September 20, 2023 - 7:47am
Would rye malt be helpful in establishing rye starter?
There is a recent and fascinating thread about CLAS. Lots of great information there but the one thing that caught my eye was the mention of rye malt having a high count of LAB's. My baking season will be starting soon and I will need to make a new rye starter so a question occurred to me: would adding rye malt (such as Weyermann) to whole grain rye flour be beneficial for that? Either store bough or freshly ground as I have gotten some rye berries and ground them in my Vitamix. I hopefully didn't overheat it as they went from the freezer straight to the Vitamix and at the end of grinding the temperature was 90-92 F.
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I've been wondering about a related question, which is producing a rye sour as in Ginsberg's The Rye Baker. He says to mix rye flour or even chops with water and leave overnight at room temperature. That's supposed to create a sour starter. To make a sour for a particular bake, take a little of that sour (which will be residing in a refrigerator), feed it 10:1 with rye and water, and again, leave it at room temperature overnight.
I find it takes much longer than overnight, between 12 and 18 hours, to get the result to be sour, and it never really bubbles and looks lively as he describes. Now I'm wondering if it needs diastatic rye mal to be included.
TomP
Yes, the first step in creating a rye starter from scratch could be done with 5% rye malt, 10% rye malt, 25% rye malt, or 100% rye malt, whole, milled or cracked.
Weyermann rye malt is excellent, high in LAB counts, rich in yeast species and yeast counts, and with high enzymatic activity. I usually buy rye malt already milled into schrot, unless a recipe specifically asks for unmilled rye malt, then I buy Weyermann.
For rye starters, 75% cracked rye grain and 25% cracked rye malt + acidified water (150-200% hydration) in the first step give the fastest results.
Acidify your first malt-flour- water mix a little to pH=4.5-5.0 to suppress stinky bacteria that need neutral pH to survive, and keep it at 90-95 degrees F until its pH falls below 4.0 due to sourdough LAB proliferating and producing organic acids. After feeding it, you can lower its temperature to 80-85F. Do not feed again until its pH falls below 4.0. Use a pH meter or 3.5-5.5 pH paper strips to track your starter's pH.
From my experience, a ready to bake with, highly aromatic rye starter with high gassing power is usually ready in 2-3 days.
The first step could be non-acidified and kept at 100-110 degrees F for 24-48hours to suppress E.coli by acidifying it to pH≤4.0 with existic microbes on rye malt and flour particles (it will be stinky) before feeding it rye flour (with 5% diastatic malt or 10% non-diastatic malt extract) and water and keeping it at 80-90 degrees F to encourage yeast growth.
To circle back to Ginsberg's directions, if it takes your procedure to get a highly acidified rye starter, then how is his able to be useful in rye baking? And using his method, would rye malt mixed in with the rye flour/chops improve the result, just with a say 10-hour fermentation period?
I used Ginsberg's instructions a couple of years ago to prepare my rye sour (aka Vaal). The procedure worked pretty much as written. After some initial vigorous activity from the "bad" bacteria, it was quiet for a few days then began bubbling up and rising. It was ready after ≈7 days. It could be that the rye malt will hasten the development of the sour.
I just pulled it from the fridge and tested it with the paper that @mariana linked; result: pH 3.5–4.0. It was fed ≈5 days ago.
It acidifies rye pre-ferments just fine, but lately it has been a little more sluggish where the yeast is concerned. I don't feed it on a regular basis, and that may be part of the reason for the sluggish performance. I might try adding some rye malt (I have Canada Malting rye malt form Ginsberg's NYBakers) on my next feeding.
Tom, a rye sour is not really a starter, it is more like a rye sponge to be completely used in bread.
Starters (a.k.a. rye sour cultures as Ginsberg calls them) are different, they are created as a breeding place where microbes multiply in optimal conditions. Those conditions Ginsberg illustrates on page 33. Sourdough yeasts multiply the fastest at 82F/28C, doubling in numbers every 60 min, When on a Petri dish with its optimal nutrition that suits them. At 68F/20C, a.k.a. "room temperature", that Stanley recommends later on in his book, they multiply every 120 min.
In any dough, unless supplied with yeast food by bakers, condition are never optimal for yeasts or LABs, more like in between bad and good for both. So, my starter(s) even at 82F/28C come back to their glory in 6-8hr after being fed 1:1:1. (1:2) ratio, essentially, numbers of yeast cells tripling in 6-8 hours. Whereas on a Petri dish they would double every 60 min, quadrupling in 2 hours, growing 8-fold in 3 hours, etc.
No wonder that in ten hours at room temperature your sourdough culture fed 1:20 does not produce much new yeast cells and there is so little gassing power. First, that temperature won't let them yeasts multiply fast. Second, they have no sugars to eat in a 0% sugar flour solution and tiny amounts of alpha amylase from rye flour with such low diastaticity are working very slowly at 20C, they love 63C.
You can take a portion of your starter or take all of your starter to use in bread making, in a sponge or in a direct method bread dough, but there will always be a portion left to propagate that starter later on (for example an equivalent weight of ripe bread dough taken out to preserve it or feed it to use in the next batch of rye dough).
On the other hand, rye sour is used completely in bread baking and can be fermented in different proportions and at different temperatures than starters.
Rye sours sour bread dough, they are carriers of flavors. So, if you use a rye starter in your bread formula, then it's an equivalent of direct method in rye bread baking. If you use rye sour, then it is closer in meaning to sponge-dough method of breadmaking. And that is the rule number one in rye baking: a rye sour or rye sponge/preferment must be way more acidic to taste than you would like your bread to be. Only then the resulting bread will have just the right level of acidity. Under fermenting rye sours and other preferments is a sin in rye baking.
Yes, although not as much as when you combine three things that suit sour culture (microbes) best. Just remember that Stanley's goal is not to produce a ripe ready to use starter/culture in 10-12 hours at room temperature, Beware. See my note below.
1) malting your flour at 3-5% level depending on how diastatic is your rye malt (or barley malt, etc.) or sweetening your flour by using 10% of malt extract with your rye flour.
2) lowering the ratio from 1:20 to 1:2.
We could assume that there is a typo and it should be 70:70:70, not 7:70:70, although the table on page 37 insists that it is 1:20 (10%:100%:100%, 0.25oz:2.5oz:2.5oz).
That said, Stanley clearly uses 1:2 refreshments (100% culture:100% rye:100% warm water) every 24 hours for his culture kept at 68-72F (New Sour Refresh table on page 36), which is just about right.
I am familiar with 1:20 feedings of rye starters. They do well at 30C, in between 28-30 C optimum for most sourdough yeast species and 32C optimum for sourdough LAB species like Lb.San-Francisco. In 24 hours they will be ready to use.
The fastest schedule of refreshment is when rye starters are fed in 1:1.5 ratio, ddt = 28C, and they are ready to be used in baking after 4-6 hours at 30C.
3) Rising temperature. Please keep your starter/rye sour culture at 82-90F/28-32C, not at rather low room temperature of 68-72F/20-22C. There is no way in hell that a starter fed 1:20 will mature overnight if kept at low/average room temperature, even if it triples in volume. Volume is irrelevant in rye starters, only acidity (pH, TTA, taste, aroma of a ripe starter) matters. Which is why not much is said about their volume in Stanley's description of feeding a culture.
Please, let me remind you about what Stanley says about his overnight Maintenance Refresh 1:20 at 68-72F. |After 10-12 hours It is not a completed refreshment yet. It is supposed to sit in the fridge after that for a day before being used. At that point it will become sufficiently sour and some species of sourdough yeasts will continue to multiply even in the fridge. He also quotes Hamelman saying that at room temperature a starter should be fed once a day to maintain it. Which is what Jeffrey does in his kitchen, his rye starter is ripe in 24 hours at room temperature when fed 1:3.6 in winter and 1:5 in summer.
Mariana, thank your for time you are putting into organizing and writing up all this material. I still feel I have some gaps in my understanding, which may partly be caused by Ginsberg's writing not quite meshing with my mind.
To get started with the rye starter/sour, I (thought I) followed The Rye Baker's (TRB) directions. I had some "pumpernickel" flour from Baker's Authority, and some rye flour from my local water mill - which seems to be a medium grind whole grain. I used some of each, and ended up with a refrigerated starter that smelled and tasted very sour - a kind of clean odor - and also showed a lot of largish bubbles through the walls of the container. So I assumed that I had achieved the right kind of starter.
Now here is where I get a little mixed up. On page 37, about maintaining and using a sour. On the one hand he says refreshing once or twice a week, no more than 36 hours before using some to make a sponge. On the other hand he says that the refrigerated culture will last indefinitely (in the refrigerator) The maintenance refresh is 20:1, fermented at room temperature for 10 - 12 hours. I would assume that before making a recipe's sponge, I should take 7g of that refrigerated starter (that is supposed to last indefinitely), add 70g each of rye flour and warm water, and it ferment overnight. Then I should take the recipe amount from that 147g of fermented mixture while creating the sponge.
Now in many of the recipes TRB says to make some of the starter and feed it 20:1 or even a higher ratio at room temperature to make a sponge - at least, this is how I understand the recipes. TRB always wants the water to be at 105 deg F, in these recipes, which I assume is supposed to counteract the cool temperature of the starting culture. When I do that, the sponge always seems to take much longer to get sour enough.
An example of one of these recipes is on page 199, Munich Penny Rolls. The rye sponge is supposed to take 16g of rye sour culture and add 160g each of medium rye flour and warm water. Ferment at 68 - 72 deg F (20-22C) for 16 - 18 hours.
Another such recipe is on page 222, Black Bread of Val d'Aosta. The sponge adds 70g each of medium rye and warm water to 10g of rye sour culture. Ferment for 10 - 12 hours at the same room temperature. "The sponge will be very bubbly, have a clean sour smell, and will have doubled in volume". When I try to make such a sponge, it takes more like 18 hours to get sour, it's never bubbly, and rarely increases much in volume.
This has gotten way too long. Mainly there seems to be some disconnect that I haven't quite grasped. Or maybe I need to start again to make a basic TRB culture...
Good morning, Tom!
Of course, at that point, at the end of 7 days, the starter should be tested before refrigerating it (or baking with it). both its acidity and gassing power should be tested.
Acidity is tested by pH paper (strong acids contents) and a few drops of indicators from an acid testing kit (total acidity).
The simplest assessment of its leavening power is to make a small sample of leaven (15g starter+ 75g bread flour + 75g ice cold water, it's a 1:10 ratio) and leave it alone in a one liter measuring cup for 12-16 hours at 20-22C. It should at least quadruple in volume by then and not fall, and, when vigorously stirred, more than double in volume again in one hour or less. Then it is ready and can be dried, refrigerated, frozen, and/or used in baking.
TRB has no instructions for that, unfortunately. Some starters are ready earlier than 7 days, some later, needing full two weeks to mature, some never become good starters at all. We just do not know the failure rate of TRB method.
I do not know if Stanley had a team of testers from different places before publishing that method, since Stanley himself bakes with a starter that he's owned since 2010 that was given to him "by a friend, who got it from another baker, who got it from another baker, and so on back into the distant past".
I assume that Stanley talks about his own starter that was gifted to him and tested by generations of bakers. This is how Stanley uses it. He keeps his microbial ecosystem intact by feeding it once or twice a week 1:20 and after 10-12 hours at 20-22C he refrigerates the sample. And he continues like that ad infinitum. And his starter stays the same, at least for the number of years he's had it.
The starter does not sit in his fridge (at unknown temperature, might be 0C or 8C or anything in between, 8C is best) indefinitely while being unfed for long stretches of time. It is taken out each 3-7 days and fed.
Now, for baking, he prepares a sample in the same way, taking out a portion of refrigerated culture, feeding it 1:20, 10-12 hours at 20-22C, it triples in volume and bubbles, looking like so
And this is how a rye sponge/preferment looks when made with a rye starter, rye flour and water (1:1:1)
Then Stanley refrigerates it for a while but no longer than for a day (24 hours), and it is ready for baking.
Tom, between overnight refresh and creating the sponge, you missed the refrigeration step at 6-8C for up to 24 hours until the starter is both acidic and very yeasty. We cannot use a starter that has no acidity, no leavening power (you mentioned before that your starter does not even rise overnight), and make a sponge with it. A refreshed rye starter should be a high quality starter, fully ready to leaven anything in sight and contribute intense flavor to it.
Well, your assumption is not quite correct. Hot water is used to achieve a desired dough temperature, the initial temperature of a refreshed starter, so it can then ferment at optimal temperature. It's just that optimal temperature of feed or very warm water if you 'dissolve' your starter in hot water first is a thermal shock to cold, lethargic microbes. It's like scalding a sleeping person's hands with a pot of boiling water to wake her up and expecting her to immediately start doing some work with those burned hands.
A starter is a carrier of certain microbes that sour and leaven bread dough. Those microbes experience a shock each time their environment abruptly changes and need about an hour to adapt to it. So, refrigerated starters are usually taken out of the fridge and sit on the counter to slowly warm up for 30-120 min, to avoid thermal shock which, as you noticed, kills some of them and damages others. During that time a still cold starter warms up, the microbes become lively, and the rye starter should again look like so
Only then can the now active starter be mixed with a 105F water and 72F flour to achieve an ideal DDT number (desired dough temperature). In other words, at that point the starter woke up, was activated, when handled in a gentle manner, and the sponge has initial temperature of about 32C/90F which is very beneficial for proliferation of microbes and their acid-producing and gassing activity.
There is nothing wrong with that description if you remember
1) that 16g of rye sour culture that was refreshed 24-36 hours ago, no longer than that.
2) that after taking those 16g of sour culture you let it sit on the kitchen counter for 30-120 min to become active again, very bubbly.
Sour culture is not like compressed or instant yeast which have special strains of baker's yeast that were designed to be used straight from the fridge. Active dry yeast is designed to be reconstituted in a small amount of 110 degrees F water before being used. Wild yeasts are extremely diverse, but they do not tolerate sudden changes for sure. You saw that with your own eyes.
Obviously, 10-16 g of sour culture is a very small amount, I would take out a whole jar (or a larger amount, at least 1/4 of a cup) of refrigerated culture, let it become active at room temperature, take the necessary amount for baking and the rest should go back to fridge.
It's up to you, Tom, of course. But in any case, please test your culture, new or old, at least test its pH and leavening power before concluding that it is good, ready for baking with it.
@mariana—Do you maintain your rye sour at 150–200% hydration and is that better than 100%?
If so, how do you judge when the sour is ripe after feeding? By pH alone?
Thanks!
@alcophile, Anything is better than 100% : )) I am serious.
A stiff whole rye starter should be stiffer than that, about 70-90% hydration, a liquid starter should be way more liquid than that, to the point of not just 120-200% hydration (those hydration numbers are for flours with 15% moisture content) but 1000% hydration. Those are both traditional and most effective hydrations figured out by artisan and industrial bakers and confirmed by scientists.
100% hydration only makes sense if our rye flour is very dry due to exceptionally low air humidity in your pantry where it is stored.
I maintain several precious rye starters' cultures in dry form, they are unique, they are practically national treasures protected by Unesco or state laws, or cultures from extraordinary bakers, etc.
For daily baking, it is so easy and fun to develop a rye starter from scratch even under 24 hours, or to feed my refrigerated Nancy Silverton's white starter rye flour 3 times in 24 hours, I do not even bother to keep a rye starter maintained daily on the kitchen counter or in the fridge/freezer.
Only CLAS is kept at 120-185% hydration (on a 15% moisture in flour basis) and is refrigerated for maintenance. I am not a big fan of CLAS, although it's a beautiful starter. I prefer yeast rich starters, either sourdough brews (1000% hydration starters) or stiff rye starters in baking.
Technically, it is not pH that matters but TTA. After a starter reaches its target pH, it usually takes several hours of further fermentation to reach its target TTA at that same pH!
Also, different traditions favor different pH in their rye sours and rye breads. For example, the target range for pH of a ripe German starter and even ripe German sourdough (rye bread dough) is between 3.4 and 4.2. French sours are about ten times less sour: 4.0-4.5, Whereas Italian sours (lievitos naturales) form two distinct groups, if judged by their microbiology, pH and TTA.
It is so simple, quick and affordable to measure our starter's TTA once at home without any special lab equipment or training. I use acid test kits they sell to test wines or purchase tiny bottles of phenolphthalein and 0.2N NaOH which they also sell separately. .
Once I measured TTA once, I simply know that at that ratio of refreshment and that temperature my starter/sour/preferment is ready in such and such time and I write it down to rely on it in my future bakes. It will have not just typical sourness at that time (which reflects its pH), but a typical look and flavor/aroma (which reflects its TTA).
Although I already started a rye starter from the grain blitzed in the aforementioned Vitamix using the traditional method after Hamelman (it's on day 8 and doing rather well) I'll definitely try your suggestion once I get those pH strips. As for the grain: I have crushed rye malt but only whole grain rye. I don't have a grain crusher or a mill (yet) only that Vitamix. Would grain blitzed in it work or does it have to be crushed? And what can I use to acidify the water? Vinegar? Lemon juice? Or is that too crazy?
Yes, bitcat70, of course Vitamix would work just fine. It will create a mix of rye malt flour, and cracked rye bits of different sizes in its jar as you pulse over and over. The more you crush, crack, and mill it in your Vitamix (watch its temperature to not kill the microbes by overheating it), the more flour would be in the mix, eventually creating medium schrot, then fine schrot, and, in the end, 100% rye malt meal.
Yes, you can easily acidify your water with 5-6% vinegar, creating a 0.3% acetic acid solution. 10 g (2 tsp) of 5-6% vinegar per each 180g (3/4 cup) of warm water in your first mix on day one of developing a starter.
Industrial standard for acidified water to protect soaked whole grain from rotting as it begins to germinate, is three times stronger, a 0.9% acetic acid solution, which is 17g of 5% vinegar per each 100g of clean water.
What I mean by that is that you can presoak your whole grain rye kernels and whole grain rye malt in 0.9% acetic acid solution for 18 hours at room temperature to fully rehydrate them. For example, I show two ryes side by side in one vessel where they are about to be soaked:
After 18 hours of rehydration one rye grain swells more than other:
And then drain them, and blitz them in your Vitamix or food processor, until you have either activated wet chopped grain (40% moisture grain)
or fully blended malted rye dough which you can leave alone to spontaneously ferment, use as a feed to your starter, of as your rye sponge or rye bread bread dough, etc.
You can freeze portions of it and use them as needed. Because rye kernels became activated, in the early stages of germination, they are choke full of vitamins and enzymes, and using them is the fastest way to develop a rye starter, or fully revitalize an existing starter, or making exceptionally fragrant rye preferments and rye breads with them.
There are many methods of acidification of the first step of creating a starter from scratch. They all work. People on this forum like pineapple juice solution, for example. The pH of pineapple juice may range between 2.51 and 3.91, depending on whether people store it in a freezer, refrigerator, or at room temperature.
Others acidify the first mix of water and flour/meal by adding to it yeast, it quickly brings pH down to pH = 5.0, sour beer, vodka or straight alcohol, sour whey strained from yogurt or buttermilk, sauerkraut juice, lactic acid or citric acid, Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), sour fruit juices, like orange juice or apple cider, and many, many other things to suppress those stinky fecal bacteria on the surface of the grain until they die off (E.coli, Enterobacter spp), and let the 'good' sourdough bacteria and wild yeast thrive instead.
Thought this link might be helpful for some descriptions how one can make a rye starter from scratch and quickly, using malt in many options (use auto google translate): http://brotgost.blogspot.com/2021/08/Itogi4.html
I once followed the method from the first video when I was in Russia, and the aroma of this first liquid starter was absolutely mindblowing, and the bread was also so aromatic (I didn't follow the bread recipe from there, just made up something on the spot back then).
I have just tried the method with rye flour, red rye malt, active malt, and some honey and raisins, for fun on the weekend - it worked, it was bubbly after 48 hours - but for me the starter wasn't super active this time, and didn't get such an amazing aroma. Might repeat it again with a different flour and with malt extract... And my diastatic malt powder is quite old, should source some fresh one.
Diastatic malt may/will speed up all maltose-fermenting organisms in your starter, which I guess could be a good thing. Whether it will actually participate in inoculating the starter - you'll probably never know.