This is awesome; thanks so much. My main problem is getting the DDT and the timing to coincide, but these are very helpful posts! The bread is currently bricklike but tasty. Aiming to get a little more lift, which requires a bit more babysitting, I think.
This is so great. I've by trial and error sort of fallen into a similar strategy for my own starter, so it's great to see it formalized and confirm what I was discovering on my own, and have a more reliable & proven method for it!
Just to round back... I needed to get my starter strong again and followed this new strategy to a T (finally got my butt around to getting some good organic Rye flour) and after 2 days in phase 1 and 1 day in phase 2, I just set it for a normal refresh, and (under the perfect temp 74-78 degrees) it doubled in just THREE HOURS!!!!!!! I can't wait to bake with it now to see if my sourdough gets back to great heights!!!!!
This is just the post I needed! My starter has always seemed a little sluggish. A few weeks ago I started refreshing it daily using a bit of rye and have seen an improvement. I look forward to trying your method. Thanks!
1) I've found it very helpful to use a food process to mix a starter refreshment. I find it leads to a more active starter. I hypothesize that this is because it incorporates more air into the dough. I've read several places that yeast (and bacteria?) reproduce more easily when they have oxygen.
2) I'm surprised that you use stiff starter to decrease the sourness. I have heard from many people...but not tested...that they get a milder taste with liquid starter.
3) I have decreased the amount of starter I include in refreshments from my training based on third-hand advice from Didier Rosada. I now use 100% bread flour, 50% water, 10%-20% starter for a 12-hour refreshment cycle. I have been very happy with the results.
Allen - I wouldn't use a stiff starter for most doughs, precisely because it's a pain to mix/mix into a dough by hand. I can see how using a FP might aerate things usefully; you could probably achieve something similar by vigorously whisking the water and a small portion of the flour for a bit. As for the sourness-stiff starter connection, it has to do with water activity and also relies on the presence of sugar. It's a technique that is commonly used for pannetone, but works well for other enriched breads. I'll be talking all about it soon, as it works wonderfully.
I'm a big fan of stiff starters for home bakers...but I use machine mixing. I like stiff starters for home bakers because I think they are less active and thus more forgiving/tolerant of measurement errors (which home bakers like me are prone to make). But your mileage may vary.
I look forward to learning about your stiff starter approach to getting mild sourness. It's so contrary to what I've heard before...and I love learning something that upends my previous understanding.
No question that stiff starters are more resilient. The one I make is much slower to collapse. I used to just keep a 66% hydration starter, which was to me the perfect medium between the two. But the math compared to 100% or 50% made my head hurt, so I switched to 100% hydration for the most part.
As to adding extra oxygen to the starter (I read that in one of Sandor Katz's fermentation books) I mix the small percentage of starter with water in a jar with a lid and do a "shake Sir Bobby Farts-Alot Dance". My husband thinks I'm nuts, but so far Sir Bobby seems to love this shaking dance through the kitchen. I shake him till he foams up, then add the flour. ;)
This is a great reminder. I took my starter with me at Christmas and made wonderful loaves. They've been dismal since returning home. I'm sure it was because my traveling starter was tiny and had to be refreshed and grown. It turned into a vigorous happy starter in a day our two. My starter that stayed home needs the same boost
When I was struggling last year I had happened upon a method with a stiff levain and it was the first thing that performed the way I wanted it to. Now I'm superstitious and I do an initial levain build at 100%, but then I still incorporate that into a 55% hydration firm starter, and twelve hours later I tear that up by hand, mix it into my flour mixture, and only then add water. I would 100% be here for a post comparing the performance of different levain hydrations and another post comparing levain percentages in bulk fermentation.
I'm also super lazy and even though our kitchen is cold I haven't once bothered warming the water before bulk fermentation. I just make a note of how much longer the dough takes to double when the kitchen is cold, and then I stick it in the fridge overnight. At some point I might need to be more careful with DDT and fermentation timing, but it's not like I'm going anywhere.
Ed - I'd love to do those comparisons too someday, but I don't have the time or bandwidth for that sort of extensive testing at the moment, alas. It's on the list, though! As for the requirement for DDT or not, I do agree you can get away without it, but at least in the winter not doing so can slow things down so much that you find yourself having to stay up all night to move things along. I've burned bread more than once having fallen asleep on the couch while it baked.
It’s a relatively new technique, but what are your thoughts on #KatzoomiBread’s (sourdough shokupan) technique for sourdough sweet breads? They made a stiff levain at 40% hydration along with a sweet levain of 2:2:2:1 flour, water, starter, and sugar and about a 3:5 ratio of sweet:stiff levain. The levain mix makes up a big portion of the dough, 317% in bakers %.
sorry, I missed this comment somehow. I've seen that recipe, and had meant to try it out. But the ratios are different than the one I am using, particularly as regards sugar %, which I think is key to a mild sourdough profile. I'm not sure how much testing they did around that aspect of it. But it's definitely in the same family!
Andrew, I conducted the reviving starter method with the two fast and one slow feeding in a day. Did this three days. I was compelled the test my original starter (your dried starter) which I suspected was sickly with the interim starters that had the rye in it. I have yet to test the final maintenance starter (fed with only bread flour). In comparing three versions of starter my original “meek” starter aced the race in crumb and flavor. I did not expect this. It also was pleasingly sour, unlike the revived interim starters. Original starter was not fed for a week by the way. My question: a starter that comes out of fridge that has not been fed for a while, slumped, can bake perfectly good bread? Does a starter that has sat in fridge give more sour flavor, which I am after? What would you say is max time a starter can be in storage without feeding but will bake good bread? Thanks.
This is awesome; thanks so much. My main problem is getting the DDT and the timing to coincide, but these are very helpful posts! The bread is currently bricklike but tasty. Aiming to get a little more lift, which requires a bit more babysitting, I think.
Best headline ever!
I spend as much time on headlines as I do the content here
This is so great. I've by trial and error sort of fallen into a similar strategy for my own starter, so it's great to see it formalized and confirm what I was discovering on my own, and have a more reliable & proven method for it!
Just to round back... I needed to get my starter strong again and followed this new strategy to a T (finally got my butt around to getting some good organic Rye flour) and after 2 days in phase 1 and 1 day in phase 2, I just set it for a normal refresh, and (under the perfect temp 74-78 degrees) it doubled in just THREE HOURS!!!!!!! I can't wait to bake with it now to see if my sourdough gets back to great heights!!!!!
Great!!
This is just the post I needed! My starter has always seemed a little sluggish. A few weeks ago I started refreshing it daily using a bit of rye and have seen an improvement. I look forward to trying your method. Thanks!
Three items:
1) I've found it very helpful to use a food process to mix a starter refreshment. I find it leads to a more active starter. I hypothesize that this is because it incorporates more air into the dough. I've read several places that yeast (and bacteria?) reproduce more easily when they have oxygen.
2) I'm surprised that you use stiff starter to decrease the sourness. I have heard from many people...but not tested...that they get a milder taste with liquid starter.
3) I have decreased the amount of starter I include in refreshments from my training based on third-hand advice from Didier Rosada. I now use 100% bread flour, 50% water, 10%-20% starter for a 12-hour refreshment cycle. I have been very happy with the results.
Allen
Allen - I wouldn't use a stiff starter for most doughs, precisely because it's a pain to mix/mix into a dough by hand. I can see how using a FP might aerate things usefully; you could probably achieve something similar by vigorously whisking the water and a small portion of the flour for a bit. As for the sourness-stiff starter connection, it has to do with water activity and also relies on the presence of sugar. It's a technique that is commonly used for pannetone, but works well for other enriched breads. I'll be talking all about it soon, as it works wonderfully.
I'm a big fan of stiff starters for home bakers...but I use machine mixing. I like stiff starters for home bakers because I think they are less active and thus more forgiving/tolerant of measurement errors (which home bakers like me are prone to make). But your mileage may vary.
I look forward to learning about your stiff starter approach to getting mild sourness. It's so contrary to what I've heard before...and I love learning something that upends my previous understanding.
No question that stiff starters are more resilient. The one I make is much slower to collapse. I used to just keep a 66% hydration starter, which was to me the perfect medium between the two. But the math compared to 100% or 50% made my head hurt, so I switched to 100% hydration for the most part.
As to adding extra oxygen to the starter (I read that in one of Sandor Katz's fermentation books) I mix the small percentage of starter with water in a jar with a lid and do a "shake Sir Bobby Farts-Alot Dance". My husband thinks I'm nuts, but so far Sir Bobby seems to love this shaking dance through the kitchen. I shake him till he foams up, then add the flour. ;)
This is a great reminder. I took my starter with me at Christmas and made wonderful loaves. They've been dismal since returning home. I'm sure it was because my traveling starter was tiny and had to be refreshed and grown. It turned into a vigorous happy starter in a day our two. My starter that stayed home needs the same boost
I know what do to with my refrigerated 50g stiff starter leftover from bagels! Perfect.
When I was struggling last year I had happened upon a method with a stiff levain and it was the first thing that performed the way I wanted it to. Now I'm superstitious and I do an initial levain build at 100%, but then I still incorporate that into a 55% hydration firm starter, and twelve hours later I tear that up by hand, mix it into my flour mixture, and only then add water. I would 100% be here for a post comparing the performance of different levain hydrations and another post comparing levain percentages in bulk fermentation.
I'm also super lazy and even though our kitchen is cold I haven't once bothered warming the water before bulk fermentation. I just make a note of how much longer the dough takes to double when the kitchen is cold, and then I stick it in the fridge overnight. At some point I might need to be more careful with DDT and fermentation timing, but it's not like I'm going anywhere.
Ed - I'd love to do those comparisons too someday, but I don't have the time or bandwidth for that sort of extensive testing at the moment, alas. It's on the list, though! As for the requirement for DDT or not, I do agree you can get away without it, but at least in the winter not doing so can slow things down so much that you find yourself having to stay up all night to move things along. I've burned bread more than once having fallen asleep on the couch while it baked.
It’s a relatively new technique, but what are your thoughts on #KatzoomiBread’s (sourdough shokupan) technique for sourdough sweet breads? They made a stiff levain at 40% hydration along with a sweet levain of 2:2:2:1 flour, water, starter, and sugar and about a 3:5 ratio of sweet:stiff levain. The levain mix makes up a big portion of the dough, 317% in bakers %.
Nevermind, it looks like you’re a fan of it!
sorry, I missed this comment somehow. I've seen that recipe, and had meant to try it out. But the ratios are different than the one I am using, particularly as regards sugar %, which I think is key to a mild sourdough profile. I'm not sure how much testing they did around that aspect of it. But it's definitely in the same family!
Andrew, I conducted the reviving starter method with the two fast and one slow feeding in a day. Did this three days. I was compelled the test my original starter (your dried starter) which I suspected was sickly with the interim starters that had the rye in it. I have yet to test the final maintenance starter (fed with only bread flour). In comparing three versions of starter my original “meek” starter aced the race in crumb and flavor. I did not expect this. It also was pleasingly sour, unlike the revived interim starters. Original starter was not fed for a week by the way. My question: a starter that comes out of fridge that has not been fed for a while, slumped, can bake perfectly good bread? Does a starter that has sat in fridge give more sour flavor, which I am after? What would you say is max time a starter can be in storage without feeding but will bake good bread? Thanks.