August 16, 2023 - 7:38am
How much to feed starter for recipe
Hello all.
I'm so thankful to everyone that help me get my starter going. Now I'm on to the next stage of feeding it and baking.
I want to start with the King Arthur crusty sourdough bread that uses 454 g of starter.
How much should I feed my starter to achieve that and still have some left for leftovers?
I want to use AP flour.
Thanks a bunch
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Kim, it depends. We do not know anything about your current starter or the recipe, so there are too many variables to cover in a single answer.
Assuming that the recipe asks for the same kind of starter that you have, then the math is simple. The same kind means (1) the same flour that you use in your starter (2) the same proportions of flour and water as in your starter.
If you feed your starter equal amounts of water and flour 1s:1f:1w and it is ready after 12 hrs at 75F,
then(1+1+1)x = 450
450/3=150
150g starter, 150g all purpose flour, 150g water. Mix and leave for 12hrs at 75F, then use in the recipe.
If you want some leftovers, then mix 200s+200f+200w and you will have 450g of starter for the recipe and 150g leftover starter for the next bake.
Which recipe are you referring to? I made a quick visit to the KA recipes but didn't find a sourdough recipe with that amount of flour. 454 grams is one pound, but the KA recipes I saw all used cups as the measure, and they were all for more than 454 grams. They also used cups for the starter amounts.
Looking at one of the recipes, they also give gram equivalents, so we can figure out what the amounts are for other recipes -
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/rustic-sourdough-bread-recipe
it seems that KA is using 120g/cup, which is 4.24 oz/cup essentially 4 1/4 oz / cup.
This particular recipe calls for a lot of starter and also instant yeast, not what I would usually be making.
Generally speaking, if a recipe doesn't say what the starter is like - flour and hydration - it's probably safe to assume that a starter of white flour and 100% hydration is going to work OK. How much starter to use depends on how long you want for the first ("bulk") ferment, and how much you want the starter flavor to come through. Both those things will depend on the characteristics of your starter, but we don't know them yet because it hasn't been used and refreshed over and over. More starter => shorter bulk ferment and more starter flavor in the final bread. So what to do?
My standard white flour 100% starter, added in the amount of 30% of the recipe's flour, will do the bulk ferment in around 6 hours at my kitchen's counter temperature, usually 72 - 76 deg F. That's for a "lean" dough. If you enrich the dough with sugar, butter, etc., that may change things. We don't know yet about your starter but at least it's a starting point.
Here's what I would do to try out a new starter. I would make a plain dough with 65% water, 30% fresh starter, and 2% salt, all these percentages to be based on the amount of flour. None of them depend on getting the amounts exact, though you should be careful to be fairly accurate with the salt. 10 oz (283 grams) of all-purpose flour will make a baked loaf weighing close to a pound, which is a good size for trying it all out. It also makes figuring out the quantities easy. So the weights would be:
10 oz (283g) AP flour
3 oz (85g) starter
6.5 oz (184g) room temperature water
0.2 oz (5.7g) salt
No matter what other recipes you may have read, this formula is as simple as you can possibly have, and it will make an excellent loaf of bread. I tend to use 20% starter instead of 30%, but that is because I look for a longer fermentation time. It's good to start simple.
Be aware that this bread will probably not have a sour taste (though it might have a hint of sour), even though we always are saying "sourdough". Compared with a plain yeasted bread it will probably taste richer, more complex, mellow and buttery. But your starter is new so you might not get all that yet. Give it time (and feedings!).
Because we don't know how active your new starter is, you shouldn't start your loaf too late in the day, so that you will have time to bake it before bedtime. We don't know if that guideline of 6 hours will be close to what will actually happen, and we don't know if the shaped loaf will proof (rise until it's ready to bake) in 1 - 1 1/2 hours as I would normally expect.
TomP
I am going to try your recipe, Tom!
Easy peasy!
Kimberly
That's the ticket! It's easy to make things too complicated. There will be plenty of time for complicated later if you want.
As a general rule, I have found that many details in recipes are complications that the particular baker has performed but aren't actually needed. Now if you were running a commercial bakery and needed the utmost in consistency (and maybe a particular flavor profile), maybe you would need to worry about such details. But I'm a home hobby baker and I don't.
TomP
With no levain build method? They normally have a step-by-step guide.
With no levain build method?
It's not necessary to to build a levain (depending on the kind of bread, of course). If you feed your starter, let it develop, and then take the amount you need from that, you will have done the same thing as building a levain.
Yes, I know there are plenty of recipes that do call for building a levain as a separate step. For some rye breads, there may be as many as three successive "sponge" builds. But here, Kimberly wants to try out her new starter, and IMHO the first loaf should be as simple as possible to make.
Exactly. And KA recipes usually have a step by step method. I'm just curious as to what recipe Kimberly is following.
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Here is the recipe and the KA book where I got it from.
It calls for 454 grams of ripe culture.
Ripe culture is the same as starter, right? I understand that my starter is not very ripe but it should be ready.
Hope I'm not missing something.
Kimberly
Fed and matured = Bubbly active starter.
Many ways to do this. But here is one...
The night before take 54g of your starter and in a small bowl feed it 200g water + 200g bread flour. Leave overnight and use the next day when mature. You have more than 54g starter already so whatever is left feed as normal.
Ah! Great.
So now that my starter is active, I can basically take any amount and feed it equal portions of flour and water?
Thanks!
Technically now your starter is active as long as you have enough freshly fed and matured starter (not always the case but a good rule of thumb to follow for now) you can use it in a recipe.
Just the same principle as you have been following when feeding your starter now apply it to using your starter in your recipe with the dough just being a final feed for the starter that goes into the dough. If you catch my drift.
But there are some things you want to take into account. How much starter is being used? How long do you have before you begin the final recipe? Do you have to convert your starter to fit the recipe? etc...
In this case you're using a large amount of starter but your starter does not fit the recipe, being wholegrain rye, so you want to take a relatively smallish amount of starter, give it a healthy feed to bring it as close as you can to what the recipe is asking for and give it enough time to mature.
So if you take 54g of your rye starter and feed it 200g water + 200g bread flour then you'll have it very close to what the recipe is asking for (don't sweat the 27g of rye flour in the 54g starter - won't make a difference). It have a very healthy feed but it'll need quite some time to mature. So build it the night before and use the next day when it is very active. Should be well risen, bubbly and have a nice aroma. Starter builds are not written in stone but you'll get used to the time frames the more you use your starter and what is needed to get to the requirements. So if you mix it just before bed then it'll be ready by morning. Or if you think it needs a bit more time you can keep an eye on it and use when ready.
There is no one correct answer to your question. As you'll see.
With that much starter, without seeing the rest of the recipe, you can probably build the off-shoot starter this morning and have the bread baked by tonight.
You know what? If you see a recipe that asks for a white flour starter but you only have say a 50-50 mix of whole grain and white in your starter, just go ahead and use your starter. And the reverse as well. If a recipe says to use a starter with 80% hydration but yours is 100%, just use yours and reduce the total water in the recipe by a tiny amount to make up for the increased water in your starter.
If you have a nice active starter, you are going to get good bread.
Now if you get into rye-heavy sour breads this advice isn't going to be as successful, but for mostly-wheat breads, no problem.
Here's an example. Dave Snyder has posted here on his "San Joaquin" breads, which use white wheat flour with small amounts of whole wheat and rye. Dave likes his starters to use the same composition as his dough. So if you have an all-AP starter like I do, you need to make a levain using his flour mixture. I've done this and it gave great results.
But you could just as well make the bread with your 100% AP starter. There would probably be a small difference in flavor but the bread would rise and bake normally and taste excellent. Or you could make it with a 100% whole wheat starter. Again it would taste a little different and you might need to adjust the amount of water a bit depending on how the dough handled.
So, Kimberly, with your new starter, no matter how much rye it has at this point, if it needs a feed then feed it (might as well use AP flour), and use it to make a loaf of bread. You won't be sorry.
So now that my starter is active, I can basically take any amount and feed it equal portions of flour and water?
That's right. Here's how I do it: I keep my starter (or "culture" or "mother" or whatever) in a one-quart sized plastic deli container in the refrigerator. When it needs feeding, I discard some, leaving some smallish amount in the bottom. I never bother to try to measure how much. Probably it's in the range of 2 - 4 oz, at an educated guess. I take out the deli container and let it warm up some (not really necessary to let it warm up). Then I add 3 oz each of AP flour and water, and mix them up with my trusty chopstick. That's about 90 grams each.
I cover the container and leave it out on the counter. Five or six hours later it will be very bubbly and have risen vigorously. At that point I can take some out and use it if I'm going to make some dough just now, Either way, I put the container back in the refrigerator. Since I had put in a total of 3 + 3 = 6 oz (about 180 grams), I can take out that much or more, but I rarely want to take out more than 3 or 4 oz.
This nice, active starter can be taken out of the refrigerator and used to make bread for several days afterwards without any new feeding.
How long can you wait before feeding again? It's that phrase again - it depends. Partly it depends on your starter and how acidic it is, and its history. I suggest feeding -
1. At least once per week;
2. If you want to make bread soon and the starter has become thin or soup-like;
3. If the starter smells very acrid or has some other off-odor;
4. If you want to make bread soon and the starter hasn't been fed for three days or more.
If the starter has been neglected - not fed for too long - you can bring it back but it may take several feeding cycles to get back to its nice vigorous condition. So you can go away on vacation for a few weeks and then bring your starter back to its normal condition. During this time if it seems to be slow recovering, you can remember what you have learned and feed it with some whole grain a time or two.
Exactly how long your starter will make bread well without needing to be fed is something you will have to learn for your particular starter, manner of feeding, and so on.
TP,
So much great advice. I think I'm getting it but this sourdough baking really is like a hidden 'culture' in itself.
Like you said previously, I think once I start baking and feeding I will fully get it.
My goal right now is just to try to make one loaf every day or so.
So fun!
Thanks again,
Kimberly
My goal right now is just to try to make one loaf every day or so.
Perfect!
Bear in mind, when I talk about making things simple and not stressing the details, I have spent 15 years simplifying and streamlining what I do so that it is as simple, stress-free, and reliable as possible, yet still produces great tasting bread. During that time I have had starter problems, all kinds of failures, you name it. And probably most important, I have had a lot of opportunity to see the effects of various tradeoffs - and baking is always about tradeoffs.
At this point, when I see a new recipe that I might be interested in, I usually react something like this:
OK, what's the hydration? 85% wow, have to handle carefully. Oh, 25% whole wheat? That will soak up some of the water, the dough will be a little sticky, hmm, how about using a soaker? 3 hours bulk ferment? Come on, that's too short, I'll go for 6 hours so I'll reduce the starter. 1/2 cup of sugar? No way, too sweet, maybe 1 oz instead. Five stretch and folds every 30 minutes? Bah! Maybe 30 minutes for the first one, then we'll see depending on how the dough feels, probably won't need more than 3 or 4 at most, and more like an hour apart after the first one. Mix in a mixer for 15 minutes? No way, I'll use my standard hand process - mix, 1/2 hour rest, knead a few minutes, S&Fs as needed.
Then I'll just run my normal process, with minimal changes as needed. And I'll say to you "forget all those details and make it simple". But I realize that I know what to omit and what can be changed because of all those years of trying things out. You don't have that background yet (don't worry, you will).
In a way, it's just like making a starter. In the beginning you kept asking if you should do this detail or that detail, you kept trying different things, you worried over how many days it should take before you saw some activity, should you change the flour or water, etc..
But now you know that you just mix some flour and water together, including some whole grain like rye, maybe some pineapple juice at the beginning, keep it from burning up in the sun, feed and stir from time to time, and you are going to get a starter. None of those details mattered much, as it turned out.
I'll wrap this up with the one piece of acquired wisdom that is at the heart of my approach to making bread -
Time is your friend.
- The longer that flour is hydrated, the better the taste;
- The longer that the starter gets to do its job, the better the taste;
- The longer the bulk ferment, the more the gluten develops on its own;
- The longer you rest (or autolyse) the dough after mixing, the better the results and the less kneading or stretching you will have to do.
Tradeoffs, yes. Dough will eventually degrade if left too long. All the yeast food can get used up before proofing or baking if you leave it too long. You have to make the process fit your schedule. Etc., etc.
But it's still the best guide for great tasting bread.
Wow. So much practical advice there, Tom, and I greatly appreciate it all. But now I have more questions!
What do on you mean 'the longer that flour is hydrated'?M
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So basically everything!
Let's see what the crumb is like and how it tastes. Did you follow the build I suggested? If you did it would have been rushed to have it baked so soon.
What do on you mean 'the longer that flour is hydrated'?
I mean that when the flour is mixed with water and left for some time, even without starter, then later when the final dough is made by mixing in the starter (and salt if it wasn't put in there before), then the final bread will taste better than if the flour, water, and starter had been mixed together from the beginning.
This may sound strange, but I've tried it many times in various ways.
So wet flour + time => more flavor, even if starter or yeast hasn't been added until later. I don't usually make bread that way, because it's a bit more bother, but when I do, the bread tastes better.
I am thinking the gluten will continue to build quicker and stronger after a feed, the older it gets, right,? And that should make the dough rise more.
Not exactly, but it depends on what you mean. You can explore this yourself. Take some of the starter, put it into another container, feed it with flour and water, and stir the flour in. Notice how the mixture looks shaggy and lumpy, and has a kind of dead feel to it.
Come back in an hour. Notice that it looks less shaggy and it's smoother. Stir it again a few times. Notice how the whole feel of the dough has changed. It's somehow more liquid and uniform. Notice how the stirring action gets harder to do as you keep stirring it.
Come back in a few more hours. Stir again. Notice how the starter feels somewhat like glue, and that feeling gets stronger as you stir. If you try to like up a piece of it, the starter clings to itself as you pull. The starter somehow has a live feel to it.
That's gluten development. Part of what you have noticed is due to the elapsed time, and part to your stirring. Doing stretch-and-fold sessions during bulk fermentation is equivalent to stirring the starter in terms of gluten development. No-knead recipes use a long time, usually 12 hours or more, to let time develop the gluten. But time alone won't align the gluten strands the way that stretching will, so the best thing is to do both: stretch, and allow enough time to pass.
I see I made it look like the passage of time will make the dough stiffer and more elastic, but that's not quite right. Time *will* help the dough to develop gluten, but more with an extensible quality. Mechanical stretching brings out the elastic - springy - qualities. After some time passes, the gluten relaxes to the more extensible form, and as time goes by it becomes easier for mechanical action to restore some elasticity.
Like everything else, overdoing things will change the way this works.
Great! It worked! You've made bread, way to go!. Please, tell us how it tasted and what the interior looked like.
From the color, I'd say that either it could have been baked at a hotter temperature or for longer, or both. You say that it didn't rise much, but there is a fair amount of sideways expansion in total. We don't know any details, like how long the bulk ferment was, how much the dough rose during bulk ferment, how you did stretch-and-folds, and so on. But to me, noticing the horizontal crack near the bottom of the loaf, the look of the cracks on the top, together with the sideways spreading, suggests that the dough was on the weak side. That could have been because the bulk fermentation was quite a bit too long, or you didn't strengthen the dough enough by S&F sessions during bulk fermentation. If so, the dough would have felt fairly slack and extensible when you handled it to make the loaf shape. The loaf shapes you made would have started to spread out sideways soon after they were shaped.
If the dough felt strong and springy during shaping, then probably the loaf was proofed too long before baking.
When the dough strength is not as high as it could be, the techniques used to shape the loaf are more important, since you can stretch the dough and build in some tension in the surface that will reduce the tendency to spread. But that's a skill that takes time to develop.
It could also be that your starter needs a few more refresh cycles or even a few more weeks before it's reached a good stable state.
I don't know if you have set up to steam the bread during the bake, but a good steaming setup, and a baking stone or steel, will improve the rise and the crust color.
At any rate, you are on your way.
TomP
I found a recipe on the KA site for "Naturally Levined Sourdough Bread" that calls for 454 g of starter. I assume this is the one you are using? There's a link at the bottom to their guide to creating a starter at 100% hydration, so it is reasonable to assume they intend you to use a 100% hydration starter in the recipe. That means you need a starter with 227 g of flour and 227 g of water. Subtract the amount of flour and water in your existing starter from these numbers giving you the minimum you need to add. Then decide how much you want left over to save for next time and add that as well.
Thanks so much. Wildcat.
So much to learn! But that makes sense.
Now to figure out the timing of feeding!
Kimberly