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| Q: |
After starting your starter, do you ever
let it breath before covering it with a lid,
so that the bacteria in the air can feed
on your starter? |
| A: |
The starters had always the lids on unless
I fed or deflated it. Leaving the lid off
would evaporate the water (the air humidity
is very low, where I live) and throw my hydration
value off and I would have to compensate
later for that.
I am not afraid of contamination
with my
starters but when growing
one from scratch,
I don't want to invite
my local molds - the
black growing on my bath
tub chalkings and
the green growing on
my fruits - since I
think that they may delay
the process by
possibly competing with
the desired organisms.
I think that the "catching
yeasts from
air" method is folklore
unless you really
know what you are doing
with sterilized equipment
and feedings. There was
a fellow on the sourdough
news group which did
a test with sterilized
flour and "air"
bacteria and nothing
grew. The viable organism
count of flour
compared to air is much
in favor to the flour,
so the flour organisms
grow, especially when
one keeps feeding flour.
All the necessary
organisms to grow a sourdough
starter are
on the grain and in humans. |
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| Q: |
After you've established your sourdough starter,
do you use it to form a firm starter (adding
the sourdough starter to 1 cup of flour and
1/3 cup of water) and then incorporate it
into the bread dough, or do you mix your
sourdough starter straight into the bread
dough? |
| A: |
I do not operate like this at all. I found
using cup measures is way to inaccurate for
what I am trying to accomplish. To get any
handle on this sourdough/baking complexity,
I need to be going by weights.
Most of the time, I build
up the starter
to the amount needed
and make the dough when
it is ready. All my starters
right now are
on 100 % hydration.
|
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| Q: |
After starting your rye sourdough, are you
continuously feeding it with rye or unbleached
flour? |
| A: |
I keep mainly rye starters and feed with
full grain rye flour. If I would need a wheat
starter, I would branch it off the rye starter
and continue maintaining both the rye and
the wheat.
I think that the starter
looses when converted
to wheat and then would
be converted back
to rye and to make a
new starter is much
more effort than keeping
it around. My next
experiment is making
a SF sourdough type
wheat bread from a rye
starter. |
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| A: I use distilled/deionized water for all
starters, tap water for doughs. |
-
| Q: |
I noticed most of your sourdough starters
are a bit on the wet side, but you never
mentioned about getting hooch. |
| A: |
Really? They are strict 100 % hydration and
that is not really wet. With that, I am not
getting any hooch. Also, you get hooch mainly
if all the gas goes out of a starter i. e.
if it is inactive. That's not a good state
for a starter to be.
Also, the pictures you
see are from full
grain rye starters. It
could be that they
appear more wet compared
to wheat starters
which hold more gas and
appear dryer with
the same hydration. |
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|
|
| C: |
I keep a culture of maybe 20 .. 120 gram
in the small containers I showed (new window) in the web page in the fridge.
This culture is renewed
maybe once every
two month by taking it
out, letting it sit
on the counter at room
temperature to get
active again. Once it
is active, I take it
down to 20 g and then
adding 20 g water and
flour each. Then, I leave
it out of the fridge
until it gets going again
and then put it
back in the fridge.
The starter taken away
is collected, possibly
frozen and used for pancakes
or mixed in
when making dough for
a bread.
I keep all my sourdough/bread
by weight and
the starters with 100
% hydration (in baker's
%) - 50 % water, 50 %
flour by weight. This
makes is possible to
fine tune dough hydrations
and dough weights almost
to the gram which
is impossible with volume
measures but I
find it important when
trying out things.
|
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| Q: |
Is it possible for a starter to become poisonous? |
| A: |
In general, healthy starter is not poisonous
and resistant against infection from patogens.
The two main organisms - yeast and lactobacillus
live in a symbiosis and maintain a sour (mainly
caused by lactic acid) environment preventing
growth of other organisms.
There are two points
in a live of a starter
where other organisms,
possibly toxic or
pathogenic organisms
can come into play:
- Birth of a starter
| When a starter is grown from grain products,
the symbiotic relationship with it's acidic
environment between the main organisms is
not yet established and all germs present
in the container/substrate will start growing.
There can be pathogenic organisms in this
initial growth. In general, the surviving
organisms are lactobacillus- and yeast strains
building the sourdough characteristics. |
- Death of a starter
| If the starter organisms die, maybe through
starvation, poisoning or overheating or other
events, the protective acidic environment,
the remaining substrate can be invaded by
foreign, possibly toxic or pathogenic organisms. |
A state, where pathogenic
or toxic organisms
can grow is usually associated
with a change
in smell or appearance.
If the smell changes
to foul, rotten, putrid
or if for example,
greenish mold starts
growing on top of your
starter it is time to
look at the cause or
get a new starter. |
|
Babelfished excerpt from
G. Spicher's sourdough bible:
In chapter about the microflora of raw material
(grain products)
... It is notable, that
with a delayed acidification
hygienically precarious
germs can grow. Although
they are killed in the
baking process, the
toxins are heat resistant.
However, formation
of enterotoxins, for example with Staphylococcus aureaus, could not even be detected under propagation
(HERX et al., 1994).
|
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| C: |
Mark sent this email:
I tried your rye starter
formula and think
it is great. I've made
other starters with
white flours and combinations
of flour but
this was the fastest
and easiest and had
the least amount of waste.
I have got to
believe if someone followed
your directions
it would be as reliable
as any mail order
starter (I've never tried
one though.). I
made bread with the baby
rye starter today
("Pain de Meteil
au Levain" formula
is found at http://www.bbga.org/formulas/meteilaulevain94.html (new window) -I substituted rye for whole wheat starter).
and had decent results, any short comings
were those of this baker and not. |
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| Q: |
What's the temperature of the water when
you begin the rye starter? |
| A: |
Room temperature (70 F, 21 C)- it is distilled
water out of a container which just sits
in a pantry. I use this water for all starter
feedings. |
-
| C: |
There are serveral ways to go about it. Branching
off a mother culture is described here. Continous
propagation (modified with fridge storage)
I use with the Detmold 3-Stage process. The idea with branching off the mother
culture is to minimize the growth generations
and (hope to) keep the culture stable.
In order to bake, I take
the small starter
container out of the
fridge and let it sit
at room temperature for
maybe 1 - 2 hours
or so at least until
it is alive and makes
bubbles again.
Once it is alive again, I take out the amount
needed for growing the batch, put it in a
new container and triple (equal amounts of
flour and water each). This will be grown
into the starter amount needed for the dough
as described below.
I also refresh the culture by adding equal
amounts of flour and water, typically doubling
the culture, stir it and wait until it makes
bubbles again ( 1 - 2 hours). Then I put
it back in the fridge. For the fridge cultures,
I use distilled/deionized water.
As an example, let's
assume, I took out 20
g to make dough. The
20 g in the new container,
I triple by adding 20
g flour and water each.
This will give me 60
g of starter. Then I
wait until it gets alive
and triple it again
by adding 60 g of water
and flour. This gives
me 180 g. Then I wait
again until it gets
going - and a little
longer, then I add 180
g water and flour each
to get 540 g starter.
When I need more starter,
I double or triple
again. Then I make bread
from it. When I
know that I will make
bread soon, I make
so much starter that
I have some more left
over, maybe 50 or 100
gr for next time and
store it in the fridge
in a larger container.
More information about the intrinsics of
growing stages can be found at the sourdough growthcurve description. The parameters determining
bread characteristics
are mainly temperature,
time and to a lesser
degree media (full grain,
white flours), hydration,
growth history,
etc.
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