Should I keep both? | The Fresh Loaf

Hello bakers.

During carnival I was out in the country for a week. While there I made a new starter. It was easy and fast. Just water and whole flour and in 3 days it was already full of activity. Smelling like bananas and rising strongly.

So I bring it back, and baked with it. Everything went fine.

I can't really tell any difference between my old starter and this one. Not in the taste nor in the rising power. If any, perhaps, this new one is a little stronger, but a marginal difference that is probably because of the WW used, which is normally faster (my old starter is mostly maintained with white bread flour).

So I'm thinking there is no advantage in maintaining both.

So what do you think, should I combine both in one new starter?

Or discard the new and keep my old an faithful?

thanks for your opinion

vicente

IMO. Keeping more than one starter is time consuming unless that doesn't bother you. Combining them will help make a new interesting starter and it'll take on different characteristics. I believe it also helps with health of a starter. Not so inbred. I make new starters every so often for the fun of it but never keep them going. I bake with them and then add them to my ongoing starter.

that's was exactly the case. :)

Thanks for your insight. I'll combine them so. Some new friends for my old buddy.

vicente

I am up to 3 starters, well actually 4 but I don't use one, that I have either started or was given. Two are from Fresh Loaf people so I treasure them but keeping and deciding which one to use is getting to be a pain.

So last night, I took a bit of the three and combined them. I was concerned because there is a Thread on TFL where someone did that and killed their starter. I refreshed my originals just in case but I am really happy to know that combining them isn't going to automatically kill them. Today the combination starter is nice and bubbly so that is a good sign.

I am going to dry some of my originals for safe keeping.

If you think that the difference is the whole wheat flour, feed a bit of your regular starter with whole wheat flour for a week and then run a side-by-side test to see if the difference between the new starter and the old starter on WW flour is still distinctive.

Check the dynamic response by making two precise replications and photographing the rise vs time for both in side-by-side shots. If they are the same, the dynamics will be indistinguishable in terms of the growth vs time. Then if they smell the same and bake the same it doesn't make any difference and you can toss one of them.

You can also do a stress test by taking your paired comparison samples and refrigerating them for a month and then rebuilding them to see if they still seem to be the same. You might be surprised by that result.

By the way, starter sample size can be quite small. Typical lab quantities are less than 1 gram though I find that 30g (post mix) is easier to manage in the kitchen. This makes it easy to mix 5 + 10 +15 (starter, water, flour) and have it mature overnight or from AM to PM at typical kitchen temperatures. Then you can feed it and use the ~20g of leftovers to initiate 450g (after accounting for the mixing loss) of levain for a next-day batch of bread (20 +220 + 220)

I might try this starter race.

I already combined some, but kept the seed of each one. So now it might be 3 competitors.

Thanks for your answer.

I'll post here the results.