In this post I will describe the simple formula and process I use for preparing 'sourwort' for my bakes.
150g cracked rye malt (by Weyermann) which I buy from local homebrew supply shops near me
500g tap water at 47C|117F
I put the malt into one of those vacuum seal containers with hand-pump (picture).
Then I pour over it warm water and stir. Pump out air as much as possible to create an oxygen-free enviroment.
The mash must remain under anaerobic conditions at 42-45C|108-113F for the next 36-48 hours untouched. I am lucky enough to possess a Brod&Taylor foldable proofer for this job.
When time comes I open carefully the container because it has become very fizzy.
You' ll be taken by the sour green-apples aroma that emerges out of the container. No putrid activity whatsoever.
I let cool down to room temperature with open lid (no rush) and strain the soured mash using one of those 'French press coffee makers'.
In the picture you can see the strained 'sourwort' in its glass container. The yield is about 300g.
Now it is ready for use to make bread. Or you can store it in the fridge (4C|39F) for the next 1-2 weeks and use it straight from the fridge to make bread at will.
I use this 'sourwort' in conjuction with instant dry yeast to bake my favorite tin loafs and not only.
In my next post I will describe how I make beautiful fragrant sourwort-bread in two and a half hours (plus bake time)
with extraordinary crumb texture.
You 'll be in for a very pleasant surprise with the outcome !!!!!
show
Thank you again! I made a quick 200 gr (total flour) batch of (100% ww lean) pita with a 2h 15min ferment (28C) (dough doubled) and 30% flas (baker's %) to replace some of the total liquid; 0.6%diy (might try lower like 0.3% for clas). Hydration 85%. There was no adjustment to the recipe except in replacing part of the liquid -that was easy. The result was a nice chewy and soft pita-all ballooned :). The whole wheat was ground on 1 pass in the komo (flour still a bit coarse) but the dough was bouncy and smooth (just like a clas dough). I like that! It was a bit too sour so I will cut back the flas to maybe 20-25% (?)next time.
May I keep asking questions?
1)
From reading the posts for refreshing flas, I missed how much liquid flas (assuming no rye sediments) to add to the following:
50gr cracked malted rye
.5L (500g) water (45C)
I believe I read 6h ferment at 43C will do it. That is fast. Vacuum again? No added vinegar.
2) Could I take the rye flas and refresh it with wheat malt as well? or is it just preferable to use rye for flas?
3) Is there a general rule to convert a clas recipe to flas? (I am using 10-15% flour from clas in ww recipes) (The clas panetone recipe is really good.) Say- flas (baker's)% range as 20-30% (100% ww )?
4) There is a layer of flour settling at the bottom of the flas liquid. Should I try not to avoid getting this in the dough?
5) Is 1 month old , sugar starved flas too old to refresh?
If a loaf of bread turns out, I will write in!
Oh I almost forgot- the pH was 3.67 (day after).
Pita is good, Joe and 0.6% IDY sounds about right because it translates into about 2% compressed yeast.
Your questions about FLAS, no one can answer them, because it is not a standard ingredient in baking. It is something recently borrowed from brewers. Unlike CLAS, for which hundreds if not thousands scientific experiments were run in the lab and exact standards were developed along with recommendations for its use, FLAS is a totally wild thing. You would have to determine what works for you from experience.
1) refreshing flas, how much liquid flas (assuming no rye sediments) to add to the following:
50gr cracked malted rye
.5L (500g) water (45C)
- Any amount, you can feed it 1:20 or you can feed it 2:1, it does not matter for as long as you track its readiness by measuring its acidity and flavor to know that it is ready. It will take 3-24 hours at 40-43C
And usually just the bottom part, the sediment (the discard that cannot be used it baking), us used in refreshments. The top liquid part is used in baking.
Vinegar is not necessary. FLAS itself is a souring agent during refreshment.
You can use vacuum or any other anaerobic measures if you believe it would prevent the surface film growing. It does consume nutrients from the solution, so you would rather not feed that parasitic microorganism.
2) Could I take the rye flas and refresh it with wheat malt as well?
Of course. You can feed it with any milled or cracked cereal or flour, raw or cooked. Malted grains and malted flours are sweeter and more nutritious higher in vitamins and active enzymes, but even regular flours or even porridges or bits of baked bread would feed the eatablished FLAS microbial culture. The aroma might and will change though, but not the important part, not the lactic acid content of FLAS.
3) a general rule to convert a clas recipe to flas.
Nope. CLAS is a standard ingredient with strictly defined acidity and microbial composition levels, whereas FLAS is not. Each person in this thread created their unique FLAS by spontaneously fermenting their unique malt by using different starting and brewing conditions and proportions of malt to water...
It's exactly like homemade sourdough starters which have dozens of wild species of yeasts and bacteria in them, totally unique and unpredictable combinations of sd species in each bakery or home, with differing souring and leavening powers.
FLAS is similar to wild sourdough, very different from baker to baker, whereas CLAS is always the same.
In 100g of CLAS, proportion of water and flour is about 60w:40f, if its hydration is about 150%.
So, if your flas is as sour as the liquid portion of clas, then you would use
1.5 x (10-15%) = 15-22% FLAS in your recipes.
Whether it's enough or not (or too much) you would have to determine from experience.
4) There is a layer of flour settling at the bottom of the flas liquid. Should I try not to avoid getting this in the dough?
I would avoid it if it's old. Old predigested flour is bad news for bread dough, essentially, it's a microbial graveyard with tons of thiols in it, unless it's whole grain bread dough and there is very little predigested flour added to it.
5) Is 1 month old, sugar starved flas too old to refresh?
It depends on how diluted it was and how many refreshments you are willing to do to refresh it, to restore its microflora. People sussesfully restore their flour based sd starters after several weeks or even months of refrigeration, but it might take a dozen of refreshments and several days to get there. Basically, it's sometimes easier to start from scratch. FLAS is so easy to prepare from scratch in one step in 1-2 days
The general rule is that one month old is not as bad as being sugar starved or not well diluted. More FLAS bacteria will die from starvation and too much acidity than from their old age.
Using the Thermos was a very simple method to get refreshed flas. No appliances needed!
0 hours- 8:45pm (FRI) (43.5C)
70 gr (from refrig) of the wet sediment settled at bottom of flas liquid
50g cracked malt rye,
500 g water at 45C.
13 hour- 9:45 am (SAT) Thermos: 40.3C, pH4.0
19.5 h- 4:15 (SAT) Thermos: 39C, pH 3.8
Reaching the right temp in the thermos:
I held back about half the water and mixed water (45C), rye, cold flas sediment. It was too cool, the temp was in mid 30s. To raise the temp, I poured the liquid portion of the mixture into the water still in the pot and heated it very carefully on the stove (low setting), watching the temp probe until it reached 43.5C- it just takes a few seconds. Then I poured it quickly into the thermos, filling it to the top (about 1/4" airspace from top of liquid to thermos plug)
Opening the thermos
The tip on slowly unscrewing the Thermos is useful! - the fizz released and I hardly lost any of the contents. If there was white foamy growth on surface of flas, it came out with the release of pressure when opening the thermos.
After straining
I will be collecting the sediments (in the freezer) for processing a larger batch for solod. My first batch was still "tan" color after 48h at 120F. (I couldn't leave it unattended so turned it off.) It is very dry and in a jar-maybe I can get back to drying it more later.
Freezing
I will be trying out the flas after freezing to see how it bakes and refreshes.
Excellent, Joe. Well done and beautifully reported. Thank you!
NOTE 1. Usually, when you take a culture from the fridge, you would let it come up to the room temp or even to 40-45C in your case in 30-120 min slowly, 'naturally', so it can wake up and restore its metabolism. Only then you will feed it and place it in thermos.
I always warm the culture up slowly before feeding it, otherwise it is too much stress for it, both thermal shock and chemical shock (change of chemical environment), but most people don't.
NOTE 2. It is better to prepare a portion of true wort with water and rye malt, instead of just a quick blend, to extract its nutritional substances into water before feeding the culture. It would be quicker that way.
Method: mix 300g malt and 1L water and take it through three steps of heating: first, keep it for 30min at 45C (in thermos, for example), then 1hr at 55C (warm it up to 55C and keep it for 1 hr at that temp, for example, in thermos), finally, for 2-3hrs at 63C.
At this moment the wort is ready to be cooled to the desired temperature, diluted to the desired proportions of water to malt, and used to grow any microbial cultures: yeast or lactic bacteria. You can freeze the portions of wort that you do not need immediately for the future use.
m.
Hi Mariana,
Note 1- understood.
Could you explain what is being made in Note 2 ?
I am not sure what "true wort" means ("wort" itself is the liquid flas?)
My thermos hold 1/2 L. I will start this process:
(a) For 30 min- 8:00-8:30pm Thermos: 150g crushed malt + 500 g water at 45C (no vinegar?)
(b) For 1 hour- 8:30-9:30pm Thermos: same contents except at 55C
(c) For 2-3 hours- 9:30pm-12:30am Thermos: same contents excepts at 63C
========
"At this moment the wort is ready to be cooled to the desired temperature, diluted to the desired proportions of water to malt, and used to grow any microbial cultures: yeast or lactic bacteria. You can freeze the portions of wort that you do not need immediately for the future use."
What will I have now? Is the liquid now flas, ready to put into any recipe? If so, then this is much shorter than the 48 h method where temp is 43C. That would be great!
Thank you for all your guidance!
Joe, wort means the liquid extracted from the mashing process. It's pasteurised liquid malt extract, sweet to taste, with neutral pH. Wort contains the sugars and other nutrients, the most important being maltose and maltotriose, that will be fermented by the bacteria and/or yeast later on.
Once you prepare the concentrated wort, 150g malt per 0.5L water, you add to it 1L water and will have the target concentration of 50g malt per each 0.5L water necessary to prepare a new portion of FLAS by inoculating 0.5L of wort with some of the existing FLAS and keeping it at 40-45C for several hours.
"True wort", or wort, as is used in breadmaking and beer production is not simply water and raw malt later fermented by some microorganism(s). It's the liquid extracted from the mash, from the water+malt combo, and pasteurised at 63C.
Extraction is that heating process that I described above, it extracts nutrients and pasteurises the wort at 63C. So, there will be no competing microorganisms from the raw malt in it, only those that we want to propagate from the previous portion of FLAS.
Normally, after extraction, solid debris will be filtered out and discarded, but we may leave it in while preparing FLAS.
(a) yes, no vinegar. You are simply extracting sugars from malt, no acidification.
In NOTE2 processs you will have a ready made wort (pasteurised liquid malt extract with neutral pH) to which when you want you will add a portion of FLAS from you fridge, ferment it at 40-45C for 3-6hrs, or whatever time needed to sour it, to reach the target pH, taste and aroma, and then refrigerate the resulting sourwort/flas and use it in baking.
This is so helpful! I hope I have understood and summarized what you wrote. I am starting a collection of flas and clas notes- Thank you Yippee and Mariana!
My mistake this time was napping and letting the 55C stage go 1/2 hr too long.
I wasn't sure what the range for neutral is - 6.4-7pH? And would the range for desired acidity for flas be 3-3.5 pH or is 4.0 ok too?
Updated Instructions (9/5/22)
It's a good summary, Joe, although you do not have to be so careful with heating up or defrosting ready made wort "naturally".
It is pasteurized, has no microbes in it, so you can use any method of heating it up that you like or find convenient.
FLAS, liquid or sediment, yes, it is "alive", full of living lactic bacteria, so warming it up slowly is better.
You decide. At 3.0-3.5 there is no proliferation of bacteria. They stay alive, but their numbers do not multiply anymore. Their bottomline is pH= 3.8-4.0.
At certain level of acidity they become lethargic and barely stay alive, as in sauerkraut or pickles which do not become infinitely sour with time, as you know. There is a certain limit.
Such is CLAS, for example, it is so acidic, that its microflora is essentially dormant both at room temperature and in the fridge, and it does not keep too well in the fridge, only for a week or so. After that the microbes die out in massive amounts, irreversibly, the starter is gone, no longer "alive".
Also, at 3.0-3.5 you would use flas and clas in baking only in smallish amounts, as flavor improvers, since they are so sour.
At 4.0 - 4.5 you would have it at the normal acidity level of a sd starter or sd bread dough, so you can replace all or nearly all liquid in the recipe with flas. And it will keep very well in the fridge, for a month at least. It will become more sour with time, obviously.
Best wishes,
m.
I am understanding more and more. Thank you! Your discussions cover a
lot of new things to me.
I updated the card. Just relating the pH of flas to how much to put in a recipe was
really helpful. This morning I put too much in and the dough was a bit sour.
Dang, this sounds too good to be true but I would like to try it. I will order some rye malt this afternoon. Thanks for sharing this methodogy.
Got my rye malt today and started the brew tonight.
Had to get the water up to around 120-degree F to kick it off with a right temp in the mixture.
Didn't know 5 lb malt was made to fit a 4 qt container, it fits just about perfect.
Your starter should be about ready? How does it look, smell and taste so far?
Hi Mariana, my mash just got to the 48-hour mark this evening. I screwed up the temp for the first 8 hours with a temp of around 135-degree F so I think it might not be as good as it could be. It did not smell fruity sour like my 60% hydration SD starter, the aroma of my SD starter always reminds me of strawberries for some reason, and this mash solution did not smell anything like that. It had a strong grain smell with a hint of sourness and sweetness. It tasted like ketchup. It is quite thick so if this is the way it supposed to be then it might change the consistency of the dough if it is a 1:1 water replacement. I brewed it for 48 hours undisturbed, so I did not add sugar nor stir it. Following are some pics for your viewing pleasure.
Mash screened with yield:
It came out of mashing with a temp measurement:
Mashing with a jar of water as a temp gauge:
Ming, this is so amazing! You essentially pasteurized your mash for 8hrs non-stop (@135F it is called thermization) and made a scald out of it (starches begin gelatinizing at 55C, and you kept your mash at 57C/135F for 8 hrs) and even after that it soured! The power of the bacteria in grain!
Since you got yourself a whole 4qt bucket of rye malt, it is so beautiful!, maybe the next batch would be different.
I haven't done mine to compare, waiting for the next week for that experiment to take place. Thank you for the pictures and that unusual and bold variation in the process which encouraged thermophilic lactic bacteria to develop, similar to those in yogurt.
Thanks Mariana for some good insight of this mashing process. Unfortunately, I do not have a meter to measure the pH level of the solution, so I have to use my tongue to do that for now. I can afford a good pH meter, but I don't want to just buy one just to have one if I don't really need it. For my next mash, I think I will stir and taste it every day and of course to control the temp more accurately in the LAB thriving zone.
By the way, I said it tasted like ketchup is not quite accurate as ketchup could taste salty, a more accurate description of its taste would be like tomato juice.
I just took two pics below after it was in the fridge overnight. I drank a spoon of the solution, and it did have a little bit of sweetness to it. I think the yeast will love all the sugary substances in it, but the result will be in the bread that I bake tonight.
Mistakes, errors, forgetfulness, experimentation ... All tools in the workshop of progress.
It's done but not what I expected.
I followed the instructions as best I could.
Indications that something might be wrong.
Any suggestions?
Our tap water has lots of dissolved gases. I wonder if there was enough oxygen came out of solution and sent things in the wrong direction? I could try boiling the water first, letting it cool, and then using it.
Gary, it takes from 24 to 72 hours to develop the culture. Just give it more time and some sugar. Fizz is not a must either. In fact, it rarely happens! Maybe once every ten times. You should be ready for it, or for some of it, because you sealed your jar tightly and should take precautions when opening it, but it is not a rule, not all lactic acid bacteria produce gas.
Add a tsp of sugar or liquid malt extract, rice syrup or barley malt syrup is ok too, cover and keep at 40C for full three days, adding sugar once a day.
Anaerobic condition is not really a must, it is mostly used to avoid penicillin/mildew growth on the inner surface of the pot cover, if you cover your jar (beer brewers do not cover at all, it sits either in a thermos or open on a hot plate, stirred continuously! Very aerobic!), not because of the starter itself.
Reread the original Berlin lactic acid starter instructions, please.
I already tossed that first batch of mash.
Could I continue with the liquid that has been refrigerated since this morning?
Or should I start over with more malt?
Wow, you are fast!
Sure, continue with the liquid, Gary. It will be no different from developing a starter by a series of refreshments, feeds. It actually would work even better. One step starters are always less fragrant when compared to multiple step starters.
Use 50 g of crushed malt, a spoon of sugar and 500ml warm liquid (blend your first brew with water to get 500ml total, use clean water, demineralised or distilled is best if your tap water is not so good).
Thanks for your help.
I am sure you will have a great starter, Gary.
Just remember that by the end of the fist 48hrs of fermentation it should receive its TWO spoons of sugar, the first given at the end of 24hrs, the second - at the end of 48hrs. Since you added a portion of sugar at the end of 36hrs, add another one 8-12hrs or so later.
Sugar is essential in very liquid starters as this one, they stagnate and begin to lose potency when they run out of sugar in solution.
I've now got a starter that smells fruity and sour. I'm going to strain it and try a bake tomorrow.
I am so happy to hear these good news from you, Gary. Well done!
How does it look? Did you measure its pH or TTA?
It is cloudy after I strained it. I just used an ordinary fine strainer, no filter paper. The liquid before I poured it out was not cloudy.
I don't have equipment to measure pH or TTA. One day...
I'll see what it looks like in the morning after a night in the fridge.
Mariana, can you tell me more about your true SD flourless starters? Above you said:
How do you make and use them?
Gary,
it is really all about temperature ranges. Otherwise nothing is different from FLAS method. You could easily use the same rye malt and keep it at 28C, instead of 43-45C and obtain a true sourdough starter in the end. It would have a healthy yeast community in it, because sourdough yeasts multiply best at 28-30C (whereas lactic acid bacteria prefer 32-50C range).
So, you could try this experiment, do exactly as you do for FLAS, but set it to 28C and you will have a true sourdough starter from scratch. DO NOT close the cover tightly. Cover with plastic wrap with a small hole in it.
Now, rye is famous for being low on yeast and high on LAB, so you would do better if you add a tsp of any wheat grain, whole wheat flour (soft or hard, durum, spelt, etc) to your rye malt solution, or even a spoon of raw wheat bran would do - as a source of while yeasts. You can also add wild yeasts the way YW people do - by adding a few chopped raisins, or fruit peels.
Another way to develop a sourdough starter is to add yeasts to your already existing lactic acid starter. If you like its flavor that is (because at 28-30C OTHER lactic acid bacteria would thrive in flourless starter even if made from the same rye malt and it will smell differently). I did it once with LAS based on white bread flour (again, a very pour source of yeasts and a rich source of LAB) and it worked just fine.
I added to my LAS a few squished grapes and a spoon of spelt flour and kept it at 28C for a few hours and la voila. It became a true sourdough starter with plenty of yeast in it.
It became boozy, gassy, like sparkling wine. Such intense yeast propagation can take up to 2 days at 28C/82F if there was really zero yeasts in your LAS.
You use flourless starters in the same way you use flour-based starters. There are two ways of making bread
- straight method (starter -> bread dough)
- sponge method (starter - > levain -> bread dough)
So, you use your flourless starter
either to prepare a flour-based starter as in the recipe (or even directly mix your bread dough using flourless starter as liquid or part of liquid)
or to prepare a levain with it and from there - bread dough.
Example of flourless starter based levain: a sourdough poolish, so to speak (100% hydration)
at peak (max volume, domed top surface)
mature (flat top surface)
When you get there, I will give you specific examples.
I will also describe another, ancient, method of preparing a flourless sourdough starter by using scalded flour later. It's very good.
But for now, Gary, experiment with the two methods described above. Either use FLAS method, starting from scratch, but at 28-32C (keep it for 12hrs at 32C, then for 12hrs at 28C, alternating during the three days of starter development), or add to your existing FLAS some wheat (or wheat bran) and some fruit peels and keep it at 28 to populate it with wild yeast. Remember to add some sugar or even molasses. Yeast needs sugar.
So many interesting avenues to explore! I'm loving this.
I'm going to collect all these notes together so I can remember them as I go forward.
I've got some raisin yeast water started (first day) and I want to experiment with the FLAS to see how it affects the flavor in different amounts and with differing fermentation times of the FLAS.
A yeast water / flas combination is really interesting.
Have fun with it, Gary! Seeing how different sources of microbes and of their food in combination with temperature and hydration affect your outcomes is eye opening, but most importantly it is fun. I am more into bread than into sourdough starters, but I had to learn about them in a hard way, to troubleshoot or to at least make "normal" bread dough, and now I am glad that I did.
I tried yeast water once, for Hamelman's Swiss loaf made with 5 days old raisin water and it didn't work at all. The yeasts didn't grow enough and the bread was a failure, awful. The worst bread ever. Most likely, because the raisins were old, dry, shriveled, stone hard.
So I decided to repeat that expriment and made another batch of yeast water with the same ingredients, the same ancient raisins, at the same temperature but giving it more time. Set it and forget it! LoL. Ten days later it looked like a calm liquid in a jar, totally unremarkable, but when mixed with flour to make Swiss bread sponge, it turned out that I had a bona fide flourless sourdough starter there, in that jar. The sponge made with that YW was a true sourdough sponge, with typical flavor, aroma, acidity and excellent gassing power, good yeast and good LAB. The bread was delicious and good looking, just like in Hamelman's book, in his photos. Everything went according to the recipe, comme il faut.
From raisins and water, in 10 days at 25C, forgotten in a cupboard in my kitchen.
Afaik yeast water and FLAS combo should give you the same outcomes as FLAS with commercial yeast with one exception: the crumb might be a shade darker. Also, flas&yw combo will never have the same aromas as true sourdough, because in true sourdough yeasts and LAB live in symbiosis and produce three kinds of flavors: typical of yeasts, typical of LABs, and typical of yeasts in symbiosis with LABs. It's impossible to reproduce those aromas and tastes by blending CY or YW with LAS.
Best wishes,
m.
Mariana, I built a liquid starter. I used 50g of rye malt, 25g of whole wheat flour, 25g of raisins and 700g of water. I set my controller to cycle between 28C and 32C at 12 hour intervals for 3 days. I fed it 1 tsp of sugar every 24 hours.
It smelled bousy and fruity. I had company so I couldn't bake with it right away but I did mix 93g of the liquid with 93g of WW flour to see what it would do. It tripled in 8 hours. I then refrigerated it for 5 days and finally got to try it today.
I baked with the flour/starter combo today and the loaf tastes great. I really like the complexity of the flavor.
I'm going to try using the liquid directly next.
Thanks for the suggestion to try this approach.
You did it, Gary! Wow, you really made it. I am so happy to hear that you liked the bread!
Please tell me at what temperature did it triple in 8hrs. Was it ww bread flour (i.e. capable of rising very high at 100%hydration)? Was tripling its max volume or did you let it rise further? What was the pH value of that WWF levain after eight hours?
It obviously has yeast in it and can be used in sourdough baking, especially in rye breads with overnight warm preferments, but its value is even higher in yeasted breads.
Try feeding that flourless SD starter as well to propagate its microbial culture. Usually half a cup of the old starter is enough to make a quart of new starter.
If you like its flavor and do not want to alter it, you can use the same ingredients as in the initial batch, except for making water very warm, about 45C/115F. This is to encourage its SD bacteria, to make them multiply first.
To one quart of 115F water add rye malt, wwf or whole rye flour (or any other whole grain flour or flakes), chopped raisins, half a cup of previous starter (liquid or the sediment, the bottom portion)and keep it at 28C/82F for 3-4hrs or longer, until it feels slightly, but distinctly sour to taste and its temperature slowly drops from 115F down to 80-85F so that its yeasts may begin to multiply as well. Then add sugar and refrigerate for up to one month.
After 24hrs, use directly from the fridge, it does not need to be refreshed before using it.
How about we move this discussion to a new thread; this one has gotten really long and includes so many topics it is hard for me to find the relevant bits.
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/70210/flourless-sourdough-starters
This is fascinating stuff to read, Mariana. I have tossed my SD starter in the trash tonight and kicked off a new liquid sourdough starter (LSDS ?) with some rye malt and some whole wheat flour. If this works out then I will get some wheat malt for the job. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
By the way, I just got my second batch of FLAS to put away for the night. I finally got that green apple sour smell with this batch, but there was still a hint of the bad smell lingering though which I hope will go away by tomorrow when the sediment settles. Apparently, my first batch of FLAS was overcooked but surprising it still tasted sour like tomato juice, amazing stuff.
Ming, your new FLAS is beautiful! Congratulations! 💖💖💖
Bad smell is just a stage, once good odors appear it means that bad smell producing bacteria are gone, dead, lost in competition. They simply cannot survive in acidic environment.
What I do then is to whip it, to aerate it, to let the bad smell go. It usually helps, such a simple measure. I use a handheld electric mixer to aerate the starter, to carry the bad odors away with the flow of air, but a whisk or even a fork would do as well.
Interesting, thank you! I was just refreshing my CLAS yesterday and by mistake kept it a little too warm, and got a weird smell. To taste it was a little sweet (I had a little malt in there), and not sour. At first I just kept it a few more hours at the right temperature, and the acidity appeared very quickly, and sweetness disappeared. But the slightly off smell lingered, so I decided to just feed it again to make sure I got rid of any bad bacteria, and that helped a lot. But considering how easy it is to make again, I also considered just starting fresh... So do you think I could have just whisked it to get rid of the smell? I might actually do it anyway, since I'm not sure it's completely gone.
Ilya, about bad smell in CLAS. In my experience, CLAS is a multistep recipe. Even when made from pure microbial cultures, it takes three steps to prepare CLAS, so the smells are just gone naturally, due to whipping as you refresh and due to the refreshment itself which cleanses CLAS from old dough and dead bacteria.
It sounds like you are using a one step recipe or something. I am not familiar with it.
Where flour is involved, as in CLAS and other liquid or stiff sourdough starters, refreshment is always a more powerful solution to bad odors than simple whipping. Why? Because "old" flour in them is the source of bad smell as well, denatured gluten in rye and wheat in those starters.
But in flourless starters, like kvasses, where the ratio of flour to liquid is 1:10 or 1:20 and even 1:30, one step formulas work just fine and whipping or stirring gets rid of the unwanted odors.
That said, I once had a strange period when I was not able to create a CLAS at home. I spend several months and attempted several times to make it and it was not working. Bad odor persisted no matter how many times I refreshed, started anew, changed rye flours and recipes for CLAS with or without initial acidification, etc. I was not able to create a stable culture as I had before. It was as if there was something in the air that contaminated it. A scary thought. So I gave up and decided to take a break. I am not into baking with CLAS anyways, my other starters, flour-based and flourless kvass are fine, smelling amazing, so I never came back to CLAS since.
I am tempted to try it once more, with rye malt though, it is a new variation or aset of variations that seems interesting. I read about it in Andrey's blog (brotgost). http://brotgost.blogspot.com/2017/08/iii.html
I have quite a bit of diastatic rye and diastatic wheat malt sitting unused in my pantry, I might as well use it in experimentation.
Which recipe for CLAS are you using this time?
Thank you for the detailed answer mariana!
I created this CLAS using Andrey's process, but without malt (since I didn't have it then), but now refreshed it with malt (barley). Previously, back in Edinburgh I created one CLAS with malt. Even without malt with just whole rye flour it works perfectly for me in one step, although the aroma improves after the first refreshment I think, and when just created it's super liquidy, and becomes thicker after a refreshment.
When you had problems creating CLAS, did you try adding some vinegar like he suggests? And block access to oxygen?
No, Ilya, I have never tried any of Andrey's recipes or suggestions. I only had conversations with people who tried his methods in my blog and looked into his blog for the first time only when we started talking about FLAS here, to look for the original German recipe reference. He has quite a number of followers. From what they describe, they do not get a CLAS, but something else. For as long as they are happy with their bread, that is all that matters. The choice of starter doesn't matter that much. A fresh loaf of bread does.
I tried Sergey Kirillov's method with vinegar once, someone else had trouble with it and I did it to support them, to see what gives. Sergey gives two recipes for CLAS in his book, one is initially acidified (with regular sourdough starter) and another one is not. Initial acidification did not shorten the process, it still takes 4+ days and 5 or more refreshments to get there, but it gives an amazingly bright honey plum or sour plum flavor (I agree). However, in his videos Sergey gives an option of acidifying with apple vinegar.
My experience with it is described in my blog and it indeed never had much of a stink and gave me two beautiful and unusual starters, depending on his recipe's interpretation, but it never gave me a bona fide CLAS either as I get from the recipe from the Institute of Bread Technology which it not acidified with anything.
CLAS doesn't need blocking access to oxygen, it is not a requirement and never has been. Not a single one of Soviet sourdough starters is 'anaerobic'. It is simply not necessary and not possible to assure in bread factory environments where CLAS is produced and used. It is not an anaerobic culture and it is a very unpopular culture in commercial breadmaking. To this day, only one in fifty bakeries use it to make bread. Most likely, it has to do with its acid profile. All other sourdough starters have lactic to acetic acid in proportions 4:1, whereas CLAS has it in proportion 32:1. The resulting bread would be not typical in flavor or taste should you make a mistake in dosage. Most importantly, CLAS-based bread doesn't keep fresh long, mildew grows on it very quickly (due to the lack of acetic acid) as explained here. Which bakery would risk that? Sell bread that will become moldy in a day or two?
Andrey seems to have a problem with mold spores in his kitchen or in his flours and in his starters (due to the very nature of his favorite starters: CLAS and thermophilic). He does everything 'anaerobically' to avoid mold growth on his starters or on the surfaces of his kitchenware. Also, his CLAS and all his clas-based breads are obviously very vulnerable to mold growth due to the lack of acetic acid in CLAS.
Why do you think Andrey's procedure produces something else other than CLAS? Obviously the procedure is different than e.g. what Sergey Kirillov suggests with multiple refreshes, but then again, it doesn't produce any bad smells (like Sergey reported in his blog), and it gets very acidic (I don't have a way to measure, but Andrey measured something like pH 3.5 I think). Of course we don't know the exact microbial composition, so can't compare to what would be the "official" CLAS... I've never made it any other way, since I don't want to spend many days to create it :) And I have been satisfied with the bread. Particularly great to get nice white or sweet bread very quickly. So perhaps if you try Andrey's method you could compare with your own experience having done it using other approaches? I would be curious to know if I am missing out on something better, but I haven't see any direct comparisons online.
Re anaerobic conditions - it's only initially created that way to reduce growth of any unwanted bacteria or mold, however it's not really anaerobic i.e. doesn't need to be tightly covered in later refreshments. I never had any unwanted growth in the CLAS, and neither have I ever had any mold on bread made with CLAS (just like with a regular starter). It always dries out before doing mouldy, if it's not eaten quickly enough. Perhaps in a commercial setting it would be more obvious...
Thanks Mariana for the whipping tip to get rid of the smell, I will try that. For a longer term, I will need to deploy a couple of tricks to see if I can eliminate the smell altogether. Backsloping as suggested by the originator will definitely be deployed for my next batch of FLAS, and I will also try to bump the temp up a couple of degree to stay at the upper range in hope to discourage the gas producing bacteria from thriving. The last trick I was thinking about was adding some pineapple juice to the mash right from the getgo. Anyway, this is very exciting thing to explore like being a kid again playing with mixing stuff up for fun. Dang, my second batch of FLAS was really sour, there was a lemon juice like kick to it, not as mild as tomato juice like the previous one. Surprising, it was still cloudy after a night in the fridge.
Mine looks just like that.
Great, thanks for the confirmation, Gary, we are on the same boat now :).
The pH of my flas is about 3 if I'm reading this short range pH paper correctly.
Would you be able to take a clear picture? pH of 3 is extremely low!
What do you think?
Good God. That's 5 degree-vinegar. Too acidic.
Wow! Certainly close to 3.0! That's quite impressive. Can you compare it side by side to some common acidic solutions? Coca cola is supposed to be around pH 3 too. 5% vinegar should be a little more acidic than this. Orange juice should be closer to 4...
Just from what I understand, LABs shouldn't be able to go much below 3.5, so I'm very surprised and wondering about the precision of this measurement!
Know that I am just a computer guy. I'm sure I took a chemistry course and I made an A but I was a specialist at getting A's without learning stuff that didn't interest me. And the only things that interested me were computers!
This is OJ. Looks like maybe 3.5 to my untrained eye.
Both were straight from the fridge. Could temperature be affecting it?
Interesting. If anything, at lower temperature pH would be higher. But assuming it warms up on the pH strip, it shouldn't be an issue.
Orange juice usually has pH of 3.5
Your paper works just fine, Gary. It is very reliable.
I would agree. The well-regarded pHydrion brand has been around for decades. I've used it in the lab, although I preferred colorfast plastic strips (much more expensive, but it wasn't my money!).
One minor problem with strips instead of a pH meter is that colored solutions sometimes make the color interpretation difficult. A slight dilution with distilled water can sometimes help with that. As you pointed out, a pH meter has its drawbacks, too.
Just FYI I wasn't of course doubting the precision of the principle, pH paper obviously is very accurate in general. But interpreting it from a picture might be misleading, so was curious about some baseline with solutions of known pH. And I am not sure how precise it is at the end of the range it is designed for, 3-3.5 in this case... A finer gradation in the range of interest wouldn't hurt either.
Now that I see how much the strips stain things like my fingers, I wish I had gotten the plastic ones. But this is fine for my limited use.
To minimize contact with your skin, you can use an eye dropper or even a kitchen utensil to dip into the solution and touch a drop to the paper. That can also help in reading the non-colorfast paper before it bleeds.
I used the MilliporeSigma ColorpHast™ brand for strips in the low-end range ($0.03 per strip).
That is a great data point to have, Gary. Thanks.
Ming, please, be careful with pineapple juice. It is very proteolitic, destroys proteins. Since flas is a one step starter, what's inside it goes straight into your bread dough. Try adding pineapple juice to your dough and see it becoming glue. It will damage your bread, its gluten structure.
Thanks Mariana for a heads up of this potential problem, noted. I re-brewed the spent mash (strained) early this morning with some fresh water, and after about 6 hours, to my surprise there was still some FLAS to be had there albeit with a lighter color but still amazingly sour. I was not able to detect any hint of the bad smell with it so I think I will use this secondary FLAS to brew a new batch next week. I can't stand the bad smell anymore even with a slight hint of it.
Here is a pic of FLAS re-brewed from a 3-day fermented mash:
Looks good, Ming, I love it. You really are doing the right thing: good ideas, non-stop experimentation, good illustrations, clear descriptions. Nothing that stinks should be used in breadmaking. Not even stinky cheeses : ) They might be had with bread but not in bread.
Also, due to its lighter color, it is closer to the original Berlin lactic acid starter used to acidify light-colored beers. And it is more appropriate for use in white bread and rolls, of course. It won't give their crumb a darker or dirtier look.
Actually, now that you mention it, the remnant of the initial bad smell (vomit?) now kind of smell like cheese which might not be bad to have in the bread. It could also be in my head where the bad smell gets stuck while in fact there is really no bad smell left, it was long gone especially now the solution is very sour. With that said though, I would like to find ways to refine it to a point where I can only smell sour in the FLAS. Thanks.
That vomit smell is probably coming from the anaerobic bacterial production of longer-chain acids like propionic acid and especially butyric acid. Clostridium spp. may be responsible for the butyric acid (link)
Interesting. I think the bad smell could also be from the gas producing bacteria leuconostocs from what I read somewhere in this forum. I plan to do an experiment (non-scientistic of course) this weekend by boiling the FLAS in hope to remove all the volatile compounds and odors and of course will kill all the organism in it. I would like to find out if a 5-min boil of the FLAS will still have any effect in the dough and also if it can be backsloped into a new mash with a low enough pH to activate LAB quickly so other bacterial can stay inactive.
How about vitamin C to initially acidify the mash?
Sure, Gary. You can try initial acidification of the mash with anything you want, including vitamin C.
Remember though that vitamin C is unstable at high temperatures and after several days at 45C none (or barely any) will be left in the solution according to this article, which states that 2-3 days at 40-50C destroys all vitamin C in their experiments
So don't count on added vitamin C as on bread improver later on when you use the resulting soured mash/liquid in bread making.
I brewed a new batch starting with enough vitamin C crystals (about 1g) to bring the pH of the solution down to about 4. I did not vacuum seal the container but it was nearly full. No foul smell even on the first day. I could hear it fizzing on so I was assured that fermentation. I let it go for 3 days and used some today. It worked great.
Next up a flourless SD starter brewed at 28-32C.
Thank you, Gary, for this experiment! And congratulations! I am happy that it worked.
Was it 1g ascorbic acid per 500ml water? And how much rye malt? 72hrs at what temperature?
I also got a fresh bottle of vitamin C crystals to try this method. I like it better than acidifying with vinegar, for sure, or even with lactic acid. Mostly because as vit C decomposes with time, pH rises, while as sourdough bacteria propagate, pH goes down, so the solution as a whole has the pH beneficial for the good bacteria: not too high and not too low.
Have you tracked its pH daily to see how it changes? Did you notice any changes in bread dough or baked bread due to the leftover vit C in the brew?
It was a 1 pint jar nearly full. I'm guessing 400g of water. I used 25g of the rye malt. I put in about 0.8 g of the vitamin C crystals and then used my pH paper. It didn't look like it was down to 4 so I added a little more. Not very precise but my paper has steps of 0.5.
I kept it at 43.5C by putting it in our crockpot in a water bath and using the little controller.
I fed it 1 tsp of sugar each morning. That is when I checked on the smell. It never stunk. I was very pleased with that.
I just finished making it today, I will try to keep an eye on the pH though it will have to change a good bit for me to be able to tell.
The loaf I made today was a double experiment. I'm bad about changing 2 variables at once. I replaced 30% water with raisin yeast water. It turned out similar to previous loaves, though about 5% shorter (now perfect height).
So I didn't observe any effects of the vitamin C. I should not have done YW this time.
It looks the same to my untrained eye.
I think the flavor is more interesting with the YW but that was when it was first baked and bread is always better then. I'll see tomorrow if it is really different.
gb
Thank you for providing all those details, Gary! Have you checked the final pH of this batch of the rye malt brew this morning?
I wonder if you could set up an experiment to see if or how the background pH of the vitamin C solution changes with time. Just 400ml water with one gram of ascorbic acid kept for 72hours at 43.5C. Will it stay the same, decline or rise as vitamin C degrades due to heat? Your pH paper should be able to detect it.
It does degrade, but the byproduct of vit.C decomposition is a stronger acid actually, so it would be interesting to know.
The pH looks like about 3 today. I'll try to do that experiment but it will have to visit. My daughter will be visiting from Oregon in the next few days so we getting everything ready.
Is a good alternative to Pineapple juice
I noticed in a post tonight on using malt to make tea the claim that they are not "ready to eat" and must be boiled to be safe. We're keeping these malts in warm water for many hours.
I'm guessing the bread is safe after baking but we've been pretty cavalier about tasting the FLAS.
Should we be much more careful?
We aren't supposed to eat flour raw either because these days it contains e-coli.
I see that the lactic acid kills the bad organisms and we've got plenty of that.
Just like any other raw eatable stuff we just have to be careful of what we eat. I think once the pH drops with LAB presence, most other bacteria cannot survive. I read somewhere that the LAB in our stomachs can even kill the covid virus.
Got two mashes brewing right now, will have a lot of experimentation to do this week.
I'm eager to hear your results. Please keep us posted.
Finally, no bad smell for this week's brew, only green apple sour aroma emitted from the solution. I jacked up the temp to around 115-degree F and backsloped about 30% of the water with a second pass solution. It might have been fine without the temp increase, but I wanted to do everything possible to suppress those gas producing suckers. Can we call it sourwort like it was originally named by Savvas? Don't like the name FLAS, whatever :)!!!
115F, 30% backslop, how long?
I brewed it for 3 days untouched.
From what I read 'lactos' keep happy at the 100-120F range, so it sounds fine. Looks healthy too. Is the amount of backslopping arbitrary or you measured the pH? Should aim for an initial pH around 4.3. Looking forward to your bread results using it.
Yeap, I wanted to stay at the upper range of the temp, in fact, I might bump it up a couple more degree next time to stay close to the 120-degree mark so only the best lactos can survive. No I do not have a pH meter, not yet as the one I want is out of stock at the moment, so I use my tongue for now. Yeah that 30% was just a random pick. I don't think it matters much what percentage of backslope to use as long as there are some lactos in the water to kick it off. Thanks.
I'm enjoying experimenting with FLAS and have also just made my first rye loaf with SD and YW levens (rye and white) with a formula from trailrunner.
I wondering about adding FLAS to my next rye loaf in place of some of the water.
Will it work its magic?
You are ahead of the game Gary as that is what I was planning to do, the reason I just bought a loaf pan. :)
I do love my tiny pan. I can bake at least every other day (sometimes every day) and not shed too many tears when an experiment doesn't go the way I hoped.
I'm doubtful I'll be able to try rye tomorrow. Maybe Friday.
Yeap that is the reason I like this little 4"x4"x4" cube box, so cute too.
Will have to give this a try.
Hi Pane,
Could you tell me how you refresh the flas based only on the sediments that settled at the bottom of the flas? That is all I have left right now.
Thanks!