Hi all,
i've been away for a few years, but it's always nice to come back!
In the past I've struggled to use my rye starter to produce rich doughs like panettone, pandoro, colomba and even brioche because they either acidified too much during fermentation or they just didn't rise enough or - worse- they rose spectacularly but tasted acidic.
Needless to say that a panettone tasting of vinegar is simply dreadful.
I began to wonder how to make a starter that would thrive in the same kind of environment that a panettone dough represents. What slows down fermentation (sometimes even to a halt) is the high sugar content, due to the osmotic pressure that it exerts on the yeast cells. Then I thought that MAYBE the labs that produce acids are even more sensitive to high sugar content than sourdough yeasts (that are generally more resistant).
At this point the path was clear: refresh the rye starter with a very high proportion of sugar until it starts to thrive and let's see what happens!
I prepared a solution of 100 gr of sugar in 200 of water and I started to refresh my rye started with these amounts
40 gr starter
60 gr sugared water
40 gr rye flour
It took only a couple of refreshments to be very active. It was like throwing fuel on fire.
Then i did a preferment with the same proportions but with Manitoba/bread flour to test a real world scenario. Again it tripled in a few hours.
For the final dough I used these ingredients, but the formula is definitely unbalanced and needs one less egg white (maybe better replacing it with plain water)
180 gr bread flour (I used Waitrose Canadian white bread flour)
80 gr starter
80 gr egg whites
60 gr sugar
60 gr egg yolks
90 gr butter
5 gr of salt
bitter almond aroma
After getting a well structured dough (that took a while) I let it ferment at room temperature under the covers for 12 hours, until it doubled, then I put the dough to rest in the fridge for 24 hours.
The next day I shaped after several folds and I let it rise for 24 hours until the dough reached the border of the 1litre pullman pan.
Baked in the oven at 150°C
Let alone the pictures and the esthetics (it looks like fallen from a helicopter, like everything that I do), I was interested in the taste and in the structure of the dough. I'm happy to say that there was absolutely no trace of acidity whatsover, not even the slightest bit.
Also, the dough reacted perfectly to my handling both before and after the fridge. In the past, with an ordinary rye starter, it was evidently close to disintegrate between my fingers.
I think that this could be a new start towards a universal starter that you can use everywhere and that doesn't need kneading.
One more evidence that the enzymatic activity is being kept in check is that the consistence of the ordinary white flour starter fed with this sugary water doesn't get thinner even after 36 hours, while an ordinary white starter definitely gets thinner.
The next test will be a full fledged panettone.
