not a good idea before I get the technique down.
All that said, I've made many batches of brioche and all sorts of buns with this - no sourness, even though I've let the doughs ferment more than 20 hours total, several times. Most other breads have improved a lot too, especially when it comes to the strenght of the dough and rising power.
All in all, it's a perfect match for me! If I want sourness I just take a piece of my starter and feed it with rye a couple of times.
just means sourdough starter that contains LAB and yeast.in the culture. I can be very sour or not so much depending on how it is maintained, what flour is used and and how it is refreshed just like any other sourdough starter by any other name
http://www.sourdo.com/sourdoughs-international-dictionary/
Happy sour or non sour baking with your lievito madre
The reason I called it 'italian'/lievito madre was because I maintain it in the same fashion as italian bakers (allegedly) did and do, in order for it to be viable for sweet dough and long fermentation without going sour. I'm no expert, but so far I haven't encountered that specific tradition and manner of keeping starter in other 'baking cultures'. I'm sure there are sour lievito madres too. The point was rather that it works well for some specific tasks.
I'm not sure that the Italians do anything different than other SD bakers all over the world do to make their starter and levain less sour. What is it that you are doing to make it less sour? My favorite one, that is a little odd and unusual, is storing levito madre starter under water like Michael Wilson does for some of his panettone.
I don't think they do something basically different, but they do bake some rather unique, naturally leavened sweet breads - like the panettone. Not unique as in "it doesn't happen anywhere else, ever", but nowhere else have I found such a reliable and concrete method for leavening sweet dough purely with natural yeast. But yes - in the end it's just flour and water in different proportions.
I haven't tried storing my lievito madre in water yet... From what I've read it seems that it is even less sour when kept that way. I just keep my starter at room temp, feed it once every 12- or 24h and refresh it twice (ideally thrice) before baking with it. So far two feedings ~3-4 hours apart have been enough to keep the sour out of my sweets. The third feeding would probably be necessary for a heavily enriched dough (brioche or panettone).
What do you bake with your lievito?
used to keep mine in the early 70's. Tartine and FWSY bakers do so today too and I think most SD bakers for matter. Many folks don't like sour bread so they keep their starters and build their levains using white flour kept on the counter to keep the sour down. It seems many have put their starters in the fridge over the years though.... to cut down on the maintenance and the waste of flour with all the discards that can't be used if they don't bake bread several times a week. For years I kept a white starter in the fridge for those reasons.
Now I am way to lazy and too cheap for even that and keep a small, stiff, whole rye starter in the fridge for 24 weeks at a time with no maintenance and use a small bit of it each week to build a levain for what ever kind of bread I am baking that week - with no waste, no discard or work for that matter. My kind of starter!.
I usually bake higher % whole grain breads with half the whole grains being sprouted. Every so often we bake a white bread with only 30% whole grains for the girls. We try to bake every kind of bread but panettone is only for New Year's. I also like baking with YW and other starters too like Witch Yeast, cooked and raw potato starters corn meal starters etc and like to make rye starters from scratch 3-4 days before baking whole rye and pumpernickel breads. It is fun to try to bake breads from around the world when you run into one you've never heard of or tasted before. Better to be a total and complete libertarian, or floozy, when it comes to breads.
It is all fun and interesting to learn about the science and history of bread since it is such an ancient craft mastered by millions of bakers over thousands of years. It is comforting, if weird, to know that similar kinds of sprouted, whole grain breads I bake today were being baked by the ancient Egyptians in 3,000 BC and probably earlier. It's been a long time and we haven't come very far - we just blog about them:-)
Happy SD baking - There are so many breads and so few years to bake them!
I didn't mind the sour too much in the beginning, though I have to say that to me there's a good and a bad kind of sour - the latter is more of an aftertaste. The former is more as though the sour is simply a component in the overall taste. Since I stopped failing horribly with fermentation timing, I find that the bad kind of sour is rarely there. All that said, I bake mainly with ordinary wheat, partly because the breads I want to master are wheat breads and partly because my better half dislikes sourness so much. I took her dislike as a challenge to make non-sour, naturally leavened breads. Baking with yeast is not foreign to me, but I always feel that part of the process is missing for me when I don't bake with my own little hoard of microorganisms.
I've seen some of your breads, and I'm inspired to try some less conventional starters. To begin with, I think I'm going to make a firm rye starter to keep in my fridge just like you. I've been wanting to try making my ordinary wheat breads (baguettes, soft sandwich loaves,etc) with a rye starter, just to see what it does to the taste.
Just a question though: you say you entertain yourself with making new starters from scratch; why is that? Do those starters offer something different from it's more experienced cousins? (other than less sourness)
I'm with you on the last paragraph :) I usually go from thing to thing and try to reach a specific goal, then I move on to the next obsession, but with baking that just isn't possible. There are so many breads and ways of baking, that I don't think I'll ever stop. It's a nice skill to have for so many reasons. You get to satisfy your inner engineer plus you get to share the results with others, who are generally so appreciative :)
call for starting a SD from scratch every time you bake it - very old school and the way they used to do it every week for the communal bake - even though real pumpernickel doesn't have any SD, yeast or any kind of leaven in it - just rye, water and salt:-)
It is just fun to make these old salt rising, witch yeast, corn and potato based starters like the Midwest homesteaders used to do and see what the bread they used to make tastes like. How can you start down the road to being a starter expert unless you have made and used them them all?
The other thing about starters is that there are a lot of different LAB and yeast that can be in any one culture and each one has different metabolism and output as far as flavor compounds, acid, CO2 and ethanol. It depends on where the grain comes from as to what wee beasties you end up with in your SD culture. Desert Durum grown in the Desert SW and regular durum grown in Canada can have much different microorganisms on the seeds, It isn't just where the grains are grown that makes the difference either. Some wee beasties prefer to grow on different grains so spelt and wheat or rye grown in the same area might have different wee beasties on them too.
So the easiest way to get a starter that produces a different SD bread is to make a new one from some other grain, grown somewhere else. than the one you are using. Hard red spring wheat grown in the Pacific NW will likely give you a different culture of wee beasties than a starter made from hard red winter wheat grown in Kansas o they might even be the same. One might make more acid and make more sour bread and one might have a strain of yeast that makes more CO2 so the dough rises better and faster - or you might end up with a strain of LAB that produces CO2 so the bread proofs much faster and is less sour.
Some SD cultures have two or more different strains of LAB and or yeast in them as well which gives you you a different bread in the end. I am always amazed when I taste other peoples SD bread. Even though we make the same recipe the same way, the breads taste much different and it is all because our starters are different. When ever I run across a new flour, I always try to make a starter from it to see if there is any difference in flavor in the bread it makes. In 4 to 7 days you have a new experiment to run and a new bread to make even if it is the same recipe you made last week - but it will taste different.
Then you can mix two different ones together in one starter for a survival of the fittest test or as two separate levains and see if they make something different or one wins out in the end. No sense that SD bread making should be boring - better ti have fun and make it interesting I say:-)
First and foremost thanks to all the bakers who post regularly in real conversations, circa 2000-2015 usually. I’m late to the party.
I bake almost every week from SD starter I keep in the fridge. I still have some not great loaves and some pretty great loaves. Still I love the idea that we are eating from our own kitchen, our own yeast and bacteria, yadda yaadda.
I come to FL today to glean what I can before undertaking a SD levain based stollen using SD only. Based on the posts about fruit water yeast preps, I wonder if the old recipes, the ancient ones used the fruits to get more yeast in the final doughs, and to that end, lighter loaves, even though the loaves usually are loaded with butter and eggs, not to mention the fruit. If I’m not embarrassed by my outcome I will try to post a photo of my results here, just to follow this groups generous behavior.
Thanks to all and happy holidays we’re heading towards.