January 23, 2019 - 3:39pm
Converting from wet to firm sourdough starter
I am a newbie, having just been feeding my new sourdough starter for a few weeks. I came across a recipe that discussed using a firm starter/levain, which is less messy to deal with once or twice a day. How do I convert mine to the less liquidy form?
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The next time you feed it, add more flour than water. Say you have a 100% hydration starter, and you normally feed at 1:2:2. That would mean you would normally take 10 grams of starter, add 20 grams of water, and 20 grams of flour - leaving you with 50 grams of starter, 25 of those grams are flour and 25 grams are water.
To make it drier, you could take the 10 grams of starter and add 10 grams of water and 20 grams of flour. You would then have 50 grams of starter, and the ratio would be 15 grams of water and 25 grams of flour - which would yield a 60% starter much firmer than the 100% you started with. Note that the next time you refreshed, you would need to rework your numbers if you wanted to maintain at the same percentage.
You would discard 40 of the 50 grams, leaving 10 grams, but now 6 of those grams are flour, 4 are water. If you added 10 grams of water and 20 grams of flour, you would end up with 14 grams of water and 26 grams of flour, for an even firmer starter at 53.8% . Of course, you could instead refresh at a 60% ratio of flour to water, and it will stabilize at that level after a number of refreshes.