I’m relatively new to sourdough baking apart from a brief stint a few years back. Anyway a friend recently gave me a small starter which I think was 100% hydration, and I’ve been maintaining it at that level. Baked one loaf from it so far which was ok, although I inadvertently added too much flour when kneading as I hadn’t done enough research on working with quite a wet and sticky dough.
Anyway, today I hived off some of my starter with a view to posting some to my mum, and thought I’d reduce the hydration a bit to hopefully make it less prone to leaking in the mail. I used 25g starter, 25g water and 50g flour, which if my calculations are correct makes about a 60% hydration?
I’ve read today that lower hydration starters result in smaller holes in the baked loaf, but you’ll see from the photo that the holes in my lower hydration starter (right) are much bigger - does this translate to bigger holes in the baked loaf? Also, the photo was taken about 4-5 hours after feeding both, and as you can see the lower hydration starter was still going strong and had grown by more than half whilst the 100% one had started to drop already and never got much more than doubled in size. So is the new starter I have inadvertently created better and more active, or should I stick with the 100% hydration one until I’m a bit more experienced?
Any hints or tips would be much appreciated!
Hi! I’m quite new to sourdoughs as well, eventually got a starter going mid last year after 2 or 3 attempts. One major problem I had was the room temp was just too hot... Qld, Australia- my kitchen is about 30’C+ most of the year. I can’t offer too much advice on sourdoughs in general but after some advice given to me I switched my 100% starter to a stiffer one with far better results. It is much easier to store out of the fridge and a lot less temperamental. I work on a 2-1-1 ratio eg. 100g flour, 50g each starter and water every time I feed it, or whatever quantities I need for the next bake. (It requires kneading.) This gives a much greater window in which you can use it without going too sour.
Does this method produce a mild bread in terms of sourness? I'll have to research this further, I'd like to know more about the stiff starter.
Thanks
I’ve only baked a few loaves so far with the stiff starter and have been happy with the results. Good flavour without being sour. Mostly I’m just preferring the stiff starter because it seems to cope with heat better and longer gaps between feeds. My liquid starter would peak and rapidly fall after 6 hours but this one I think you would plan to use it 8-12 hours after a feed.
Thank you for the replies so far, I think I’m going to split off some of the stiffer starter and keep that going along with the other, and then try baking the same recipe with both as a starting point to see how I get on with each one! I’ve not baked yet with the stiffer starter, but agree that it seems to be more stable and stays at peak longer which may be better for me as I’m not always as organised as I should be for catching the higher hydration one at its peak. If I feed my original starter the night before, it’s well on it’s decline by morning so I end up having to feed again before using it.