Hello!
I just made my first sourdough whole wheat oatmeal bread from txfarmer using my Peter Reinhart starter. However, I do not know if it's because my starter is still young (my first refreshing time is tomorrow-it's the 4th day since the brith of the mother culture-) or it's just the presence of tang in my bread, but my first loaf was soft as can be but a bit sour. My family and I have switched to using purely whole grain and sourdough risen breads, but they are having a hard time adjusting to the taste as they are used to sweeter breads.
After doing some research, I found I might be able to reduce the sourness of my bread by reducing the hydration and increasing the feeding times before making my bread. Has anyone ever reduced their Peter Reinhart starter down to 50% and what adjustments did you have to make to recipes to accommodate a thicker sourdough?
Most people leave their sourdough on the counter and then just feed them two or three times a day to make the sourdough more active. Peter reinharts refreshing of the starter is not as simple as that as it requires mixing everything together, siting out 4-8 hours and then popping it into the fridge. Apparently you also have to degas the container the starter is in and then it can be used in 3 days before being remade again. My starter on its 3rd day in the fridge is very acid smelling. because of this unusual process of refreshing, I am a bit hesitant to deviate. Can anyone suggest what to do if I wanted to feed my starter several times before I bake with it or should I just follow the peter reinharts formula? I just don't want to waste a whole bunch of dough in the process as Peter Reinhart has you discard everything except for 3.5 ozs order to refresh a starter?
And lastly, the other solution was adding more starter than what a recipe calls for allowing for a faster rising time and less proofing time where the sourdough might develop more sourness, . So, if I increased the amount of sourdough to use by itself or in a levain, how much should I increase the starter by and what adjustments would have to be made to the levain and to the rest of the recipE in general?
Obviously , some of this will be trial and error, but if I could have some helpful input to get me started, I would really appreciate anyone who can answer my questions!!!! As I have said, my family is not overly fond of sour after tastes and we are trying not use white flour or yeast for personal reasons, so I am trying to come up with some full proof modified recipes that will adhere to their palates. Thanks so much!!!!!
I too have someone at home who isn't particularly fond of the sourness a sourdough -can- produce. She is particularly sensitive to any hint of sourness when I bake sweet breads with sourdough (and so am I in that case). So I started researching and trying different starters to find one that doesn't lead to any added sourness, and eventually stumbled upon the lievito madre: a traditional italian starter, very firm, which is used to leaven Panettoni and other sweet breads.
mrwilson here at TFL is probably the true expert when it comes to the lievito madre, but in essence it is a very firm starter (hydration at, or close to 50%), which you maintain at room temperature. Now, to make a panettone you need to refresh the starter three times (at ~3 hour intervals) to make sure the bread doesn't go sour. But for bread, you only need to refresh it once every 12-24 hours - based on my experience and mrwilson's site. I hope he doesn't mind, but he is a better source than I am so here is the link:
https://staffoflife.wordpress.com/natural-yeast-lievito-naturale/
I'm not sure what the result would be if you were to make this starter with whole wheat flour, perhaps it would have a little tang to it due to that. But I can't imagine that it would have much sourness if you made a routine out of feeding it twice a day. An added bonus is that I experience the dough as being stronger both in structure and in rising power with this starter than with a looser one.
that sounds pretty good. I sent a private message to mrwilson, so hopefully he can help me further. Given that my starter is so young do you think I should feed it according to reinhart's instructions for a little while just to make sure it's strong enough to make the transfer from 75 to 50%?
Also, the italian sourdough can be kept in water apparently to limit the acid taste. Do you know anyone that has tried that before?
if I did try converting my dough to the Italian 50% hydration (i think mrwilson recommended that on his site in the comments area for someone who already has an active sourdough), can you think of any adjustments that might need to be made if I do use whole grain like time, temperature or the measurements of my ingredients? Thanks
Update: Mr Wilson does deal with whole grain much so he can't advise me on that.
I don't think it's important for you as a home baker to keep your starter in water to lower acidity further. I haven't tried doing it myself (though I too am intrigued) but as long as I've fed my starter two or three times, that has been enough to keep the sour out of the dough, so to speak. I would probably convert my starter like this if I had to start over:
Take starter at whatever hydration it is, convert to 50%, feed twice a day for a two days, then feed two-three times with three-four hour intervals. I let my starter rise at perhaps 25-26 degrees celsius, and under those conditions it easily doubles and more often than not, triples. Of course you will have to pay attention to whether your starter takes this treatment well, but as long as it doubles or more without trouble before you convert it I don't think anything will go wrong.
If you want to try this with whole grain, I'm sure you would have to go with a 60-65% hydration. If I've understood things right, whole grain flours absorb anywhere between a little to a lot more water. The starter I refer to is definitely firm but not completely dry, and not crumbly.
One thing I should add is that I use good quality, stone-milled flour without any additives. As organic (or ecological as we say in Sweden) as possible, to put it simply. I tried starting a sourdough with standard supermarket flour, and it was never any good. Personally I prefer to use the best organic flour possible available to me for both dough and starter.
allows the LAB to produce more acid for a longer time then what they would do in a white flour mix. So less sour means you want to use white flour for your starter and levain builds.
Another thing that makes more sour is temperature in two ranges. High and low temperatures favor LAB reproductive rates over yeast and the more LAB you have to yeast the more sour will will make. So keep your starter at room temperature of 68-74 F. Higher temperatures in the 88 - 92 F range really spur on acid production resulting in more sour and storing the starter at 36-40 in the fridge for a long time will do the same thing.
The third thing to make a starter or levain less sour is to feed it often and use it while it is young right after its last feeding. The Tartine and FWSY ways of maintaining a starter by Robertson and Forkish as designed to make SD bread as least sour as possible. The reason is that most people do not like sour bread and these two are running bakeries that cater to their customers tastes.
Both LAB and yeast love being wet more than anything but LAB kike higher hydration the best so a 60 -70% hydration is where you want be for starters on the counter
Happy non sour SD baking
Hi! Thanks for recommending the Tartine and FWSY. I will have a look at these books later. Just so I know what to look for, what exactly do they do differently in their approach of maintaining a sourdough starter that provides a less sour starter? Or was it the factors you mentioned above? Thanks so much!!!! I really appreciate it.
White flour, many feedings at room temperature at 100% hydration and using the levain while it is young after the last feeding sounds like I'm paraphrasing Tartine without reading the book.