Dried starter travel travails
Since I need to break in a friend's new laptop, I might as well post something here.
Before leaving South Africa to visit family in the States, I dried some of my starter so that I could transport it easily and bake some sourdough breads for family members. The drying part went okay. Everything else, not so well.
At the first stop, I rehydrated and fed a portion of the starter. The yeast activity was very sluggish. Apparently the reconstituted starter carried more bacteria than yeast, since the flavor was strongly acidic. Even repeated feedings with rye flour didn't perk it up. I wound up having to supplement with commercial yeast to achieve adequate leavening for the sourdough breads that I made.
Possible culprits that I'm considering include:
1. Water supply. It's chlorinated at my mother in law's place (she also has a water softener which she claims to not have put salt in for months) but my dad is supplied from his own well. The water supply here in Colorado Springs is heavily chlorinated so I've used pineapple juice instead of water to rehydrate another portion of dried starter, with no discernible improvement.
2. The drying process, which was at room temperature. I had spread a thin smear of recently-fed and very active starter on waxed paper and let it dry.
3. The microflora of my starter don't react well to being dried out.
I'm really at a loss to understand what is going on. The starter traveled in my carry-on luggage, so it wasn't exposed to extreme swings in temperature. Feedings of whole rye flour don't seem to have nourished the existing culture or to have reseeded it with new yeasts. Obviously one experience doesn't establish a trend, so I'll need to try this again to see if I get a different result. If it still doesn't work out, I'll be stashing two or three samples of my stiff starter in both checked and carry-on luggage when we move back to the States later in 2011. Wth any luck, I'll have at least one viable starter to carry on with instead of having to start all over again. Meahwhile, it looks as though my present backup might be a dud.
Paul
Hi Paul.
I dried some starter as an experiment a few weeks ago. I'll be going away for 4 weeks in February, and although I think there's a good chance at least one of my fridged starters will survive my absence, I wanted to see if dried starter resuscitated as I'd heard it should.
Like you, I found it very sluggish at first. I broke up some of the dried starter into small flakes and added water, then fed it twice daily. For 3 days, not much kick, then on the evening of the third day...hope! Another feed, then by next morning, it was thriving. However, rather than reviving the starter from the dried flakes, I'm not 100% sure I didn't simply begin a new starter that came on fast (temp was warmish: about 25C inside).
Might be interesting to hear from others who have revived dried starter.
Cheers
Ross
Hi Paul,
My daughter lives in the Colorado Springs area and had issues with any kind of yeasted breads. The culprit, by process of elimination & much email discussion, we think is the chlorination in the water supply. Since you're experimenting, you might try using bottled water from start to finish. I ordered dried KA starter for both of us, her in CO & myself in CA. Mine activated fine using bottled water but Gina used her tap water. She ended up pitching it.
I also stumbled upon this issue myself... when I was out of bottled water I went ahead and used our house supply. I was wary anyway so I only took 1/2 cup & left the rest in the refrigerator. Everything I did was the same except the water & it barely bubbled. I keep a case of bottled water handy and never use the house water.
Hope this helps!
Toni
I wonder if using organic whole wheat would make any difference, Paul, since it contains such an abundance of wild yeast.
Am glad you've had a chance to get back to the states over the holiday - safe travels back to SA.
Although I haven't had that experience myself, from your description I suspect the waters. Vastly different waters than your original starter had is something the two failed resurrection attempts had in common. Bottled water is easily available not too expensively at the supermarket, and seems good insurance when resurrecting a starter (and also when feeding a starter until you thoroughly understand your water supply).
Chlorination and over-chlorination of many "city water" systems pretty much kills yeasts, and a water purifying system that hasn't been fully maintained won't remove it. (And if your South African water supply isn't chlorinated at all, your culture could be based on a strain of yeast that's extremly sensitive to even small amounts of chlorine, small amounts that wouldn't matter much to some other strains.)
Well water isn't a sure-fire alternative either, as it's likely to also contain something that kills yeast. The dying yeasties don't care that the something that got them -whatever it is- wasn't chlorine.
(I wouldn't be shocked to hear that in the end you started a new culture, that you found that a culture from many thousands of miles away just wouldn't work well in the new environment no matter what:-)
Paul, I have not gone the dehydration route yet but I have dried my starters down to "stiff" and then "stiffer" when I travel to avoid airline security problems. Since one cannot carry liquids or "pastes" in the carry-on, I weigh out the starter white sourdough starter I will bring, usually a 50% hydration, and add a measured amount of flour to it, (less than 5 gr for an 80 gr batch. It takes on the consistence of a stiff play dough. So far I have carried it on short flights in my checked suitcase and I reconstitute it to 50% as soon as I can after arrival. So far, the max time in "travel mode" has been about 24 hours and I have had no problem reconstituting it. The rye starter is normally at 100%, or 40g flour and 40g water for 80g total. I add 20g more rye flour and knead it in, again turning it into play dough. Each of the starters gets its own ziplock sandwich baggie, and both of these go into another ziplock bag.
So far, I have not had any problems. Good luck.
Bob
Hi, Paul.
I think you already have some good suggestions.
I've never done this myself, although your post is stimulating my interest. I have some starter I dried 3 years ago and have kept at room temperature.
As I recall, it may take a week of daily feedings to get a dried starter up to speed.
Chlorination is not good, but softened water may remove the minerals a starter needs to stay vigorous. Replacing the minerals with whole grain feedings may help. I use Brita filtered water or water from the refrigerator's dispenser for baking and feeding my starter.
Maybe I'll try reviving my own dried starter, since I'm off all this next week.
David
your starter, Paul?
Karin
It begins to look as though the water is the most likely culprit. The second try, rehydrated with juice, is beginning to show signs of life and the odor is much more in line with the parent starter's odor. I picked up some bottled artesian water (as labeled by friendly folks at Kroger) this evening and will try that for further builds. We'll see how things develop. I'd like to be able to bake with it before we leave on Friday.
Thanks for all of the observations and suggestions.
My usual routine in Pretoria is to maintain the mother starter with bottled water. When elaborating the starter for a particular formula, I use tap water (which is chlorinated, though I have no idea of the ppm) for the second or following builds, on the assumption that I have a thriving population that can tolerate the hit from the chlorine. I typically use both rye and white (AP or bread) flours for feeding the starter. I won't say that using WW wouldn't be a good thing; it's just never seemed necessary with the rye. There's never been a problem with growth rates in this regime. It's pretty much the same as I used to do back in Kansas, with equally good results.
The starter that I dried was the result of two or three builds. I had fed it 3 or 4 hours prior to drying and it was very active. The starter, which was a medium batter consistency, was then smeared in a thin layer on a sheet of wax paper and left to dry at room temperature, which ranged from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. It is the rainy season, so the thicker part of the smear wasn't completely dry until the second day although the thinnest portion dried overnight. It is possible that the prolonged drying for the thicker portions of the starter allowed the flora to consume all of the available food in those portions, giving me a less robust dried starter than expected.
If nothing else, it's an interesting experiment. When I try it again, I'll make sure that I spread it as thinly as possible and as evenly as possible to encourage rapid, consistent drying.
Paul
My experience with rapid drying was that the yeast was weaker. With slower drying, the yeast responds to conditions by sporing, increasing the yeasts survival in "not so ideal" conditions (lacking water.) Granted, I don't know how long it takes for yeast to respond to dire situations and then spore but I tend to abuse the starter first before drying. You know, let it get good and ripe/ hungry and then thin it out or simply thicken it up to crumbs and then dry it out. It might be interesting to try several methods.
When re-hydrating them. I tend to just cover flakes or crumbs with water and after they've soaked up the water, taste the starter to see how sour it is. If there is no sour (I then assume it was too diluted when drying) I don't give it any flour and taste it 12 -24 hrs later. I do want some sour for the yeast spores to "come to life." The starter should have a lower pH than water (no need for juice here) but if the sour is pronounced I double it's volume with a tablespoon of flour and then let everything just sit there for 24 hours. Then taste again, if no change, give it another 12 hours. I am more likely to give it more water and flour and not discard in the first 2 days. I keep the starter about 100% hydration or a little thicker.
When I notice a little rising, the yeast numbers have increased to the point of visual observation. Remove a spoonful (stick the discard in the fridge incase something goes wrong) and then feed the sample about 1:3:5 and watch it. I think the hardest part of this proceedure is knowing how long to feed at a low pH (it tastes sour) to get the yeasts to "wake up" yet having a high enough pH to keep them generating their numbers so they don't return to spores. Sooner or later, one has to give them enough flour to remove their acid protecting cloak and garbage (discard of dead cells & waste and the chemical signals they send out) so they can get on with budding big time.
I have a whole slew of old starters here. Dried and Kept about 21°C
Hmmm, looks like a need an updated one. The last few years I have dried them but I threw them into straight doughs for flavor. I tend to make low hydration starter balls for transport when traveling. I have a few dry ones in Seoul if I go back in the next few months, one I made last month. I will also take a low hydration starter with me, it just gets back on it's feet faster.
Mini in Austria
Thank you, Mini, for the tutorial. I could have saved myself some annoyance if I had checked with you first.
Stuff I had not been aware of but will file for future reference:
1. Slower drying produces better results than faster drying.
2. A stressed starter produces better results (when dried) than a well cared for starter.
3. Rehydrate the dried starter without an initial feeding of flour.
4. Long-term storage of the dried starter can be at room temperature; no freezing required.
Mini, you mention thickening the starter "to crumbs" prior to drying. Have you attempted to roll it out (once it gets to the stage that it won't absorb any more flour) very thin, as for noodles or crackers, and allowing the thin sheet to dry? Might that dry slowly enough to encourage spore formation?
Thanks for all of your tips. I'll make another run at producing and reviving a dried starter when I get back to SA. Maybe even several attempts, to see which combination of factors gives the best results. Having a viable backup on hand will be valuable as insurance against idiocy or other bad things.
Thanks,
Paul
No, didn't make sd noodles, yet. :)
I just made crumbs from my mature refrigerator starter. Took 30g of goopy ripe sour starter and added 55g of rye flour (your amounts may vary) cutting the flour into the starter with the side of the spoon until I had 85g or a small bowl of sourdough crumbs. Now I can either dry these on parchment or press them into two or three ball shapes and put them each into a zip lock for traveling. I will make one ball for the fridge and dry the rest (photo.) I also fed my starter. It is very dry inside the house as I smell the drying starter.
Also: I have taken a Tablespoon of 2007 dried Austrian starter and covered with water to make 2 cl of starter. After a quick stir, the starter taste is more of flour, no sour. The water is on top just covering the starter soaking on the bottom. Covered with plastic wrap to sit overnight on my stove next to the chimney or 24°C. It's 21:30 Monday Dec 27, 2010 and snowing. I made two pictures showing just starter and starter with water. Water has been sitting on the counter for over 24 hours in a pitcher.
(Update) The 2007 starter has been sitting 36 hours, the last 12 hours with fresh flour and no response. I just re-hydrated some of the above dried crumb starter to see what it does. Same proceedure.
Getting a jump on your experiments, <grin> -Mini
Now I have an image (particularly for the crumbs) to go along with the words. I can also see why you would not provide food for the starter for the initial rehydration stage, since a significant amount of the material being rehydrated is new flour anyway.
One of the things that strikes me about the drying process is that rehydration takes (perhaps) about half the time for producing a new starter from scratch. That's good, but not exactly a speedy recovery. The major advantage, as I see it, is that one is able to revive the same strains of bacteria and yeast that were in the original starter. Assuming that one has a reliable starter with desirable traits, that is a big advantage over the genetic roulette involved in beginning an new starter.
Paul
is re-hydrated flakes and not crumbs and still nothing going on. I have changed the way I dry starters over the last few years but, like you said it takes time. I prefer the low hydration crumb ball. When I get it to my destination, I add water or put it into the fridge or both. It has a much faster recovery rate. I would say it holds for several days as is but it gradually gets more dense and eats thru the flour.
Mini
Seems like an obvious thing to do in reviving a weakened dried-out starter. You could toast the flour or boil it in the reconstituting liquid, then cool before adding the dried starter.
or toast. Then one would know if the starter is coming from the dried starter or the fresh flour... eliminate the fresh flour... Wait... I'll go check the reconstituted starters.
Oh Wow! The crumbs are now foamy... all thru the starter! That is the starter that I dried a few days ago as shown in the photo. That took 24 hours! I just fed it some more flour. It is hardly a dusty fine powder, hard crumbs is a better description. Let's see that was 5g dried crumbs to about two-three teaspoons of water. Stirred it 3 times over the first 12 hours. Covered with plastic and rubber band and set near my chimney - about 24°C.
The old 2007 starter is still dudsville, stirred it to make sure nothing was hiding under the surface. I'm tempted to do this one again but with orange juice. It's been 48 hrs.
That is interesting about the flour bomb/dust bomb. I know that I've been doing some work in my utility room and my fire inspector told me to turn off the gas and have no flames when I continue to stir things up down there or I might go down in dorf history. He also mentioned covering with plastic and sealing the furnaces from dust, "tape them down completely." Baby powder, talcum powder, corn starch, lets see... cement, ashes, mixing tile adhesive and dry wall paste too.
Mini
When I was a little kid I saw a flour mill (old but still working) catch fire. Spectacular! It burned for several hours, flames shot many stories into the sky, you could see it for miles and miles, and it was way too hot and dangerous for the firemen to get anywhere close. The whole mill was completely destroyed.
First time that ever happened to me!
Went to look at my new rye starter this morning (well fed for a loaf today) and it had gone over! That means it trippled! And that from a rye! I will hang on to these "end of the year 2010 crumbs" for tests in the future. Want to see how long they stay peppy. This one is ready for dough raising and smells terrific!
The 2007 crumbs have life today, they doubled in size. See? Wait and be rewarded! That makes 72 hours! (the newer one was 24 hrs to the same point) It needs to be fed before going into dough. Now to make two more tests (I didn't do a control, so one with flour and water and one with 2007 and orange juice.)
Have a safe flight back to S.A.!
and 2007 dried starter is that it doubled after 2.5 - 3 days. A day sooner than using water with an old starter -- 4 days. Five grams of rye flour was added at the 30hr mark. It has a good familiar aroma.
The control (flour & water) also was active with foam after 30hrs and was fed. It had never shown any separation after the very first stir (The dried starters on the other hand all showed separation until shortly before they doubled.) By the end of the second day, control was doubled but is a young starter and smells "off." The aroma is more of hay and a pungent blossom (can't put my memory to it) than that of my mature starters and has a very faint sour taste. More Cheesy and pukey after another 8 hrs. I won't bother to keep the control and work with it, but the point is: the flour is active and can contibute a lot of organisms and bacteria both desired and not.
Mini
that the real value of drying a starter is to maintain a preferred culture. Yes, there's a slight time advantage over building a new starter from scratch but the big benefit is getting what you want instead of taking what you get.
I think that I'll dry some more starter in a few months when the rains are done. Insurance on my insurance, so to speak.
Thanks for running the tests, Mini. The results have been quite interesting.
Paul
P.S. Yes, we got back to SA in one piece.
Mini, that's quite a pantry. So far I bake enough to keep my starters going, a 75% whole wheat and a 100% rye starter, and the newest addition, apple water yeast - to my long suffering husband that seems way enough!
Karin
They are just little packages of old dried starters. They are all together in zip bags, one in a small jar and hardly take up any room. I think I hang on to them for sentimental reasons. I keep mine going as well. I haven't yet figured out how to dry a yeast water. Don't know if I want to. I have about a cup of Austrian dried (2007) and would like to know if it deserves to hang around any longer. I'd like to have it active asap to know if I can depend on it.
Mini
I want to get back to another question that's been touched on but not addressed directly yet: how to get starters through airplane security (assuming for the moment that the technology of drying and rehydrating is well in hand).
Flight security has become extremely picky (and unpredictable) these days. And small size doesn't work as an all-purpose excuse any more. Fears that a couple cubic inches of some homemade paste-like substance could be enough explosive to cause a major problem aren't so far-fetched any more. (The test explosions photographed in the movie "Four Lions" that I just saw show just how much explosive punch can now be packed into a very small package.)
(I've been very wary ever since hearing about a traveller returning from Mexico last Christmas being forced to pour a whole Mason jar of his mother's homemade mole sauce down the drain.)
I fear that small balls of stiff starter (which seem to be easier to create and to travel better than fully dried starters) are likely to trigger a security alert and get me thrown off the plane (or worse:-), with all my pleas of innocence falling on deaf ears.
Anybody have recent experience to report, or suggestions how to deal with security?
In "52 Loaves" by William Alexander- a TFL reader and occasional poster- Mr Alexander described how he put wet starter in 3 0z travel containers and labeled them as conditioner. Of course, now that the book has been out since April or so, TSA agents may be looking very carefully at every bottle labeled conditioner.
When things are properly labeled it is better. Print your full name on the bag too! Let them know it is valuable to you. Giving it a phony name (like conditioner) will dent your reputation (you lied) and result in a full strip search. If you yourself treat it like contraband, which it is not, what kind of example are you setting?
The mole sauce is a clear problem for transportation in hand carry. No amounts of liquid/gels larger than 150ml total are tolerated. End of discussion. That was the passenger fault, should have read the rules before hand.
I have declared my starter "sourdough starter" and so far, have not had a problem. I don't want us home bakers to be labeled as not being honest. If I carry a ping pong size ball of starter in a labeled clear zip bag, my business card is also attached w/flight no. (in case it gets so inspected it gets separated from me) and the starter is there for all to see along with my little bag of lipstick, hand lotion and toothpaste.
The best answer, Chuck, is that it seems to be a crapshoot. I breezed through security without anyone even looking at or asking about my dried starter. It was in a Zip-Loc bag and labeled as dried sourdough starter. Who knows how things might have gone if a security person had noticed it?
When I eventually move back to the U.S. late in 2011, I think I'll take a belt and suspenders approach. Every checked bag will have a have a piece of very stiff starter. Every carry-on bag will have a sample of dried starter. All starters will be double-bagged and appropriately labeled. With any luck, at least one will make the whole trip from South Africa to Kansas, even if all of the others are found and confiscated by over-zealous security agents. If worst comes to worst, I'll just start over.
You are correct that inspections and inspectors' actions are becoming more and more unpredictable. Consequently, I doubt that there is a one-size-fits-all answer for transporting a starter during air travel. Were I just traveling inside the U.S., I'd probably mail the starter (King Arthur and others do this all the time) and skip the issue entirely. Whether traveling domestically or internationally, I wouldn't attempt to take anything other than a dried starter in my carry-on luggage. While the lack of a detonating device should be a clear indication that a stiff starter isn't an explosive, there's no way to know how an inspector will treat it.
My two cents.
Paul
It is now Day 5 and the starter is definitely back in action. Still a bit less active than before but capable of leavening. As a matter of fact, there's a batch of PR's New York Deli Rye from BBA working away. It will be baked off tomorrow. (And I'll get to try out the new dough whisks that I received for Christmas.)
So, the moral of the story is: patience, patience, patience. Plus, follow Mini's guidance. And stay away from city water supplies during rehydration.
Thanks to all for your suggestions, tips, and commiseration.
Paul
Due diligence brings success! We'll look foreward to pictures of your rye bread. If you received the Danish Dough Whisks you're in for a treat. They work great and are easily cleaned if you rinse them immediately after using, especially with sourdough mixing.
Have fun baking tomorrow.
Toni
More than a little bit ugly because of overproofing, mind you, but quite tasty. We went out for a "short" errand that ran longer than expected. When I got back, the upper surface of the loaves was starting to tear. Panic! Fortunately, they did not collapse during baking. I'm not sure why but I'm happy that they did not. So were the happy sandwich eaters.
And the dough whisks were indeed a pleasure to use.
Thank you,
Paul
Paul,
Happy to hear your loaves turned out well! Are you still in the Springs area? I'm wondering what effect the 7K plus altitude might have on your results. I thought of you today when my 2 year old granddaughter informed me it was "nowing" right down the road in Fountain. Baking sounds like a perfect way to spend part of the day.
When I received my "Danish Dough Whisk" it generated a lot of commentary~it was stamped with a "Made in Poland" label & my son-in-law, who happens to be Polish, dubbed it the "Dough-Whisk-ski"...pretty funny.
Enjoy!
Toni
but I really haven't seen a huge difference in my limited baking at this altitude. It does seem that doubling occurs a bit faster at equivalent temperatures but that's a very subjective impression. I had been concerned about the amount of liquids required, since the humidity here is been in the teens the past few days, but that didn't seem to be a big factor. Neither has the elevation appeared to have a big impact on completely baking out a bread. Then again, maybe my daughter's oven just runs a bit hotter than advertised. It's even possible that I'm adjusting on the fly without really paying as much attention as I should. With 6 adults, an 8-year old, a 2-year old and an infant, plus a rat terrier and a Jack Russell terrier, there have been plenty of distractions most of the time.
It started snowing this afternoon and the temperatures are heading towards 0ºF tonight. Quite the turnaround from the glorious afternoon we spent at the Garden of the Gods yesterday afternoon. We have a flight out of DIA in the morning, assuming that the weather doesn't gum things up. It's been fun, but all good things come to an end.
Paul
Paul,
Sounds like your family time has been jam packed. Have a safe and uneventful trip.
Happy New Year!
Cheers,
Toni