There's a new post on Wordloaf about making and using sweet starters, both stiff and liquid. You don't need to be a subscriber to read it. There's a lot of detail. Benny may like to comment on similarities and differences to what he's been doing:
TomP
Thanks for sharing! Very interesting article! The referenced articles are also very interesting!
Thank you very much Tom. Very useful and clearly set out.
I've tried to piece together the techniques for sweet starters from those here posting about using them, but it's good to have a source where it is all in one place and with some easy to follow recipes and processes.
I once had a look at making a liquid sweet levain, but I realized that the amount of sugar that would need to be in it to create the conditions to reduce the LAB population would be far too high and increase the sugar in the final dough too much. The important thing in my mind about sweet levains is that the sugar concentration, that is the sugar in grams divided by the total water in the levain has to be high enough to have a significant enough osmotic effect on the microbes to slow and reduce the replication of the LAB. Yeast are more osmotolerant than LAB and are thus affected less. I haven’t played around with various levain formulas to see what the lower end of this concentration needs to be. For a White flour stiff sweet levain I use Bread flour 100%, Water 45%, Sugar white 31%, Starter 40%. Since I keep my starter at 100% hydration that means the ratio of sugar to total water in the levain is about 31:60 or 51.7 %.
To maintain such a high sugar concentration for a liquid levain, the ratios would need to be about bread flour 100%, water 100%, sugar 62%, starter 40% if my math is correct, or about double the amount of sugar. I’ve never actually tried making a sweet liquid levain. The 51.7% is just what I use and is not necessarily a magic number but it definitely works.
I use such a high percentage of starter to make these stiff sweet levains because the high sugar concentration definitely slows fermentation, so starting with a large amount of starter gets it fermenting well so I can do an overnight levain build.
I agree with Ian Lowe that is is necessary to have a very active starter to make these stiff sweet levains, but isn’t that the case with any levain? I don’t agree that you have to keep your starter at room temperature and consistently fed. I only feed my starter once per week and it lives in the fridge between feedings. I’ve also made many a stiff sweet levain using whole wheat flour with great success despite what Ian wrote.
Another difference in opinion is that I have used stiff sweet levains for both highly enriched and less enriched breads. I believe they are quite ideal for either and don’t think you need to use a more liquid levain to bake a great milk bread. In fact I have also used stiff sweet levains to make lean doughs. Although you could argue that these lean doughs are no longer lean since there was sugar in the levain.
I’ve also used both white and brown sugar, typically brown sugar for whole wheat and white sugar for bread flour levains quite successfully. I like the additional flavour and colour of brown sugar in a whole wheat bread but don’t want the colour in a whiter loaf.
I find that my stiff sweet levains will peak at 3-3.5x rise overnight 10-12 hours at 76-78°F which is a much higher peak than what Ian shows.
It has been my experience that working with stiff sweet levains is actually quite simple so long as you have a healthy starter. With my 100% hydration starter fed only bread flour typically once per week I create a stiff sweet starter and the next morning I mix the dough for my enriched breads either highly enriched like brioche or less enriched like milk breads.
I’ve only recently started to try baking panettone, using Giorilli’s recipe. In trying to reduce the workload of making panettone, in particular making and maintaining a Pasta Madre, I instead altered the two day starter preparation to include a stiff sweet levain to reduce the LAB population of the starter and thus try to control the acidity of the panettone. I have more work to do to improve my panettone, but I think I’ve had some success. So I think the concept of the stiff sweet levain is a good one and it is highly useful whenever you might want to produce a bread that is less acidic without having to add commercial yeast.
Benny
Oh boy... I'm about to break so many rules in the article... 😆
Jay
I'd say, it depends on the definition of sweet stiff starter and what is your goal.
and enriched bread all speaks to Yeast Water. That’s why I started using it . So simple and breads are never sour , rise easily with even high levels of eggs, sugar, butter and stay fresh for days.
My Challah is the best I’ve ever eaten when I make it with yeast water. We don’t like sour flavors and my YW all but eliminated the sour component even when I used it in conjunction with my SD levain in multi levain breads. I could also do a same day bake or retard . my levain is used whether it’s refreshed or not and there’s no difference in how the ultimate levain rises. I rarely refresh.
Just shows to go how unique each baking experience is.All information is gold. 🙏