ive recently been given a sour dough starter and have begun doing a lot of reading on how to care for her (Martha) and how to use her to bake bread. I've had a few successes, some 'meh' bread, and several fails. The more I read, the more I'm confused about all of the terms I've listed in the subject line. Is it possible to keep a starter and use that for making bread without all of the other steps? I feed her two times a day, about 7am and about 10pm. I want to begin the process of making bread about 6:30am. I just recently read about the float test and tested my starter at 6:30 this morn and it sunk straight to the bottom. Help???
Well now I know why I mispelled poolish, because of auto correct each time! Anyway.....
@Kim S.
Preferment categories are confusing. Jacob Burton does a good job of explaining away the confusion here.
On your submarine starter; time and temperature are your best friends. Sounds as if your fermentation is not as active as you would like it to be and isn't producing enough CO2 to puff up the gluten bubbles, necessary for flotation (you do have bubbles?).
The other factor, time, may not be long enough to produce enough CO2 (to support flotation). I don't use the flotation test any longer as simple observation and a finger tip touch and release on the surface of the dough tells me everything I need to know.
Best to observe what the dough is doing at temperature using time as your reference...,
Wild-Yeast
The correct spelling is levain :)
A sponge is a stiff starter with the consistency of dough. Many home bakers use a liquid starter.
to be fed a half hour later. Feed it and see if it will float 4 hours later. Its like asking you to run a mile while you are asleep at night and not dreaming.
One of the problems with names is that there are several languages at work. Levain is French for sourdough. Pain au levain is sourdough bread so levain could be a starter, or mother that is stored for use later a larger built preferment for a loaf of sourdough or the bread dough itself. A preferment is just a fermented part of the dough that is constructed before the dough is mixed and allowed to ripen. A preferment can be yeast or sourdough. A liquid pre-ferment that is made with yeast is a poolish and a stiff one is a biga. A sourdpugh pre-ferment cannot be a poolish or a biga (might as well get some Italian in there too) but it is a liquid or stiff levain instead. Madre is Italian for mother so this tis he Italian word for the starter or mother that is stored for later use to make a liquid or stiff levain. I would tell you what a liquid and stiff levain in Italian is but, that would just confuse you to no end and possibly make you eat too much pizza - if that is possible.
I hope you are now not as confused as I used to be but, no worries and take heart. It will all become.2nd nature to you too ....in a few decades or possibly less. Oh ...and the English are the only ones to use sponge which has all kinds of special meanings for them except what a sponge really is so I would just forget even mentioning it altogether. They really don't speak proper English now do they? We are at least separated by a common language and it is probably best kept that way:-) They seem to bake perfectly fine bread anyway, whilst ( I told you they had weird words) using horribly weak flour and calling them all sorts of strange things like baps, bloomers and other weird unmentionables. Best to keep calm and carry on.
Happy SD baking
@Kim S.
Preferment categories are confusing. Jacob Burton does a good job of explaining away the confusion is instead here. Sorry for "adding" to the confusion.
Wild-Yeast
if dabrownman was trying to be comical but I found it to give me a chuckle.
I think the point is, there are so many words and names for sort of essentially the same thing. I always use levain for my sourdough starter build... and use poolish for a commercial yeasted liquid pre-ferment. That's what I have been tending to bake with lately anyways. It all comes down to the fact that like dabrownman said, they are mostly all different words for the same thing. =) Just pick one and roll with it and just know, if you come across any of these terms in different recipes and formulas, you know what they are talking about.
Happy baking
English. Churchill is one of my vary favorite historical figures of all time. He had a way with words, keeping calm and carrying on like many English do and are so famous for. The post was supposed to be worth reading for some facts but fun too. Glad you liked it. I knew Abe would explain sponge perfectly and make it sound completely boring at the same time - which it is:-)
Happy baking
and am still smiling. Thanks. :)
What a coincidence....you'll see, DBM.
Poolish and biga are names of pre-ferments with yeast. Poolish is generally 100% hydration and biga is less hydrated. More like a dough.
Starter and levain are the same thing but terminology changes on how use it. If you keep a mother starter and take some off to build a preferment then this is a levain. If you just keep one starter, feed it and use it then it's called a starter. Or mother starter. Basically a levain is an off-shoot starter. A starter and levain can be any hydration.
A sponge is a pre-ferment that is high hydration. Again, can be used interchangeably. A poolish or high hydration levain can be called a sponge.
Terminology does crossover.
How are you feeding her? (How much Martha, water and flour?) And when did you feed her last? Is she on the counter or in the fridge and about what temperature is she? Oh, and what's her favourite food?
Basically Martha is a yeast and bacteria culture and gets used in recipes when her yeast population is high. After first feeding the culture (one has to feed enough to stimulate growth) there should be a lag time followed by a gradual increase in activity, a levelling off of that activity (peak) and then a decline in activity as available food is used up by the wee little beasties.
forget about it .
the international language soup , bug is another name for starter , and Rewena is another name for sourdough .
I trust this has clarified the matter , lol