Hello,
This week I had a day of orientations here at my work, with a baker from our flour supplier, and she advised me on some issues that I came about. When we tryed to bake with my starter, she pointed out that the starter should be accounted as water (even being a stiff starter). I started it with 200g flour, 100g beer, and kept feeding it as follows, until today:
130g starter
65g flour
30g water or beer
I just wanted to know if I should follow her advice and consider the starter as water...
Thanks
You should consider your starter what it is made up of. In your case your starter is 45% hydration which is quite low even for a stiff starter. You could probably adjust your ratio to 50% which will make the math easier. That is to say 1 part water to 2 parts flour. You must need to feed your starter every 3-4 hours with that much starter to flour ratio.
None the less. If you have 250g of your 45% hydration starter going into a dough you Divide the 250 by 100% (flour) + 45% (h20) or 145% and the result will be the total flour in the starter. The remainder will be liquid.
250/145%=250/1.45 =172.4 (flour)
250-172.4= 77.6 (liquid)
If your starter was 80% hydration we would
250/180% = 250/1.8 = 139 (flour)
250-139 = 111 (h20)
If it was a liquid levain @ 125% hydration you would
250/225% = 250/2.25 = 111 (flour)
250-111= 139 (liquid)
Josh
To get the hydration you want in a dough you have to account for the water if your starter is very stiff like yours or very wet like others. If you are making a 70% hydration dough and your starter is also 70% hydration, you can just ignore it completely to get the hydration right in the final mix.