The Sourdough Starter Topic

[Toliver]

Today's sourdough.

 

What a beautiful photograph! Perfectly suitable for framing.

Of course, the bread itself is singing a siren song to me. I enjoy a sourdough with a nice tang to it. All I would need now is some soft butter to slather on a warm slice of that sourdough.

Thanks again for posting the picture!

[Ann_T]

Thank you Toliver.

[bethesdabakers]

Todays sourdough:





English Muffin!

[bethesdabakers]

After all these years of making bread, I never made a muffin. But I'm planning a TexMex birthday brunch for a few people next Sunday and Robb Walsh has a recipe for Huevos Benedictos where the Hollandaise Sauce takes on some chipotle and refried beans come into the equation. So I look for muffin recipes and The Cheeseboard Collective Works, one of my favourite books even if it is all spoons and cups, had the answer.

 

I used my most basic white sourdough formula - Strong White  Flour 100%, Water 59%, Starter 26.4%, Salt 1.5%. Fermented at room temperature for four hours, folded every hour. Then, pressed out the dough into a rectangle about ¾ inch thick, cut 3 inch rounds with a floured glass. Proved the rounds on a baking sheet liberally dusted with corn meal for two hours. Heated a baking stone on a low gas for five minutes. Dusted the baking stone with corn meal, cooked the rounds for 10 minutes either side. Easy or what?

 

Mick

[Smithy]

Suppose I have a recipe that calls for yeast, and I want to substitute my own sourdough starter. Is there a simple conversion to be made so I could do that?

For instance: in Foodman's eGCI course, Introduction to Lebanese Cuisine, there's a recipe for pita bread that has worked well for me. Here are the ingredients from that recipe, about halfway down the page:

• 3 Cups Bread flour or All Purpose flour

• ½ tsp Instant yeast (or 1 tsp Active Dry yeast combined with a Tbsp sugar and ¼ cup warm water till foamy)

• ½ tsp salt

• 1 Cup warm water (reduce the water by ¼ Cup if using Active Dry yeast)

I normally make this using the Active Dry yeast, 1T sugar and 1/4 c warm water. Would I just use 1/4 c of sourdough starter, then mix and knead until the texture was right? I'll bet there's a more scientific way to go about it.

(And yes, I realize these are volumetric measurements, but so are all my other recipes for pocket-style bread.)

[bethesdabakers]

Good grief! How do you Americans do it?

The long term answer is to store your bread formulas in grams in bakers' percentage format in spreadsheet calculators.

Can't help you in volumetric but if you convert your formula to grams, here's what you do. This assumes a starter at 100% hydration and between 25-30% of flour weight using bakers' percentage.

Add together the weights of the flour and water. Divide this seven and this will give you the weight of your starter. Divide this by two and subtract this number from the original flour weight and from the water weight (because your starter is equal weights of flour and water).

Good luck!

 

Edited to say: I was thinking in the bath just now, "What's special about this recipe that makes it authentically Lebonese?" And the answer is, "Nothing" - it's just a basic white dough. So why not just use a white soughdough formula? I use my basic wholemeal formula for pita.

 

Mick

Edited February 19, 2015 by bethesdabakers (log)

[cyalexa]

Suppose I have a recipe that calls for yeast, and I want to substitute my own sourdough starter. Is there a simple conversion to be made so

I am unable to access my files while traveling but am sure I got the info to do that from freshloaf.com.

[Smithy]

I am unable to access my files while traveling but am sure I got the info to do that from freshloaf.com.

Thanks, cyalexa.  That particular site didn't help, but I did find two sites that said, in essence, 1 cup starter for 1 packet of yeast.  This website has more detail, along with adjustments to be made and considerations for hydration level.

[Ann_T]

Rather than make a preferment with sourdough starter, as I usually do, I have started making sourdough by just adding 140g of discarded starter to 500g of flour.  This dough was handmixed - autolyze/stretch/fold method and left in the fridge overnight.

 

 

[Smithy]

*bump*

 

Over on The Bread Topic (2014-) Mick posted about his sourdough olive bread that was 50% starter.  Newbie that I am, I was startled and intrigued at the proportions, and decided to give it a go.  

 

Schedules being what they were, I decided at first simply to try the proportions and add rosemary, since I'm still trying to make a satisfactory olive oil and rosemary dough.  Then I had to set the project aside and let the dough proof overnight in the refrigerator.  By the time it was ready for the final shaping, I had found time to pit and chop a bunch of olives and sundried tomatoes.  I folded what I could into the dough as I shaped the loaf, but it was nowhere near the amount Mick had put in.  The distribution wasn't what I'd have liked, and the entire loaf was overrisen...but it wasn't bad as a first attempt.  Nobody complained.  The interesting side effect of having those chopped bits so close to the surface of the loaf is that they caramelized slightly.  Mmm, sweet tomato and olives!

 

 

[rotuts]

nice

[DianaB]

I came across this thread yesterday, just after my first sourdough bread came out of the oven. Over the past month or so I have read extensively about sourdough. I've been around eGullet for quite some time but stupidly I didn't visit here when first exploring sourdough, I could have saved both time and money.

I have baked bread for as long as I can remember, as did my mother and those before her. The only gap in this tradition was a period of 7 years when I lived in France. At first I didn't have an oven, when that arrived I had found great bakers so close to home where community news (aka gossip) was exchanged as we waited to be served morning and evening. My demi-baguette 'tradition' was always waiting for me and I couldn't have made better.

Returning to England in 2007 I quickly reverted to home made bread made in the Kenwood Chef and baked in a loaf tin. It was fine, not amazing. Thanks to eGullet I became aware of 'Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast' by David Forkish. We tried various of the recipes and the major change adopted from this text was introduction of an autolyse stage, higher hydration and baking in a covered cast iron pot.

We could now produce white or whole meal, or granary 'boules' with a crisp dark crust, and a tasty soft ' mie' reliably. Stupidly I had bought the book as a Kindle edition only to find that while that format is great for novels it doesn't really work for me for reference texts. I just continued to bake to the same recipe using a Kenwood Chef for kneading rather than Fornish's techniques but with wetter dough and loaves browned in cast iron. Higher hydration pizzas baked in 2 or 3 minutes in the G3 Ferrari pizza oven.

In the back of my thoughts lurked always the idea of bread from a poolish, bigga or similar. I should have come here earlier in the month to read this thread but for some reason that didn't occur and I ended up buying Victoria Kimbell's 'Fresh sourdough Starter' mail order from Bakery Bits, vendors who also supplied our marvellous Brød&Taylor folding proofer.

My knowledge of sourdough was (is) minimal. At this time of year in Europe we can watch France's 'Meilleur Boulangerie de France' and all of their wonderful breads made me more determined to improve our own results. It is a televised national prof baking competition.

Somewhere I read of Eric Kayser's Larousse du Pain (also in English for US market). Getting a hard copy this time and armed with my fresh starter, duly fed for three days, yesterday I was delighted with the results of the first recipe in the book 'La Boule'. I forgot to slash the top but otherwise this is the best tasting bread I have ever made. The recipe has some yeast in addition to the liquid starter.

Bakery Bits wrote to ask me to review their starter. By return I asked for advice as to long term storage and use of the sourdough to which I have had no reply. As a result I found myself back at eGullet this morning where I should have done my early research and where I found this thread.

I know that Mick has given instructions for saving money and getting a starter active from scratch. Some days in though one would be in the position I am now. My starter is active. Yesterday, having removed 100g for my loaf I transferred the rest to a clean plastic container with a good lid and put it into the fridge.

This morning I took the box out of the fridge and gave it a small feed of 40g strong wheat flour/40g bottled water. The lid is loosely replaced and the kitchen is 20c, normal here at this time of year.

Can anyone give more guidance on future management of the sourdough?

Assuming perhaps that each week I would use 3x100g to make dough, should the starter live at room temperature or in the fridge?

What would a 7 day schedule look like? Eg day1 - rest in fridge. day2 - feed 40g:40g cover, room temp. Day3 take off 100g to bake, rest at room temp.

The above is only an idea, I am hoping that perhaps Mick or one of the experienced bakers might help

I understand that ph can be a good indicator of a healthy sourdough starter. Does anyone check this?

This is my first attempt to include a photo on eGuller, if it has worked you should have an image of my first sourdough(ish) boule.

Thanks to all who have shared in the development of this thread and for the inspirational photos. Probably by now those of you involved at the start in October 2014 will have so much experience that the stuff I am unsure of has become second nature.

Does anyone still have their Autumn 2014 starter (or is that a stupid question)?

Edited to remove multiple photos.

Edited September 23, 2015 by DianaB (log)

[Smithy]

DianaB, that is a beautiful boule! Congratulations! I'm glad you found this topic.

I still have my starter from Autumn 2014, and bake from it every week or two. In addition to the active starter that traveled with me last winter I have 2 batches that I split from it and froze as insurance when it was established. Someday I'll thaw and revive one and compare it to the current starter to see whether the flavor has changed.

My starter has had some brushes with death due to lack of feeding and too-warm room temperatures. I've settled into a routine, more or less, of storing it in the refrigerator and feeding it weekly unless it's starting to look too puny: runny, or worse yet developing a layer of free liquid on top - the "hooch" mentioned earlier. If it starts to look runny I feed it earlier: 1 part starter, 1 part water, 1 part flour. If it starts throwing off hooch I feed it earlier also, but double the amount of water and flour. Since I began refrigerating it I haven't needed to feed it more often than twice weekly; at room temperature it was a daily occurrence. When I'm getting ready to bake I feed it a day ahead of time, and let the smell and the amount of starter I'll need determine the proportions of starter to water and flour.

I'm still a novice. I'm not nearly as disciplined or practiced as many of the other bakers here at eGullet, and I look forward to their answers.

[DianaB]

Thanks so much for your advice Smithy, that sounds like a good approach to adopt. We were delighted with our first attempt at sourdough (DH and I). Might have another attempt tomorrow. The starter is bubbling nicely now it is back to room temperature but refrigeration in between sounds like the right way for us.

[keychris]

I usually use my starter every weekend, so on Wednesday I will remove it from the fridge and feed it at 1:5:5 (starter/water/flour), leave at room temperature, repeat on Thursday, on Friday make a sourdough sponge, then bake on Saturday. Starter gets a 1:5:5 feed and then back in the fridge on Friday for a rest I've also left it for weeks at a time in the fridge with no obvious adverse effects on the starter. Probably wouldn't do this regularly though

 

I don't bother checking the pH of the starter, if it's active, bubbling and smells good then it's likely ok - the easiest way to check your acidity (IMO) if you don't have pH strips is to mix a little starter with water and put a bit of baking soda in it - soda should fizz up immediately if there's acid present.

[Smithy]

keychris, thanks for weighing in. Your proportions show one of the things that fascinates me about sourdough: the variations in how to handle it. I generally use the 1:1:1 because that's what Mick promoted early in this topic; somewhere along the way I picked up the 1:2:2 proportion. Another member, an experienced and accomplished baker (judging by photos), uses 1:3.75:3.75 with a longish ferment. (Translation because the formatting is clumsy: for 60g starter, refresh with 225g each flour and water.)

So far I've been playing as I noted above with 1:1:1 and 1:2:2 and starting to relax a bit about the proportions - as in, by accident I've gone to 1:1.5:1.5 (50% more flour and water than starter, instead of equal amounts or double) and realized the world wouldn't end. How did you arrive at 1:5:5, and what difference do you think that makes to your end product?

[bethesdabakers]

Yes, what we need are mature starter owners rather than mature starters. The main thing is to make sure you don't starve them (the starters not the owners) by adding at least the weight of the starter in flour when you refresh. Apart from that do what suits you and what you can get away with.

 

Mick (back in SW France)

 

Mick

[bethesdabakers]

 

Not the most spectacular of loaves but consider its history.

 

Last Friday I put some starter in a freezer bag and left it overnight. Saturday it went in the hold luggage of a flight from Liverpool to Bordeaux. When we reached Arcachon I just lobbed it in the fridge. On Monday I refreshed it and left it on the counter top. Tuesday I knocked up a dough at 100% hydration using T65 flour and put the dough in the fridge. Yesterday (Thursday) late afternoon. I shaped it and turned on the nasty little microwave/convection oven we have here to what it claims to be 230C. As soon as it came up to temperature a mere 10 minutes later the dough went in the oven.

 

Not really many rules left to break here.

[Ann_T]

DianaB, that is one beautiful loaf.

 

Haven't been baking as much sourdough the last couple of months.

 

 

 

I hadn't fed my starter in about six weeks.  So I fed my starter and I also fed the discard. I fed them both again the next  morning and they went into the fridge. My starter is fed with locally milled organic rye.

 

The next day  I used 100g of starter in a 750g batch of dough (700g bread flour and 50g rye) at 72% hydration. NO YEAST.

The dough went into the fridge for an overnight rise.

It came out of the fridge at 3:00 AM and the bread was out of the oven just before 8:00 AM.

 

[bethesdabakers]

Quite right Anne. NO YEAST in sourdough.



Celebrating this homemade starters 16th birthday with a Fig and Goat Cheese Brioche. Don't you just love the way it is so over-stuffed the filling is just bursting out.

[bethesdabakers]

The rest of the brioche dough stayed in the fridge overnight and today became two burger buns and a brioche jambon de bayonne baked in a coriander (cilantro} box.



The burger buns in action:

 

 

Big Sunday market in Arcachon tomorrow. Stock up on someone else's bread.

 

Mick

[Ann_T]

I had neglected my starter again. So Thursday night I fed it with fresh milled organic rye and I also fed the discard with half rye and half white. Left  out overnight and by early morning they had both more than doubled.

  

Friday morning I fed them both again, this time with white.  

 

 

They had both almost doubled in three hours.  They went into the fridge when I left for work.

 

Friday evening, I used 100g of starter in 750g flour at 68% hydration.   The dough went into the fridge for an overnight fermentation.  

 

 

It had almost doubled by morning. 

 

I had to work Saturday, so my son took the dough out of the fridge at 3:00 PM so that it would be ready for me to bake last night.

 

 

Bread came out of the oven around 9:30 PM

 

\

 

Sliced this morning.

[Smithy]

You get beautiful color on your loaves, Ann_T. What temperature(s) do you use?

[Ann_T]

Thanks Smithy.  I bake on a stone at 500°F.

[bethesdabakers]

Been back two and a half weeks now. Put the starter through the same degrading treatment in reverse (tied into the corner of a freezer bag, buried in hold luggage, subjected to a trainload of Saturday Night drunks for four hours, rail replacement bus, etc.). But it bounced back better than we did after the first refreshment.

 

In France we quickly got into a sensible bread routine. Stock up with bread from the one decent Sunday baker’s stall, so good it will last through the week, and pad that out with briochey type breads suited to the softish flour available in the supermarkets for fun and pleasure.

 

Still baked the odd campagne:

 

Pizza (in this oven you bake the base first before adding the topping):

 

Fig, Jambon de Bayonne and Roquette Flatbread:

 

Enriched doughs: the crumb of the Jambon Brioche shown in the earlier post:

 

A soft Tahini, Butter Bread. This is a Dan Lepard bread from Le Comptoir Libanais by Dan and Tony Kitous, an excellent Lebanese cookbook, that I’d been meaning to convert to natural leavening for some time. They ended up stuffed with lamb:

 

Finally, the owner of our little gite, a very charming retired French judge, brought round some delicious apples from a friend’s tree. So he and the neighbours were presented with apple brioche where the milk was replaced by a Normandy cider/pureed apple/honey reduction. I have to say it was very good:

 

The point of this ramble is this. You might remember that this thread grew out of another I started in France last year where I made a starter from scratch and encouraged other people to have a go. I have a feeling that not many have maintained their starters and still bake sourdough bread. But that doesn’t matter. Possibly some did.

 

All I am trying to show is that sourdough is not difficult, it is reliable, can be manipulated to fit in with your routine even when you’re on holiday (with judicious use of the fridge) and that there’s a lot more to it than churning out the same old white, crusty bread for years on end.

 

Thank you and Good Night.