Proteolytic starter ruining high-hydration whole wheat dough?
Hi all, I didn't know whether to post this in whole grain or starters. I usually post in whole grain, and it's a whole-grain starter. But this question is all about the starter itself...
So I made another run at the Theresa Greenway 100% hydration 100% whole wheat sourdough formula, with the same (failing) results as the last time. Her dough is smooth and elastic, mine is clotted, with a sort of weak, fragile mushy character. It displays some gluten but it's just not a pleasing dough at all.
Going back to re-watch her video I can see that her 500 gram inoculation of 100% hydrated whole wheat starter looks like her dough: like a supple, elastic, high-hydration dough. Whereas my starter was shaggy/fragile/mushy....just like my dough is now.
Did I allow my starter to over-ferment and go proteolytic, and now it has carried that same problem into the main dough? Her formula is 500 grams of starter, 500 grams of water, 500 grams of flour, and 14 grams of salt. So 250 grams out of the 750 total grams of flour are in the pre-ferment. It's a high percentage, especially if there's something wrong with it.
She fermented her starter for 6 hours, whereas I left mine out overnight in a cool location. Did it just go way too far and develop a runaway enzyme reaction?
The other possibility is that this is just more water than my flour can handle.
What do you think?
Its possible your starter may be over fermented but without photos it's not possible to diagnose.
But I didn't photograph the starter before adding it to the dough. Nor the dough before I punted and baked it off as rolls. Here is a picture of the baked roll, though, in case that's useful at all.
For 100% hydration it looks better than it has any right to be.
The dough made good pain a l'ancienne type rolls. I didn't trust it to make good bread. It just didn't feel right.
Well, maybe next time I'll just try changing both variables: decrease hydration to 85 or 90 and make sure my starter isn't over fermented.
Easiest guess is overfermented starter and over-over fermented dough. I like to follow David Snyder's guidance of refreshing my starter 3x before using it to seed a levain. I bake once every 5-7 days and between bakes my starter is refrigerated. If you're baking daily, then obviously three refreshments isn't necessary. But I like to see my starter (maintained at 80% hydration) very gluten-stretchy and not soupy at all. Soupiness means proteases and they definitely hitchhike along into a levain, doing nobody any favors.
Overnight in a 'cool' place sounds too uncontrolled and dangerously inviting for over-fermentation. I thought I could pull off bulks like that in my early days before I fully recognized my limitations and the importance of controlling bulk time x temperature carefully. I'd try to control it more closely, with a typically warm (78˚F, 25˚C) bulk for 2-4 hours and otherwise refrigerate/retard.
Finally, that sounds like a lot of levain (you call it "starter"). But if you're following a legit formula, then somebody has demonstrated it can work in this context. So you know best about that.
Tom
I'm not sure why she chose to use so much levain, but it did work for her bake. But her levain was clearly dough-like, whereas mine was mush. I wonder if I my starter can be reclaimed at this point or if it's gone too far along the proteolytic path.
I would feed your starter several times serially, using a low inoculation proportion. And either refrigerate or re-inoculate immediately just when it domes. You’re basically trying to outrun protease production with refreshment. Proteases don’t reproduce themselves. And if your bugs don’t feel the need to make so many, they’ll dial down production and your starter will return to appropriate behavior.
Good luck and keep us posted.
Tom
I did a few feeds and it seems ok. I will continue working on developing better practices for sourdough care. My last bake was the 100% Wholemeal Spelt Treacle but I used a combo of my sourdough starter and my yeast water to leaven it, instead of ADY. It was a little slow in the final proof and I got impatient and baked it off, but it came out great: moist tender, and with a faint hint of molasses/malt and a faint hint of sourdough tang. So I think the sourdough starter has been pulled back from the brink. I just need to treat it a little more gently. I don't want to get hauled off to the pokey for sourdough abuse!
Sounds good. Although not so sure about spelt treacle bread. Wow. Sounds positively 17th C. Covid got you caressing Scottish monoliths?
Stay safe.
Tom
Hi Seaside Jess,
How much starter is used in the levain in this recipe?
Also, where did you find the recipe?
Thanks,
Y.