Starter doubling or tripling - time or target?
Just curious what most of you do when developing or refreshing a starter, in terms of doubling or tripling targets, and time it takes to get there.
I used to keep to the volume growth target, and refresh only when the levain made the target (or was beginning its decay phase, whenever that was). Aiming, over time, for the time and target - say, a tripling within 6 hours at 78F.
It occurs to me, though, that may not be right. Firstly, I wonder how much acid damage I'm doing by allowing it to get to that point consistently, rather than refreshing at an earlier stage of development.
Secondly, I surmise I'm favoring LAB over young, viable (and vital, "perky") yeast, and so am handicapping the relative leavening ability of the levain.
I'm going back to building blocks, and levain is central. For what it's worth, I develop a Rubaud-levain (as written by MC, Shiao-Ping and dmsnyder, for the most part), and maintain a rye culture.
Shooting for a tripling of the Rubaud levain within 7 hours. The levain is salted at the rate of 0.25% (after MC's protocol), so it's slower than it used to be, obviously. I'm currently doubling at 78F at 7 hours.
My bent is to just change out at this point, favoring young yeast, and proceeding in this lower-acid environment to my goal, the tripling target. (I prefer sweeter sourdough, "wheatiness" at the fore over fermentation organoleptic contributions).
Thoughts? Time or target?
NOTE: I should add that mariana's thread on Professor Calvel's pain au levain has been fundamental to me. When I see her levain screams to target at 3 hours, I know I'm not there! M. Rubaud similarly speaks of his robust levain. Mine is, well, other, yet. How to best get there?
A few months ago, @Doc.Dough posted a scholarly set of observations on The 2% weight loss method for judging levain maturity that you might find of interest. I have made a few measurements since that confirm, for me, his observations.
However, since I’m not as seriously inclined or too lazy to care, I generally follow a 3 generation levain build process beginning 36 hours before I mix a batch of dough. It goes something like this, with each generation lasting about 12 hours:
Gen 1: 5 g of my refrigerated starter + 10 g water + 10 g flour
Gen 2: 25 g Gen 1 + 25 g water + 25 g flour
Gen 3: 75 g Gen 2 + 125 g water + 125 g flour
Yields 315-325 g of lively levain.
Doc’s observation provide an interesting explanation for where the angel’s share of levain goes and I suppose I would monitor weight loss more often if I was working on some new, important recipe requiring only the liveliest levain. But truth is, yeast and all the helper bacteria seem to be awfully forgiving in my experience, so I plod along with a method that requires little thought, just some planning. You’ll notice that I don’t necessarily adhere to a strict 1:2:2, 1:4:4, etc. orthodoxy. My goal is to end the process with about the right amount of levain for the dough I am building. Adjustments can be, and are, made all along the way during mixing, bulk, retard, shaping and baking, so controlling this one aspect of dough build is important but not much more so than any other step.
Wishing you the best of luck on your yeasty quest,
Phil
Thanks alot Phil, we actually follow a similar protocol. I've just never screwed up like this (wholesale switch to rye from longstanding wheat levain, and on top of it, ended up with a very tiny seed for this recovery) before and so don't know if it's better to just let it develop to, let's say, even just a doubling, or keep replenishing at a set time, regardless of development (hoping for a ton of new yeast growth).
I have experimented with very small levain percentages in the main dough (as low as 1%), setting up for a 22-24 hr bulk (some French guys are big on it, and I wanted to check it out) and there, I obviously just let it ride until the bulk volume target was achieved.
Just uncertain if the same thing rides here - let it sit no matter how long to get to target volume increase, or keep replenishing a young and very slow recovery levain.
Thanks again - on the dehydration thing, too. That's wild.
Paul