I started converting my sourdough starter to a stiff pasta madre a couple of weeks ago to prep for the Christmas season. All was going well, with the starter tripling with each feeding (I was doing three two to three refreshments at around 80 degrees F, and one overnight refreshment at 60 degrees F for about a week). At that point, I decided to tie the new refreshment and store in the fridge for a week.
The starter came out of the fridge puffed and looking healthy. I cut out the core, gave it a bath in sugar water, then started the refreshment cycle again. But after it didn't bounce back, barely rising at all with the following three refreshments.
I decided to start over with a new conversion, but was wondering if anyone has any insight into what happened? Did I just not give it enough time to gain back strength after a week in the fridge? Or was this indicative of some other issue?
Thanks!
Without knowing the details (maybe you can provide some more details) I see 3 possible issues:
1. Too much sugar in the water -> high sugar concentration slows down the activity. How much sugar did you add to how much water?
2. The pieces of LM in the bath were to small, the bath too long -> a significant amount of yeasts and bacteria was in the water, not in the LM.
3. For other reasons (too long fermentation in the fridge??? still too cold after the bath ??? bath too hot, killed most of the bacteria and yeasts???) the yeast and bacteria where weak and the refresh significant more time to develop.
PS: I'm not a big fan of bagnetto. Imo the benefit is very small compared to the what you have to do.
Ah, okay, I think you may have nailed it, as my bagnetto was not at all precise for a couple of reasons. So, it was roughly, 1000ml of cool water to about 6 grams of sugar. It was meant to be, I believe 1 gram, but I dumped too much and didn't think it'd matter. Then I left it in the bath for probably 45 minutes because I was distracted, AND the pieces I cut were quite small (only working with about 50 total grams of starter before cutting away the dried bits.
So...yeah. I think what you've described is highly likely. I appreciate the feedback. I had no idea the bagnetto could have such ill-effects. I'll probably skip it now, for this new LM.
I know a PM is supposed to be at its healthiest when able to triple within 4 hours after being fed however...
It sounds like you jumped the gun when feeding and it needed more time before the next feed. Perhaps it didn't bounce back as much because your feeding schedule slowed it down. If it doesn't rise then you wait until it does rise to go onto the next feed. Once it can triple within 4 hours then it is good to use.
A significant amount of time had passed after the first feeding (I'm talking nearly 24 hours at 60 degrees F), so I was pretty sure something had gone wrong and only proceeded with another feeding to assess the damage. By the second, there was little to no activity after six hours at 80 degrees F.
I misspoke when I said three, the third was when I decided to switch back to my other sourdough and restart the process.
I'm thinking what a previous comment said about the bath being the culprit was probably accurate based on the circumstances.
How are you doing the overnight refreshment? How was the LM after the nearly 24 hour fermentation? Did it seem healthy?
Oh, by that point, I think the starter was pretty inactive. There had been almost no noticeable growth. Perhaps a tiny bit of puffing. I'm thinking it was the bath that "killed" my progress with that one.
Otherwise, I've been doing two to three warm refreshes at 80 degrees F for 3-4 hours, followed by a cold overnight of about 10-12 hours at roughly 60 degrees. That was working really well, right up until I did the long refrigerator rest followed by the bath.
I've converted a new one from my liquid sourdough and am going through this process again, as described above, only this time I won't be using the bath and will probably use the starter before it ever gets put in the fridge for a long rest.
I only use the refrigerator once or twice a year, but I routinely keep my LM in a wine chiller, "free", at about 8C (that's the setting at least - the core of the LM is ~10C) and refresh it every 2-3 days. I notice similar behavior coming out of the wine chiller and fridge, with the fridge case being a little more "severe".
Like sparkfan, I am not a huge fan of the bagnetto. I'd much rather try and control the acidity in my starter using refreshment ratios, as one example. When getting the starter ready for production, I'll take it out of the chiller and do a 1:2 warm refreshment, then 1:1 and back in the chiller. The temp of the chiller varies - for example, if the warm refreshment runs long, I increase the overnight temp.
I use the 1:2 refreshment as the first acidity "correction", I guess you can call it. On the following days, I begin doing 1:1 refreshments to see how the PM behaves. At first, the 1:1 warm refreshment will take a while - even 5 or 6 hours. Each warm refreshment in the following days typically brings the maturation time down, until I see the PM near its peak within about 4 hours.
There are also other qualities to look for. My PM gets drier. It's hard to explain. It's not a hydration issue, but with the same quantities of water used previously, the PM feels very dry. At the beginning of the whole process, the PM usually sticks to its container when I remove it, but as it gets healthier, it seems to come out more easily and in a single piece.
I think you can probably make a PM from a liquid starter fairly quickly. It might not be worth putting in the fridge next time.
Thanks, that all makes sense, and I agree, I'm going to try and get this one into fighting shape and use it without a fridge rest. For what it's worth, I am also noticing what you mentioned, with the first few refreshes being softer and sticking more, and later ones becoming drier. I *thought* that was simply the hydration evening out as I went from a semi-liquid starter, but perhaps not.
In your case, it could've been. Who knows 🤣.
My PM has been through a lot. A couple of months ago it died. Like dead dead. Like would not grow a millimeter regardless of time, temp, or refreshment ratio. The starter would just get kind of yellowish and sit there. The whole time though, it had this sort of clammy feeling to it. Similar to the dryness I explained, it wasn't wet and didn't behave the way you'd expect if it were just more hydrated than usual. I guess maybe that's why I associate this "stickiness" with the LM being too acidic.
I'm always a fan of trying to get it to work though.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I've had more downs than ups on my Panettone journey. It got so bad that last year I didn't even *try* to use a sourdough starter and went with a recipe I saw on YouTube. They came out good, but they weren't what I'd come to know and love. So, I'm back at it again this year, with a *little* more knowledge, better ingredients, and hopefully a tiny bit of luck.
My starter lasts longer, and springs back quicker, if I allow the acidity to build up (so fed and bubbled up till at least doubled) before refrigeration. This way it has a healthy population of yeast and enough acidity to ward off other bacteria.
I understand PM is a starter that isn't acidic hence the bathing and feeding. That's for baking! Perhaps there needs to be a different approach for storing.
Might react better to storing when further along the fermentation process (but not peaked) and more acidic. Then when taking it out of storage you can bathe it and feed it to bring it back within the normal parameters of a PM.
Then again i'm just thinking about it from a 'normal' sourdough starter point of view so it might not apply to PM.
Right on, that could be a good idea. I'm going to try and keep this one out and active through baking, and then I can experiment with storage after that.
Don't' know if I have much to add, but I agree with Abe that if you jump the gun on feeding, you will "dilute" the PM's population before it has had a chance to increase. That leads to weaker and weaker PM. You need to be more patient than you think sometimes. The little bit of sugar in bagnetto sometimes helps start up a sluggish culture, but as others have said, don't overdo it. I use sugar as a way to avoid acidification in the primo impasto, but you don't want to do that when developing the PM.
Cheers, Sue
Thanks! Yeah, I'm seeing a similar pattern with this new starter. Started out really strong, then after the first night/cold refresh where I tied it up, the next day the starter was much weaker during the hot refreshes. It had been pretty much tripling, then fell back to doubling, and now it has been sitting at about 65 degrees for around 7 hours with barely any movement. I'm just going to leave it until tomorrow now and see if it continues to slowly grow and leave it until it at least doubles. I'll try to be more patient with waiting times as well. Not sure why it goes from being so strong to relatively weak like that.
In a previous post I said this
I didn't mention how I fixed it because I didn't want it to sound like a solution to your specific problem, but the solution feels very relevant now.
At some point I had to travel for a few days and couldn't refresh the starter, so I left it in the chiller for a long time - maybe 4 days or so at around 10C. My decision to do that was really just because I couldn't deal with it for a few days and didn't want to put it in the fridge. It was already "broken", what else could possibly go wrong...
Of course, when I returned after those few days, it had finally risen and has been rising well ever since
Huh, that's interesting, so really just need some time I guess, and maybe the cool temperature helped?
SO, I actually ended up starting a new one which I haven't tied, haven't given it a bath, and haven't used the "underwater" refresh. I basically just was doing the three hot and one cold overnight for days, and it is incredibly strong.
Well, I made a panettone test loaf, which is in the final rise now. The first rise went awesome, but then during the construction of the second dough, the gluten structure (which had been very strong) disintegrated during the first egg additions.
I kept working the dough, and it eventually bounced back and took all the ingredients, but the gluten mesh never did feel anywhere near as strong as it was at first. (The total "second dough" time from adding flour to placing into the molds was four hours, including rest times, etc).
Anyway, they're in the proofer and at this point I'm just holding my breath that they will still rise and be able to hold their structure long enough to bake.
I did a 1:2 (starter to flour) refresh at 50% hydration on the leftover mother and put it in the fridge, planning on holding there for about a week. Still no binding or anything.
If these loafs turn out and the mother remains strong, I'll attempt the actual Christmas Panettone with the expensive flour.