I have been feeding my countertop starter twice a day in an equal ratio. I find I’m not baking twice a week as planned but I like to have a starter ready to go if I add a bake day. I would like to reduce to one feeding a day. Can I feed like a ratio of 50 starter, 100 flour and a 100 water and just feed once a day?
50g starter + 100g water + 100g flour is 1:2:2 and isn't a good enough feed for once every 24 hours. If you aren't baking often then feeding it everyday will just be wasteful and time consuming.
How is feeding it everyday, to have starter ready to go, any better than keeping it in the fridge and taking it out to feed the night before you wish to bake?
Riley, if it is possible to efficiently feed once a day without very cool temperatures I’d like to know how. I keep my starter n the counter and have done so for over a year. I feed 2:6.5:12 and keep it around 76-78F. I have tried many things to extend the duration of fermentation to 24hr with no luck. I would think a 24 hr feed cycle would be possible with cooler temps, but that is not something I want to get into at this time. My feed ratio is 1 part starter to 6 parts flour and it is kept at 54% hydration. My feed regiment uses 24g of flour per day.
Abe - a few years ago when Debra was working with me (concerning my starter) she told me that she keeps her starter on the counter and feeds twice a day. She incouraged me to do the same. NOTE - she knew I was fanatical :-D
I am not sure if Debra still maintains her starter at room temp or not.
I am experimenting at this time with refrigerating test starter utilizing different hydrations (50 &150%).
Danny
If kept at room temperature and it's a liquid starter. If once in 24 hours then something has to give. Would be nice to be able to nurse ones starter more but baking only once a week and working doesn't make it ideal.
Abe, my starter is dry and even at 1-10, maybe even 1-20, it will still recede way before 24 hours. As far as I can tell, an active starter would need to be kept relatively cool to ferment for 24 hour. I’m thinking 50-60F, but that is a guess. I have not tried it.
You may remember, when I was working to develop a refresh cycle (you were very helpful), I was unable to get my starter to rise for longer than 8-9 hr. Debra had me reduce the hydration and increase the feed in order to reach a 12 refresh cycle.
Danny
Dan, a Hamelman levain build is typically 20g starter + 125g water + 100g flour and, if I remember correctly, either recommends a 10-12 hour ferment or 12-14 hours.
Question is... Does peaking mean the food is beginning to run out or is more at play here? Perhaps it has risen to it's max for gas produced and flour used but not necessarily to the limit of the food supply.
What is the temp of Hamelman’s levain?
I consider Debra’s statements concerning starters almost as solid as the red letter text in the New Testament :-D
She told me that the ideal time for a starter that is maximized for yeast is the point where it just begins to recede. But on my very stiff starters, I often feed when the starter is still weakly doomed (12hr, depending on temp). I now feed at 11.5 - 12.5 regardless. I do make slight adjustments to the weight of the starter as the seasons and conditions vary.
Yeasts feed off the sugars. How the starter rises one has to take into account other properties of the flour like its strength and ability to trap gas. Question is why would a starter peaking and falling be the sole indicator of yeast formation and food left?
P.s. for your starter i'd just stick to 12 hourly intervals even if it has peaked and fallen as long as it's had a good feed. Rest assured it hasn't run out of food and it'll still be healthy. When doing a levain build one can be stricter. Starters aren't always fermented to the optimal time to use whereas a levain would be.
I don’t have a clue. Hopefully madam Wink will see this post and set us straight.
Abe, have you read Doc’s premise about 2% of flour weight loss as an indicator of starter/levain maturation?
Danny
Over the past 15 years or so that I have been baking with a sourdough starter I have become very flexible in how I maintain it.
I generally bake once a week or so, baking 5 to 7 loaves at a time (and giving at least half away to friends ..... baking bread is a hobby of mine and the two of us in the household can only eat so much. Bread is baked in the masonry oven in the back yard when it is not to cold, rainy or windy. It is now surrounded by a shelter and greenhouse but it did not start out that way.
I am sure that the following is pure sacrilege for most.
I use a sourdough starter in most of my bread. It is kept in the fridge in an old plastic mayonnaise container. I started out being very precise in maintaining a feeding schedule, using carefully measured amounts of water and flour as I expect most people do. Over time I've found that I really don't have to do a lot to keep it going.
I now feed it about once a week .... adding a bit of tap water (we're on a well here) mixing it up with the end of a wooden spoon and then adding unbleached apf or whole wheat apf .... until it looks to be about the right consistency (generally a little less liquid than most starter). I let it work away for a few hours on the kitchen counter until I can see some activity and then stick it back in the fridge.
What can I say ...... it works!
Yes, I agree, it is not very active .... if I want to kick up the activity level, I leave it on the counter feeding it smaller amounts of flour for a day or two before I use it.
I generally use 100 g to 200 g of starter in my poolish along with 1200 g water, 400 g whole wheat apf, 100 g light or dark rye f, and 700 g bread flour ... more or less, with a pinch of instant yeast). I generally figure the starter has a ratio of 50 / 50 water to flour for my measurements. The poolish is usually prepared in he evening and sits on the counter overnight. It is ready for use the next morning.
A couple of other items ... I NEVER throw away any surplus starter .... I always use it ti bake a loaf with a higher volume of the starter in it .... and I have yet to have any complaints about the results. Also, I maintain a 'blob' of starter wrapped in cling wrap and stored in the freezer just in case some disaster or other overtakes my original batch .... a number of years ago I neglected the starter a little too much and had to recreate my starter for regular use.
I hope this helps. Whatever you do .... have fun!
My starter family of 4, not including an "old dough", resides in the refrigerator and is fed only as needed. Feeding them on a regular base daily - or even weekly - is in my experience not necessary. I, also, keep the amounts fairly small, since I don't like constantly discarding surplus.
I refresh a starter a day before preparing the sourdough called for in my recipe: once or twice, depending on how ripe it is. Since I have a home-based micro-bakery, I bake a lot (also Tartine-type loaves) and gave up spoiling my sourdoughs years ago.
Happy Baking,
Karin
I think some of the "starter pampering" that people do comes from simply not yet being sure what will kill it and what won't. I don't think the people doing it are really so much mistaken as just over-cautious from inexperience.
if you drop the temperature down at night and maybe change the feeding ratio if need be. You could reduce the temperature the whole time. Remember that in getting starters going, a cooler temp takes twice or even three times as long as one over 75°F. The trick is to find the temp and maintain it or be flexible enough to understand the starter and correct should the temp change. The starter will be slowed down in cool temp but levain and bread dough can be speeded up using warmer temps when desired on baking day. There are many ways to maintain a starter.
First feed the starter as your routine and dry any discard for back up. Then time the starter at say 70°F to see how long it takes to smell like a starter, look like one, taste like one and maybe rise like one. Then go fourth considering those results. Make use of an old time pantry or cellar and no need to let it rise first to show signs of activity (like one would for a colder refrigerator.)
Be prepared to extend the time between feeds to a longer time as well should it happen.. Watch the starter.
Thanks for all the great replies. This gives me enough info to make a new decision about a countertop starter. I do keep a small backup in the fridge and refresh it once a week. Thanks Mini Oven for the great suggestions. Very helpful. In NorCal the garage stays about 50 degrees, another possibility for experimentation.
50F should be plenty cool enough. Why not mix a starter and give it a try? Compare the smell of that starter, when matured, with your regular matured starter.
The higher the ratio of flour to starter and also the wetter the starter, the faster it will mature. With this in mind to can change ratios and hydrations to provide a 24hr cycle given a particular temperature.
If you do try this, please let us know your findings.
Danny
If you were to refresh at 1:400:400, and ferment it at 24C (based on Gänzle's model but I have verified the numbers with experimental results) it would take approximately 24hrs for the starter to return to the numerical densities of yeast and LAB that were in the initial seed. The problem with doing this is that you are running close to conditions that will allow bacterial contaminants to compete effectively with the desired species in your seed starter. Remember that flour is not sterile.
The other approaches are to refresh twice, refresh once and refrigerate for the second 12 hr period, or reduce the temperature to the point where it takes 24 hrs to restore the initial population densities. Using the same model but without any experimental verification, the refresh ratio should be about 1:22:22 and the fermentation temperature should be around 18°C, which is only a 6° reduction. The message here is that it is sensitive to temperature. I would be hesitant to go much above 1:20:20 (even though I went for a few years at that ratio and a higher temperature and refreshed successfully once every 24 hrs. Starter is really quite robust, but you can mistreat it.
You are blowing my mind, Doc. A ratio of 1 to 400 @ 75F for 24 hours...
I am amazed at the things I don’t know.
“Ignorance is a great thing, if you are self aware and working to reverse it”.
If really enjoy reading your post, especially the ones I am able to understand :-D
Danny