Sour Dough Starter...

[Modthyrth]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Complete sourdough noob here, with a question about starter. I started mine about a week and a half ago, and man, it likes to eat! While it lived on the counter, it wanted to eat at least four times a day (based on hooch forming). At the end of the week, I put it in the fridge. A day and a half later, I had half an inch of hooch on top, so fed it again. I fear I'll just accidentally kill it if I need to remember to feed it more than about once a week! Am I being too aggressive about feeding it? Do I have some super-strain? It smells awesome. I made some really good chocolate cherry sourdough bread with it. It seems good and right, except the need to feed is different based on everything I've read.

[splatgirl]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

I used a raisin to innoculate the starter I use now. I just plunked a regular old sunmaid raisin into a flour/water slurry. Worked great and only took a couple of days to get going that way.

[BrianShaw]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

IAnyway I pacel some ripe grape in a bowl of lukewarm water, moving said grapes whenever I passed by...

Very similar to my methodology. I 50-50 mix water and flour; throw in ripe grapes (from the store, unfortunately) and mix every so often. After week remove grapes and add more water & flour. etc. The interesting thing is how the character of this wild yeast glop changes character over time. It seems to mellow and become much easier to work with. Perhaps the little yeast-ies get domesticated????

[mike22226]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

I will work on that little project...m

[heliman]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

That is an amazing recipe - a most unusual process!!

Do you have any pics of the process/completed starter?

Rossco

PS - great retirement plan!!!

[mike22226]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

I grow my own grapes called christmas red grape (very simular to Pinot Noir)

Anyway I pacel some ripe grape in a bowl of lukewarm water, moving said grapes whenever I passed by, 3 days added some surgar to grape water, keep walking by, 4 days later lift out grapes they now do not have the white powder on their skin. I then add a little 2 tbls of flour 1 whole wheat the other all purpose add water luke stir make slurry, tow days add malt powder 1 tbls. ,all purpose flour to form dough. Cover with wet towel in warm place, top of fridge perfect. My starter looks lile yourgt, smells like buttermilk, when pizza is baked, the slight sour smell is gone, crust smells like sweet butter and taste's the same. Sweet! This is my first post, I am so pleased to have found this group. My wife" and mine dream is to retire to Prince Edward Island make outdood oven's and cook to our heart's content. Howdy Michael

[texassourdough]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Hi Tomtom!

You are right! You won't get much from the starter. It will help give a slightly more complex flavor but its probably not enough to really be noticeable. The retard does more. Still, it should have just a hint of bacterial acid.

I started to address the hybrid approach of mixing yeasts. The commercial yeast will dominate the wild yeast under most any conditions (except high acid) and especially in the fridge. I haven't done this but you could go as high as probably 30 percent starter and doctor it with commercial yeast and get really good flavor - almost as good as true sourpizzadough (I use this approach sometimes to make bread when I am in a hurry and have excess starter.) You don't want to go too high because the starter is highly degraded. You will learn that your starter will get increasingly liquid over time (from mix to use) as the starch molecules are broken down by the enzymes to make sugar.

Good Luck!
Jay

[tomtom]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Thanks Jay for your response. I made some dough early this morning with my starter. I cheated a bit by adding some instant dry yeast (2g for 800 flour). I only used 5% starter. 65% hydration with caputo, Autolyse for 20 min. kneaded, rest for 20 min, balled and into fridge. I quess that Im not gonna much from my starter. If I took the dough out say 6 hrs prior to baking will that be of any benefit. Next time I will pay attention to what you have suggested. My main reason for trying to incorporate the sourdough yeast is just to give a little flavor to the dough. I have some dough in the fridge that has been there for three days. Same process as above. Opened it up and it has a nice smell to it. Tom

[texassourdough]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

You are way off on pizza, Tomtom but your feeding is fine...

Your feeding is okay. I follow much the same routine 100 plus 50 and 50. Then comes the question of how long to leave it out. Depends on when you want to use it. It should be peaked (max activity) in about 8 to 10 hours at room temp. It should be out about an hour if you will use it in about a week. Three hours is about optimal for three days. Any longer and your leaven will be past prime and less active. So your several hours means your leaven should be less active than desired in about four days.

Next is taking it from the refrigerator and letting it warm up. That is fine if you fed it yesterday but if it is already over the hill you are letting it go further over the hill. It needs to be fed immediately even if it has been three days. The room temp water will wake it up fast.

Five % in the pizza dough is WAY low. Normal expansion ratios for sourdoughs are in the 3 or 4 to one range. I.e. take 100 grams of leaven and add 300 or 400 grams of flour and water. For 70 percent dough (chosen for easy calculation) that would mean adding 300 grams of flour and 100 grams of water to 100 of starter (which in your 100% hydration would have 50 grams of each). That should take about twelve hours to peak at room temp. Should be usable in about eight to ten. I would time the balling by the flour. Probably half an hour to an hour later for bread flour or OO or about two hours before baking for AP. Retarding is tricky and I don't like to do it with my sourdough for it simply shuts down below about 60 degrees. While you will get flavor from the bacteria, you will probably need a good bit of time at room temp (like eight hours) and it takes time for the chill to come off the dough so...this could be really slow.

I find retarding works great for commercial yeast which keeps on going in fridge, but sourdough is not so straightforward.

The good news is that pizza dough is not as proof specific as bread so you have more leeway on timing.

Good Luck!
Jay

[tomtom]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Good info. Thanks. I am wondering how much starter to add to make pizza dough. I am using 5% starter by weight. Does that sound correct? Also, the way I have handled my starter is to take it out the fridge. Let it warm and get happy. Take the portion I want and add it to the flour I am making pizza with. Then with the starter I dont use I measure out 100g (of starter) and feed it 50g of flour 50g of water and let it sit on the counter for a couple of hours and then put in the fridge. I have only had the starter a couple of weeks and not sure of the correct procedure. Tom

[heliman]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

HA - none of the above.

Vital Wheat Gluten!!!!

It is a sort of flour with 75% protein...

Rossco

[Frances]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

VWG - What does VWG stand for? Acronyms and abbreviations by the Free Online Dictionary.

VWG Very Wicked Grin
VWG Volkswagen Group (UK)
VWG Video Working Group
VWG Validation Working Group
VWG Valley Writers Guild (Canada)
VWG Vintage Worship Gathering

??? ...whichever one you took, your starter has my sincere sympathy. No wonder it croaked!

[heliman]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Thanks for the clarity Frances.

The way I killed the starter was that I added VWG as the flour and it turned to cement.

I will definitely give it another go later...

Rossco

[Frances]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Oh hey guys! What sad news to spring on a cold Monday morning!

...How do you kill a starter anyway?? I leave mine in the fridge for weeks on end, and it comes back again.

acbova, it sounds to me as if you may not be putting enough starter in the dough. You need to feed it up a bit (i.e. increase it) before baking. But its really not complicated once you get the hang of it.

I keep 300g of starter in a small covered bowl in the fridge (as I said, for weeks on end without so much as looking at it). The day before baking, in the morning, I stir in 300g of flour and 300g of water and leave it in a large covered bowl on the counter. Before going to bed I add another 900g of flour and 900g of water (this could also be less, depending on how much bread you want to make). By the next morning I have a bowl full of 2.7 kg of very active starter. Before baking I remove 100g, add another 100g of flour and 100g of water to this and put it back in the fridge for next time. And the rest goes into the bread dough.

In Winter I use 40% starter in the bread (so I'll bake 6.5 kg of bread with 2.6 kg of starter) in Summer it'll be as little as 20%. And yes, it takes a while to proof... hang on I baked only yesterday so lets see... the dough was made by 12, I folded it once at 1 o'clock, once at 2 (when I fired up the oven) , once at 3, we had pizzas at 4 and I shaped the bread right afterwards, left it for another two hours or so and put the first load of bread in around 6 in the evening. Although because it rises slowly this timetable is quite flexible.

You can of course feed your starter more regularly, take better care of it and whatever, but I find this method works for me and means I don't have to bother remembering to do anything with the starter when I'm not baking. Ha, And I don't throw any starter away either.


Um, this is the thread that got me started on sourdough (from page 4). Now I'm not saying that this is the best way or even the right way to do it, but I found sourdough very confusing until I tried this approach... so maybe it'll be helpful to you, too. And you can always get more sophisticated later on.

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/11/proofing-raising-questions-2334-4.html

[heliman]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Good luck with the starter. It seems to be quite a big job to keep it going.

I got distracted and mine died some weeks ago (RIP) without me even making a single loaf. I do plan to making another starter sometime in the future, but for now my focus is on making pizzas in my new industrial mixer.

Good luck with your activities...

Rossco