Starting All Over Again
Starting All Over Again
I've been hit by a mystery starter affliction. The starter, levain and dough would rise well and in a timely manner. But when the dough went into the oven, loft and oven spring were poor.
I've no real understanding of why this has happened as my starter is well maintained. The only thing I can think of is a possible lack of calcium; I switched from a starter feeding mix of 90% BF/10% WG rye to using 100% high extraction wheat flour (home ground and sifted). In the UK, bread flour (well, nearly ALL flour) is fortified with calcium carbonate. Since I was using tap water and our water is very soft there may have been a shortage of calcium in the starter refreshes after I switched flours.
Anyway, I decided to build a new starter and see if that cured the problem.
I made the starter from 50g freshly milled high extraction flour (90% wheat/10% rye), 0.2g malt and 35g spring water. This was stored at 30C for 24hrs, at which point it was looking nice and active.
This is how it looked after after a couple more builds, 2.5 days after starting:
What I noticed is that the new starter is a lot more frothy than the old one - there seems to be more gas production.
And the bread has a much better, fluffier crumb:
Lance