July 7, 2022 - 1:57am
starter feedings for 100% rye sourdough bread
From my experience with white wheat sourdough breads, frequently feeding a starter is essential for creating a good oven spring and open crumb. However, an underfed starter can still produce good and tasty bread albeit with less oven spring and with a tighter crumb. Since rye breads will not have an open crumb and won't have much oven spring, is there a purpose to frequently feeding its starter? I am considering just keeping a piece of the dough from each bake in the fridge, and then just using that to leaven the next loaf.
Share
I would still do a 2-3 stage build for rye bread anyway, too much acidity due to slow rise with an inactive starter is bad for the dough. Otherwise, I keep my rye starter in the fridge, it's fine.
I've been surprised how much loft ryes can achieve. Ilya can correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect simply keeping a piece of old dough wouldn't offer the combo of acids and yeasts that make this possible.
Old dough can totally work, if it's not stored too long: you just need to be sure you are activating it well for the bake... One traditional way would be to actually dry old dough (then no fridge needed), and before making dough make a very liquid levain out of it until it is fizzing, then go on to pre-dough and final dough.
cool. I've learned something new!
Wouldn't drying still weaken the yeast? Im surprised it would be more effective than say storing in the fridge
I'm not saying drying is better in general, it's just better for storing for longer. That's just one of the traditional ways. Fridge is also totally fine. But either way, rye bread in general benefits from multi-stage builds, but this would be particularly important with a less active starter.
thx