Sourdough Newbie.. Questions
Hello to all..
I am a NEWBIE at all things sourdough.. (Although I have been baking bread for 40+ years).
I have created my starter and it seems very healthy. I have baked several loaves of bread with it and overall am FAIRLY pleased with the end results. .. would like better crumb structure and better oven spring. flavor is good however....
In my very limited experience with sourdough, I find that waiting for the starter to be active before using has been very disruptive for my schedule.... I also have found that I do not like wasting the discard.. so I began looking into more "schedule friendly" ways of making sourdough bread (and less wasteful). I discovered that I can use the unfed starter to make my bread.. (I know this is no revelation for those of you that have been making sourdough for years.. but it was quite encouraging, even liberating, for me!).
My questions relate to making sourdough bread with unfed starter and I wonder if anyone can help?
1) Does anyone have a successful recipe that uses unfed starter (I mean tried and true)?
2) Can I use my starter (as unfed) 48 hours after feeding and still get results?
3) Proofing seems to be a mystery for me.. how do I know that the bulk ferment stage is finished (and not over proofed?)
4) When removing the dough from the refrigerator after the overnight/extended second proof, do I need to check for additional proofing before baking (or does a successful bulk ferment guarantee that the dough will be ready for the oven once it has had it's shaping and refrigerator rest time)?
5) Once I am ready to bake, should I let the dough come to room temp before removing from the banneton basket or bake directly from the refrigerator?
I hope that some of you sourdough "experts" can help as I delve into the new world of sourdough.
I can help with a few of the questions
3) Proofing seems to be a mystery for me.. how do I know that the bulk ferment stage is finished (and not over proofed?)
There is no set answer, but the volume increase is the best indicator. Use a straight sided container, and use a rubber band or post it note to mark the level when it goes into the container so you can see exactly when it increases in volume the correct amount. I can't tell you the correct amount, because it varies. IIRC, when there was a community bake of baguettes, the best results were obtained from a 30 percent increase in volume. I make 100% home milled wheat loaves, and find 100% increase in volume works best for me. I suggest you try different amounts and keep notes to see what works with your recipe.
4) When removing the dough from the refrigerator after the overnight/extended second proof, do I need to check for additional proofing before baking (or does a successful bulk ferment guarantee that the dough will be ready for the oven once it has had it's shaping and refrigerator rest time)?
Simiilar to the above, volume is what you are looking for - though using a banneton makes it tough, since it is extremely hard to judge the amount of the increase in volume due to the shape of the banneton. If it has risen enough, it can go straight into the oven. If you think it needs to rise more, you can do that at room temp. No, a successful bulk ferment is just one part of the process and does not guarantee success. If you nail BF, then underproof final proof, the crumb will be less open than ideal, if you overproof the final proof, you won't get much if any oven spring.
5) Once I am ready to bake, should I let the dough come to room temp before removing from the banneton basket or bake directly from the refrigerator?
I find my best results directly from the fridge, easier to score and holds its shape better.
I appreciate your insight and advice. The learning curve is high at this point because I don't have much experience with this sort of leavening agent (unlike regular yeast).
Before getting into it - a question - how often do ya bake this? Enjoy!
Right now, 3-4 times per week.. trying to get the "unfed starter" part of the puzzle resolved.. Like I mentioned, the waiting timing of the "active starter" phase is not very user-friendly for my schedule.
Here's how I would approach fitting a sourdough process to a busy schedule. I'm going to assume a daytime job, with several hours home in the evening and some time in the morning.
- Day 0 early evening - refresh starter with flour and warm water. Put in refrigerator just before bedtime.
- Day 1 early evening - mix dough (10 minutes). Rest dough 30 minutes. Stretch&folds for two more hours (total hands-on time 10 minutes). Put in refrigerator just before bedtime.
Day 2 - depends on how long your bulk fermentation went on. I'm going to assume it was 4 hours before refrigeration. That is probably too short, so bring the dough in its tub to the counter when you get home from work and refrigerate it again before bedtime. Hands-on time 1 minute.
Day 3 morning - remove dough from fridge, and shape the loaf before leaving for work even though it's cold. Cover and refrigerate again. Hands-on time- 5 to 10 minutes.
Day 3 evening - remove loaf from fridge. Let it warm up and rise until 1 1/2 hours before bedtime. Preheat oven 1 hour before this time. 1 1/2 hours before bedtime, bake the loaf. Put the baked loaf on a cooling rack and leave it until the morning. Total hands-on time: 10 minutes.
The details will vary depending on how long your starter and dough take to ferment, the recipe, the style of loaf, and so on. This kind of schedule would work well for the usual kind of breads I make. The point is that you can build in a lot of flexibility by making good use of the refrigerator.
TomP
Thanks TomP..
I'll try this and see how it goes.. here's another question.. at what point does a "fed starter" become an "unfed starter"? There are recipes that I am reading that use an unfed starter.. and others that use a fed. It seems that those that using a fed starter will yield quicker bulk fermentation results.. (unless I am wrong about this too?).. so the question is at what point after feeding and seeing activity, have I lost the opportunity to use my starter as fed? Is it 24 hours after feeding? (I only mention this because SOMEWHERE in my VAST reading on the internet I saw someone mention this number). What do you think?
Jet...
After a starter is refreshed, the concentration of yeast and bacteria cells will be reduced and they start to multiply. The starter starts to become more acidic, little by little. As the oxygen in the dough gets used up by this growth activity, the cells start to go into fermentation mode and produce a lot more CO2 and some more acid. Starches get broken down into sugars that the cells can feed on. The CO2 causes the starter to rise. The starter is active and could be called "fed"
After a while, there isn't much easily broken down food and the yeast activity slows down. The yeast and bacteria concentrations are approaching what they were before refresh. The starter is more acidic, and the bacteria are continuing to produce more acid, but slower. If you feed it again, it takes some time for the cells to become active again.
At this point, the starter is becoming "unfed" because it doesn't have much available food left. If you use it in a bread dough, it will first have to go through the activation-refresh process and then continue to multiply and raise the dough, so the fermentation will take longer. The amount of initial acidity will be different from what it would be if you used a fresher, active starter, and that may change the timetable and dough qualities.
As a general rule, when a refreshed starter stops rising and then starts to fall, it has reached peak activity. As time goes on, the cells become less and less active. After more time goes by, the gluten structure gets degraded and the starter starts to get thin. Eventually it will turn into soup. You don't want that. You should throw away most of it and start refreshing it again until you get a nice active starter.
So the state of being "fed" will depend on many things, and the clock time is only one of them. My standard starter is 100% app-purpose flour at 100% hydration. Typically it will peak about 5 hours after refresh at around 75 deg F/24C. I would use it or refrigerate it at this point. If I left it out on the counter for 24 hours, it would become thin and unusable (or barely usable).
In the refrigerator it will remain usable for 2 - 3 days. Then it should be refreshed before use.
A starter of lower hydration will ferment slower. A starter that is refreshed with a larger amount of flour and water will take longer before it gets to that peak state since there is more flour to ferment.
TomP
That's a familiar timing.
That should keep ya going. Enjoy!
Let it thin out before using - should be thin.
That's not something I do. However, I did try making a loaf with very thin starter and although I had to adjust the hydration somewhat, it eventually made a pretty normal loaf. I didn't notice anything about the baked bread to would make me want to use thin starter regularly, though.
It's at a max when thin. Enjoy!
P..
Thanks for your pointers!
If you have been baking bread for 40 years, you are well equipped to bake sourdough bread. It's not really different (starter issues aside)! Bulk ferment will take longer than for a yeasted dough, but you must have learned to "watch the dough, not the clock" by now.
Maybe you are used to "punching down" and a second rise after, or even several punching downs. What that is about, really, is getting a longer fermentation time without letting the dough expand so much that the cell walls of the gas bubbles get too thin.
Since sourdough bulk fermentations usually take much longer, there is more chance that the dough will relax more than you are used to. However, the long fermentation time also sets the dough up to regain its elasticity during shaping of the loaf.
Many sourdough bakers (including me) don't bother with a mixer and mix their dough by hand. Since time does much of the work of organizing the gluten, we most of us don't worry about kneading up front to a window pane stage. Instead, we stretch the dough a number of times during the early part of bulk fermentation. That makes it easy to get a good gluten structure without working hard at it. But you can mix with a mixer and get a window pane then if you want, just like you probably did with your yeasted breads.
The signs of a well-fermented dough are the same for sourdough as for yeasted doughs. The same is true for shaped loaves, though where your yeasted bread may have proofed in 45 minutes to an hour, a sourdough loaf may take 1 - 3 hours. (These are not hard and fast numbers and things may vary all over the map).
As for refrigerating shaped loaves, I go by a rule of thumb that says that a loaf (or bulk dough) will continue to develop for about an hour after it goes into the fridge. So if you put a loaf into the chill around an hour before you think it will be ready, it should be in good shape the next morning. After that you can hold it for another day or two in the fridge before baking, so you have a lot of flexibility.
Some people bake right out of the fridge, some let the loaf warm up first. I fall in the middle. I'm too impatient to wait several hours for a complete warm up, so I may wait 30 - 45 minutes before baking. There's a potential advantage to baking cool, since it will take that much more time for the top surface of the loaf to get so hot that it gets too hard to spread any more. Also, cold dough holds more dissolved gasses than warm dough, so more gas will come out of solution during baking and therefore you could get more rise.
You can simulate a sourdough loaf without a starter, so you can start baking this kind of bread even before you have created a working starter. Just make a normal loaf, say 65% hydration, but use 1/4 to 1/2 tsp yeast instead of a whole package. The timeline will be about the same as most sourdough breads, and the flavor will be better than for a plain yeasted dough. You can bring the flavor closer to a true sourdough by collecting the liquid that will drip out of a live-culture yogurt. You cover the opening with cheesecloth, invert the container, and collect the liquid. Add an ounce of it to your dough. Now your bread will taste much like a mild sourdough bread.
TomP
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I am less intimidated by sourdough after reading your comments. The more I learn about sourdough, the more I am beginning to realize that this is "just bread" (although there are a lot of differences that I am still learning about--- starter/ fed/unfed/- cold ferment -- overnight or even for DAYS!).. The journey has been a lot of fun so far.
Thanks again for taking time to impart your wisdom and some of your experience.
Jet....
The thing is to try the easiest things first, and don't obsess about details. You have probably noticed - or you will when you ask for help with your starter - that many people will give you all kinds of advice, and that all the advice is different.
Some people will sort through all those different details trying to find the "best" way. But really what all those differences mean is that the process is incredibly tolerant and you can get good bread out of wide range of techniques. There is no "best" way. It's better to come to a personal, hand-on understanding that comes from actually working with the starters and flours. You must already have that for yeasted breads, after so many years of baking them. It will be the same when it comes to dealing with sourdough breads.
Now if you were a professional baker and wanted to wring every last bit of quality and consistency day after day, week after week, you would have to demand much more of yourself in terms of developing and following strict methods and procedures.
Fortunately we at-home bread bakers aren't in that position! We have the freedom to vary what we do and try weird things.
Thanks .. I am SLOWLY beginning to gain knowledge (and confidence).. but still have questions about what will yield the results I am after. Naturally, over time, I'll figure it out. Up till now, (10 loaves into this experiment), I have only had one really BAD result, I over-proved the dough (massively), and it just turned into a liquid of sorts. THAT was the only dough I actually threw out.
How sour do you want your bread to be? I like the classic strong sour that we used to enjoy in San Francisco.
Below is an authentic S.F. sourdough recipe which will make a small boule. Adjust quantities as needed. They used to bake on a schedule so specific times are given.
They used the sponge-and-dough method. First make a stiff sponge and then add it to the dough.
Unbleached AP flour
SPONGE
50% liquid storage starter (25 g) This is your "unfed" starter. It is kept long-term in the refrigerator. As time passes the starter turns to liquid. This is normal.
100% flour (50 g)
apx 50% water (25 g) - enough to make a stiff dough
Proof for 8 hours @ 90°F / 32° C
DOUGH
100% flour (100 g)
60% water (60 g)
20% sponge (20 g)
2% salt (2 g)
Proof 9 hours @ 90°F / 32° C
Slash crust
BAKE 375°F
I think the sponge-and-dough method facilitates long proofing times without dough degradation. This gives it extra sourness.
Thanks Dough...
I'll give this a try.. I am really excited about the different methods and recipes being shared.. LOTS to try to find my "go to"!
Here's a different take on one of your questions ...
after 2 or 3 years of working to understand my 100% hydration 100% whole rye sourdough starter, I have found that it is happiest hanging out in the refrigerator, where it remains ready to go with no feeding or discarding for 6-10 weeks at a stretch.
Each time I bake, I scoop out the amount I need and return the starter to its cool hibernation. When there's not much left in the jar, I estimate what a 1:5:5 feed would be and, after a rise at room temperature, stash it back in the fridge. After an abnormally long wait (10+ weeks), I might have to feed it twice before putting it back in the icebox.
I got back from a 10-day trip last night and mixed a levain with starter that had been sitting in my fridge for about 2 1/2 weeks. Now, after an overnight ferment, I am mixing a bread that I will probably bake tonight. With family arriving on Friday, I'll do some more baking and, since that will use up most of the starter, I'll follow that with a feeding.
This might not work for everyone or every kind of starter. And it might not be right for all kinds of breads. But my starter is so so so much happier now than it was when I was feeding it every day. And the bread I have been baking is better too.
Rob
Rob. this approach sounds like what I need to adopt. This sounds like it will work with my schedule very well.. Just to be clear: .... you make your starter (lots of it) and let it rise and fall at room temp.. then put it all in the fridge. When you are ready to bake, you just take whatever you need (cold) from the large container of starter and mix your dough. The only time you really feed it is to make more starter so you have it on hand when you want to bake?.. Do I have your routine down correctly?
If I have it right, my next question is how long are your bulk ferment times generally?
basically, yes, it's pretty simple. I don't even wait for my starter to fall. I let it rise and then pop it into the fridge.
I wouldn't say I make lots of starter. Maybe a half-filled pint-size jar -- which might be 200 or 300 grams of starter. But you might want more if you're baking often.
I use it cold out of the fridge. I generally mix levains with warm-ish water and probably give them more time than the recipes call for -- not because they need it but because I like a good sour base.
As for bulk ferments -- the saying cited here all the time is, 'follow the dough, not the clock' ... meaning that recipes are general principles, not commandments, and you might need more (or less) clock time depending on the temperature in your kitchen and type of bread you're baking (high percentage ryes can move very fast) and the hydration of the dough and a bunch of other factors. You'll figure it out.
Enjoy!
Rob
I'll definitely try this, thanks again..
King Arthur Baking has a couple of recipes you might find interesting. Both of them were discussed in this TFL post:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/71431/dont-be-bread-hostage
I haven't tried the "hostage" formula, but I have made the Do-Nothing Sourdough a few times with unfed starter and have liked the results. There's also another blog post at KAB that discusses simplifying/streamlining SD:
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2021/10/15/how-to-streamline-your-sourdough-bread-baking
I make this recipe regularly and it works very well! I like to make one big loaf rather than two smaller ones, which works well for me, as I have a large dutch oven.
IMG_7039.jpeg
Alcophile:
Thanks for the link. will definitely try this!