January 3, 2022 - 11:21pm
Sourdough starter
Hi,
My sourdough starter is 2 yrs and since I live in Mauritius where it is very hot these days, it tends to peak really quick which means that I can't fit it in my baking schedule..tried to use cold water for my feeding but even this did not work...I am really desperate for any advice?!
Clarel
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Clarel, 24-31C is a normal temperature range for starters, ideal even. I keep mine at 27-33C after feeding them.
If you want your starter to peak slower, then feed it 1:10 or 1:20 and keep it stiff (50%hydration), not soft (100%hydration). Adding 1-2% salt will slower the process as well.
If you want to keep feeding your starter as usual but need lower temperature for fermentation, around 15-25C, use cold water and a food thermos with extra wide mouth. Depending on the size of the batch, you can either put you little jar with the starter inside the food thermos, or place your starter directly inside the thermos.
It would reliably maintain the temperature of the starter for 9-14hrs both in hot and cold weather. By that I mean that you could place that thermos with the starter even in your fridge and it would still maintain the temperature of the starter inside.
Wow mariana that was an ingenus idea to keep a SD starter in a passive insulator. This should work great in the winter with a warm water feed and a cool water feed in the summer without plugging in to anything.
Found something linked below that might work great for this purpose.
AmazonSmile: Thermos Stainless King 47 Ounce Vacuum Insulated Food Jar with 2 Inserts, Matte Steel: Home & Kitchen
Wow!, thank you Mariana for these valuable informations..great idea that to keep my starter in a thermos to maintain temperature. I will surely give it a try
Thanks again for your help.
Mariana, my kitchen is currently about 19.4 C. I know it's low, but whereas I used to maintain all starters and doughs at about 26 C, I basically follow Hamelman and take a levain to 16 hours, with the dough in and kept at 26-27 C. All starters are 100% hydration. I refresh 2x daily.
Whether I run up a rye starter, a BF starter, or a 50:50 BF:WW starters, breads develop in bulk at about 4.5-5 hours, 1.5-2 hours proof. They taste fine. I still cannot seem to get any decent holes. I must kill the bread. Rubaud boules from last night (70% BF, 18% WW, 9% spelt, 3% rye):
At any rate, I'm wondering if I'm maintaining a sub-par starter on a regular basis, maintaining it at this low temperature. Any guidance? Thanks.
Edit: I neglected to mention that my starter is 1:2:2. I'm wondering if something like 1:5:5 and a warmer temp would be better.
Paul, your bread looks amazing. So much drama, so beautiful! The crust, the scoring... Wow!
The "holiness" of the crumb does not depend on yeast or yeastiness of your starter, because even zero yeast in puff pastry gives huge oven spring, like 11fold rise in the oven, and beautiful lacey "holes" in the slices. The king of all oven springs!
"Holes" depend on cold, relatively high hydration and layering, on creating layers of gluten with air trapped in between them as you stretch and fold and as you shape your dough in certain ways to encourage more layers with air trapped in between layers of gluten.
There is also a very interesting video that shows how oven management affects oven spring and the character of the crumb, how too much heat and too much steam can give poor oven spring with tightlyg closed crumb and moderate steam with turned off oven gives giant oven spring and the most open crumb character. The link to that video was provided by ytm in the thread Sourdough Baking in Deck Oven
Paul, I do not keep my sourdough cultures at 100%hydration or at 68-70F and cannot share my experience with that, but those professional bakers that do, they keep them by feeding it 1:1 once a day (!!!). That is what Daniel Leader describes in his Bread Alone book, p 186. Sections "Maintaining the Chef" and Nourishing the Chef.
He writes about 8oz starter, 4oz flour, 4oz water, mix, keep for 24hrs at 70F which is close enough to 67-68F that you have in your kitchen right now.
Just remember that a chef (a sourdough culture) is not a levain (not a starter). The chef never goes directly into bread dough. The Chef is just bacteria and yeast in peak amounts per gram of flour in that chef, we completely disregard chef's gluten, so a 100% hydration chef will barely double in volume.
Levain or starter on the other hand will become part of the bread dough, so their gluten has to be in a top notch condition. A 100%hydration starter or levain is treated like poolish, i.e. it should about triple or quadruple in volume and never collapse or recede too much as it stands.
This is how a 100% hydration starter (levain, sourdough poolish) looks when it is ready and must be either stirred and allowed to quadruple in volume again, or fed.
Warm fermentation, at about 80F
Cold fermentation, below 70F:
Mariana, as usual, a big Phew! for the fantastic, generous and detailed info. I'll look forward to checking out the video. That is really interesting.
To be honest it's not that I'm that geeked about holes. The bread tastes really good, and has a tremendous "tear," all I ask in terms of texture. The crusts are caramelized deeply, which I like, but too thick and tough. I know you and I think others have addressed this plentifully and I'll get that info as well. Holes - not an ongoing concerned, but formerly - when I began here - all my breads had tremendous holes. And I've no idea what I've taken to doing differently. I just want to know I can do the quality, and not be limited by not knowing how.
Chef and levain terms - sorry, yes. I mean I maintain the chef at 1:2:2, 100%, 19.4 C or thereabouts, 2X daily at 12 hours. More and more, I follow Jeffrey in doing a levain at 100%, 30% chef, 100% BF, 125% water, again 19.4-21 C, 12-16 hours depending on temp, or more properly, development. I also do a 20% -24% chef inoculation in breads like my "Rubaud" breads. Whatever the routine, I look for a mature but vital levain, very spongy and elastic, not the soup of an overdeveloped levain. I've never taken to the early levains described by Chad Robertson, but then I've not yet really dived in to his approach. I'm not anywhere near ready for that, as I've no real mastery of basics, I feel.
Just a check - the Leader, that's pretty incredible. But as you have it, isn't that a 2:1:1 starter? If so, that's even more incredible. I have way too many books in the house and I've had to box up some including the Leader but I'm grabbing it out. I did really like his two books.
Thanks again.
edit: Neglected to say thank you for the 100% starter comments and pics. I've never thought of them as an SD poolish essentially, but of course that makes sense. I've just held to the 12-16 hrs per Hamelman and looked for development (and the surface), but I've stopped looking for volume. Honestly I've forgotten as all volume stuff I did was with stiff levains. Thanks for the reminder and I'd love to do the comparative temps, as you have done (which took time, again, thank you for your generosity).