Starters showcase #2: Whoreass Silver (salted black rice starter with freezing treatment)

Say hi to Whoreass Silver!

Whoreass says: *making some random jazz noise* "doo ba da ba doo ba da bee doo LAY LAY LAY LAY LAY LAY LAY LAY low low low low low low🎷🎺🎼"

Lol. I named him after my all time favorite jazz musical artist Horace Silver. It's the second and last installment of my starters showcase series. (see part one)

So, anyway, along the way I decided it's best to separate starter meant for enriched dough and for lean dough. Before he was conceived, the sweet bran form of Cariah Marey was perfectly fine handling lean dough, until I went too far with an experimentation using fructose (to both Cariah and Whoreass). Everything went wrong.

Long story short, he developed over-reliance toward sugar. Indicator dough always rose fast when added sugar was present, but no leavening power when no sugar was added (as levain).

So I worked really hard to turned him into salted starter instead. Same as Cariah Marey, the idea is to effortlessly control yeast:LAB ratio under harsh tropical climate.

And the principles are more or less the same as Cariah, except the switch from wheat bran to black rice flour is not just to take advantage of anthocyanin property that can change color depending on pH (basically nature's litmus paper), but also to introduce starch into him.

When yeasts are in osmotically stressful environment, they will produce glycerol intracellularly to equalise osmotic pressure. But to produce glycerol, they need sugar. I introduce starch to give room for amylolytic yeasts (specific to amylopectin, especially raw, such as Saccharomycopsis fibuligera and Pichia kudriavzevii) to thrive, in the hope the amylolytic property will be carried over to my mostly-white-flour lean dough, to sweeten the dough naturally, which happen to be the starters' signature characteristic.

Just like Cariah, I freeze Whoreass immediately once he peaks. That way, he will always be at his peak before use.

He is 24:12:1 black rice flour : water : salt. Here are pictures of him 20 minutes before peak.

Whoreass silver, 20 minutes before peak, top view. Notice the convex surface with some slightly visible cracks. The color of starter has shifted from greyish dark blue to purple, indicating lowered pH. There is pleasant sweet, fruity, and alcoholic smell when the jar is opened. The jar feels warm to the touch.

Whoreass Silver, side view. The mass is looking slightly aerated. He was tightly packed before fermentation.

Whoreass Silver, bottom view

Here is the indicator dough, 6:24:12:1 starter:black rice:water:salt. The lag phase was 2 hours, and proofing time was 3 hours. Notice how trace of black rice is not turned pink, indicating the pH is not going too low.

Indicator dough, at peak. Lag phase was 2 hours, proofing time was 3 hours.

Temperature at peak fermentation. Keep in mind that my starters are exothermic at low hydration (usually 50% or below)

If you feel like replicating, here is the timeline I'd recommend:

1. build 2:1 bran:water starter, to give room for pentose-fermenting yeasts to thrive first, for more efficient whole grain fermentation.
2. Switch from bran to black rice flour, to introduce starch and hexoses.

3. Gradually introduce salt, up until 12:1 water:salt.

    

Happy baking!

Disclaimer: this post is not a mean to establish rights and wrongs, just to showcase what I do and why I do what I do. If you have something to add, feel free to start discussion in the comment section