Hi All,
I've been wondering about this for quite some time.
We have three jars in the fridge:
- wholemeal wheat flour sourdough
- wholemeal rye flour sourdough
- rice flour sourdough
I started wondering if it makes sense and though I could get rid of one of the wholemeal ones, and make a white flour one instead.
Is there much difference? Obviously, the sourdoughs look differently and behave differently, but let's say I make a wheat-rye bread. will there be much difference between the result based on two wholemeal sourdoughs?
"Whatever makes you happy!"
I keep just one storage starter (or mother, or chef, or whatever one wants to call it) on hand which usually has bread flour, whole wheat flour, and whole rye flour in the mix. Levains for specific breads are built to that bread's requirements for flour type, hydration, etc., starting with a small amount of the storage starter. It's simple, saves time and cost of maintaining specialized starters, and it works. What's not to like?
Other bakers enjoy and use multiple starters because that best fits their purposes.
You can follow either of those paths, or a different one, and remain a member in good standing of the sourdough league.
Paul
and then switched over to a stiff whole rye one I keep in the fridge for weeks with no maintenance. Either way I would take small amount of starter and feed it what ever the flours were going in the bread to make a levain that was 15% or so prefermented flour. If 5 grain I built a 5 grain levain/ But if you want to make 100% whole wheat bread it is hard to do it with a rye starter or make 100% rye bread with a white starter. But I figured what is few grams of rye in a wheat bread anyway - no one could possibly notice.
There a lots of recipes out there that call for 2 or even 3 levain, all with different flours and hydration and even made at different temperatures too. They are supposed to promote different flavors and acidity mostly but I'm nit good enough to taste them.
Then there are all the different yeast waters, Corn based ones, potato starters, Witch Yeast, non gluten... etc. The list gets pretty long, pretty fast and before you know it you have a whole bunch of them hanging around in the fridge.:-) It is a disease really. Still, all you really need is one SD and one YW to make any kind of bread in the end. Just feed it what ever you need to in order to get the levain you want just use the YW for the non gluten and also in gluten breads where sour is not wanted or needed.
I have 7 right now but I really am slowly getting down to those 2 - if I don't die first. So like Paul says - anything goes and no way is right or wrong.
But a stiff rye starter nand YW both do not require any maintenance for months if you keep them in the fridge, Less work, cost and waste score very high in my book of dos and don'ts for all things - not just bread.
Happy baking
We have one leaven for all our breads. We make fruit bread, olive bread, white bread and dark rye, oh and croissants and brioche all from the same starter :) 50/50 whole rye and white spelt. Works well, easy to keep coz its just the one.
You could easily make a 50/50 whole rye/white.
but for probably different reasons.
No 1 is a white wheat starter. I use this for all wheat based breads. White because I have customers who like white bread.
No 2. is a white spelt starter. Used for 100% spelt breads.
No. 3 is Rye. Whatever Rye I have to hand, it doesn't care. Usually light rye though rather than 100% wholemeal rye.
It will all depend on how "pure" you want. I guess the rice one is for gluten free breads, but if you don't need it, then fridge space might be more valuable... You can get away with just a rye starter for everything if you wanted - I've considered it, but I'd need a big bucket of the stuff and my whites would be less white than white...
-Gordon
In the decades since I started using a SD starter I've kept only one. Here's my reasoning: sourdough starters serve the function of bringing live yeast and lactobacilli into your dough mixture in order to cause the dough to rise and taste better. The rising will happen if the yeast is alive and you don't do any of the things that might kill it after you make the dough. (The most common thing we do that kills yeast is baking the dough.) The flavor will happen because of the chemical fermentation caused by the lactobacilli. You actually need very little sourdough starter for these two events to occur. You can make many loaves with only a golf ball sized lump of starter. Since it's the yeast and the lactobaciili bacterium that are important for these processes, and not the flour you're feeding the yeast/bacilli culture, it don't believe the type of flour matters.
So, if I have tiny amounts of flours and I need to refresh my starter, I just mix them all together to do the refreshing. I use so little starter that it could never effect the taste of my final product.
If you disagree, I'd like to know your reasoning.
... when you're making bread to sell - as I do. Then I can claim 100% spelt, or 100% rye (or 100% wheat, but the reality is that the wheaties don't care unless it's not white when they want white) I have a small and growing number of customers who're buying rye due to wheat intolerance - same for spelt, but I sell more rye than spelt (spelt is much more expensive!)
If I wasn't selling my bread I'd probably just keep the one. (which I did before I started selling)
-Gordon
We make about 9 varieties of bread all very different including a white and and weve never had a complaint, only people commenting on the beautiful flavour, I think the grains from the leaven add interest and depth to white bread, in fact our croissants work well with the same leaven too, Because our culture is rye/spelt it works well for all the others as well, we have one loaf thats khorasan(kamut)/whole spelt/white spelt and thered be the tiny bit of rye from the leaven no ones complained and when people ask I tell them and it doesnt seem to deter them.
Sometimes I think, as bread nerds, we make it complex coz we like it :) we love all the nuances and details and variants, like alchemy! But people just want something that tastes good, presents well, and doesnt mess with their digestion.
Amber
Getting down to two, If you count the AYW. in a couple of weeks for sure. I still the rye and one potato too so the potato will be gone next :-)
So what was was that like 10 !? different leavens? too funny, how do you have space in your fridge, what a mission it must be to maintain them all :) a true culture master... or as my kids say "leaven bender" from the avatar series, hahaha
experiment that required new levain to be made every Monday for a Friday bake that had a toss half after day 2 s, rather than toss, I made a rye keeper for the fridge, then we got into a potato starter experiment so I had a left over Which Yeast, cooked and raw potato starter from that. There is 6 right there. Then I had a 40 week stored rye No Muss No Fuss one I was testing to see how long it could un-maintained in the fridge and mu nprma; No Muss No Fuss rye that is 10 weeks stared. So that was 8. I also have my AYW so that was 9. All of these starters were about 30-40 g each so they were tiny but the containers would hold a 100 g one before it doubled and hold it after it doubled too,
I tossed one of the potato starers last week and 5 others today so I am down to the 2 NMNF rye, the Yeast Water and 10 g of Witch Yeast because it so fun and different.
I've been making a lot of 6-7 starter combo breads of late if you have been following, trying to use them up, which were very nice and not easily made - even by me :-) I hate to throw anything away but we need room in the fridge for pickles, jam and chutney and nothing is more important than Orange Mango Chutney!
Happy Baking A108
Here too... When I got into sourdough last spring I had three cultures (white, wholemeal and wholemeal rye), but keeping them all going and having to give up fridge space was something of a pain, especially when for the most part, I'm only baking for mum and me.
So I culled them in the autumn and am down to one - the wholemeal rye at 100% hydration. I use it as a "seed" to build a levain for whatever bread I fancy by feeding with the appropriate flour. Having one culture at an easy to remember hydration just makes my life easier. :-)