I have been watching some wonderful YouTube videos to increase my knowledge about bread baking.
Something I have been studying lately on YouTube is Mother starters or just "starters" I guess some people call them. One video I recently watched was a lady baking bread with a mother starter that she claimed she had in her frigerator for years. This confused me and I could not understand how somebody could keep alive a mother starter in their frigerator that long. What do you do when you go on vacation or out of town for extended time?
So I left a question on her video page asking this question and she responded that she does not feed her mother starter. All I can think of is that she was confused with my question because I thought mother starters need to be fed quite often so the yeast does not die. Would somebody clarify this for me. I thought that mother starters are nothing more than a homegrown yeast that is to be used instead of the store-bought granulated yeast.
A starter, levain, mother, whatever you want to call it iare natural yeasts that are found on the grains that we grind into flour. There are a number of them. Commercial yeast is only one strain or kind.
As to not feeding her starter, I think what she means is that she doesn't feed it on a daily basis. It might not even be on a weekly basis. But she must feed it at some point in time or she would run out.
A number of us do a similar thing here. We make a very thick version of our starter and once it shows signs that it is active, we put it in the fridge for months. When we want to make bread, we take a bit from it and feed that bit until we have enough for our dough. The mother starter stays in the fridge. When it gets low, we feed it again to make a thick version and the cycle starts again.
Hope this clarifies things a bit.
So from what you are saying, a starter only needs to be fed when it is running low? So with that logic, a starter would not have to be fed if it was not used? Am I understanding this correctly, if I take six months off from baking bread I would not have to feed my starter? I thought the yeast inside the starter was a living thing and needed to be fed from time to time. No, I am still confused.
and there are different ways to maintain them. In general, the thicker a starter is, the less often it needs to be fed / refreshed, basically because the yeast takes longer to eat through the food in the flour. Refrigeration has the same effect, so by doing both, it's possible to build a mother that can go months between feedings.
There are benefits and drawbacks to any maintenance method, so no single one is best for the various ways different people bake.
but if you give it enough food to survive (that's why you make it thick) and you slow down it's metabolism by keeping it in the fridge, it can live for a very long time on the food that is in the jar with it.
They eat like pigs during the summer and fall, and then they sleep for the winter using up the fat that they have accumulated. Same thing with the wild yeasts in a starter.
I know of some folk who only bake occasionally , so the starter is stored in either the fridge or the freezer , and is taken out ahead of time , brought up to room temperature , transferred into the mixing bowl , and the levain built up.
When the levain is bright and bubbly , a portion is put back into the storage container , and returned back where it came from .
A process akin to this may be what the woman on the video was alluding to .
Made with just flour and water then left to ferment. Often called sourdough starters. When fermented, over a period of a week or two, yeast and good bacteria populate this flour and water mix. To make bread from this starter you feed it, or take some off to feed, allow it to ferment and then use. When creating the starter it can take a long while but once mature a fresh feed will ferment quite quickly (relatively quickly but slower than commercial yeast). One doesn't wish to go through the whole rigmarole of creating a new starter each time so you always keep some back to inoculate the next batch - this is the starter. In between feeds one can keep it in the fridge and it will last quite some time until it needs another. If kept at room temperature it'll need regular feeds to keep it alive. As long as it has food it can be kept going indefinitely.
There is no official/formal/proper definition online that I've ever seen - just see above for some alternative views :-)
Here is mine - the "mother" is the jars I keep in the fridge. I use the mother to make a production levian by taking some of the mother, adding flour and water to it, mixing and leaving it somewhere warm for a few hours. At the same time, I top-up the mother and leave it somewhere warm for a few hours then it goes back in the fridge until the next time.
Another name for mother is: starter.
Another name for production levian is: starter.
I really just use the word starter for everything. It's either in the fridge or ready to go (and I sometimes use starter directly from the fridge!)
Some people (e.g. look up dabrownmans "No Muss No Fuss" method) keeps the mother in fridge all the time, using a small piece and not replenishing it until the very end - when the last piece is used to create the next larger piece that then lives in the fridge and the process repeats. This may well be a good thing to look into if only baking bread every week or so.
The best way is the way that works for you, and the best name is the one you like best...
On the question of holiday - I've left mine untouched in my fridge for 3 weeks in the past. When I got back the last time I just tipped out half of them, topped them up appropriately and left them in a warm place for a few hours and put them back in the fridge to be used the following day.
See http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/50417/happy-new-year-starters-holiday for some photos!
-Gordon @moorbakes in Devon
This is my understanding of the process:
When you build your starter for the first time you are creating a growth medium. What grows in that medium is a combination living things introduced from the flour, water, and the air around that medium. Once the starter takes hold, usually 48 to 72 hours from its inception, a war takes place within the medium and the stronger bacteria begin to dominate.
Lactobacillus usually become dominant and they generate lactic acid as a byproduct of digesting nutrients in the flour. Only a very few strains of yeast fungi can tolerate the (now) acidic medium so a healthy starter is comprised of dominant bacteria and dominant yeast. I have read that the ratio of bacteria to yeast is around 100:1. This new successful starter that will become the beginning of future levain for your bread is called the "mother", and starting a mother can take up to 7 days. The product of your hard work needs to be stored so that you don't have to go through this process every time you want to make bread.
Some bacteria and some yeast can survive indefinitely when place in a dormant environment like a cold refrigerator. They can even survive a drying process that removes most of the water and permits storage at warmer temperatures. Just because they are not active doesn't mean they are dead.
When the occasional baker wants to create a naturally-leveaned (sourdough) bread they will take a small sampling of the mother from the refrigerator and begin the process of regrowing more of the dominant bacteria and yeast from that sample. I find that the best results occur when the build happens in two stages.
Stage 1 is a refresh which is small build to kick-start the process. After several hours, based on the strength of the mother and the ambient temperatures, Stage 2 begins by adding the refresh to the final levain (flour, water and sometimes a little salt). The levain build will also take several hours based on the same criteria. That levain is added to the final mix for a round of fermentation, dividing, shaping, proofing and baking.
As the mother is depleted the baker makes the decision to refresh the mother. What is left is removed from the refrigerator and refreshed by adding flour, water, warmth and time. After a successful refresh the mother is returned to the refrigerator and the process starts all over again.
Some of the bakers around here bake often enough that we do not refrigerate our mother, but instead run a constant sampling and refresh system. I bake 3 days a week and I refresh every day. Some here refresh twice a day. Our mothers are very strong, active, reliable and predictable. Most of us also keep a small mother backup in the fridge, or dried, in case we screw-up and have to start over.
If you bake occasionally and have an open schedule, refreshing a sample from the fridge works pretty well. The downside is that each time you make bread the timing can alter a bit based on the ingredients you use, the ambient temperature and time. Bakers that need bread delivered at specific times each day cannot afford the luxury of a sleepy starter.
I hope this adds to the dialog that others have presented here and I am open to any corrections or suggestions.
Jim
When I first started in my breadbaking journey, a co-worker offered me some starter that had a history of being around for 70+ years. She kept it in the refrigerator and never fed it. She was alarmed when I asked about a feeding schedule and advised I never feed it. Apparently, she would bake every few months and would make a sponge/preferment (just flour and water) with all of it and when the sponge/preferment was ready, she would put some back in the jar and back in the refrigerator. When I got it, it was very velvety-like fully digested flour at 125% percent hydration, with a thin layer of hootch. It hadn't been fed in months.
I used this starter for a while but I did feed it. It did have some great properties but longevity was not one. It did end up dying on me during a period of neglect. Perhaps I should not have fed it at all!
I don't know why this culture survived. It may have something to do with how yeasts go into spore form for long term survival. They have successfully made beer and bread from yeast cultures found in Egyptian tombs that were several thousand years old.
On the other hand, about 8 yrs ago I found an original packet of Sourdough Jack culture sold as a tourist souvenir in the 60's and revived it. It is still my main starter and is still going strong despite cross country travel, dehydrating for storage and infrequent bakes. A real survivor.
So now you have heard about some of the many ways natural levain, mother, chef, starter, sourdough (all the same thing) can be kept and used. Pick a method that works for you but it always helps to understand what is actually happening. Understand the science behind it- at least the general concepts.
If you bake often so it's always a recently matured 'starter'. Like a Pate Fermentee (sourdough style) which can be stored in the fridge and used in a few days. Works well as long as it's made to the flour and hydration you want in the recipe. Downside is forgetting to take some dough off and not really for enriched breads.
fridge for up to half a year at a time with no feeding or maintenance of any kind and have been doing this for years. I just take a bit every week to make a 3 stage, 12 hour levain for a loaf of bread. My apprentice, Lucy, invented the NMNF starter method and many Fresh Lofians use it or variations of it. Here is the post.
No Muss No Fuss Starter
I can relate to the confusion. This thread is better than videos. I use videos to support the thread instead of the other way round.
So, first learn about starters- the different types and the processes. Check out "The pineapple juice solution" which can be found here. Just use the search box in the top right. There are two parts. It explains what is going on to develop a Mother ( starter, chef, chief...lots of words that mean the same thing. )
Note there are many variables- temperature, flour type, ratios, acidity, bottled vs tap water, time, feeding cycle....etc. My starter: I used unbleached general purpose flour, bottled water, 68°F household temperature, and no set ratio. It took weeks to get consistent. Right now I'm going through a cycle to get it down to a set ratio (hydration percentage.) Then I'm going to dry some to make an emergency reserve.
I wouldn't recommend my starter technique unless you're a patient microbiology freak like me. -- Find a rye starter technique here, use an organic rye flour and bottled water, and read the pineapple juice thing...much faster results and much more aggressive yeast beasties.
There are also storage variables. A starter with a higher water ratio (hydration,) will require more feeding/maintenance in the fridge. And there IS an upper/lower hydration limit to storage in the fridge... otherwise you end up with either dormancy or risk starving the yeast because they burn through all the food. If it goes dormant (very, very low activity) you just have to do a few feeding cycles at room temp to "wake it up" again. All storage is forcing dormancy to varying degrees whether by refrigeration, lower hydration or by drying.
So...your "mother" can last a long time with very little maintenance in the fridge, if you use a sound technique. Then you use the mother to start up another culture at room temperature and the correct hydration for the recipe. This takes a few feeding cycles.
Good luck.
I'm new to TFL. Here is my Lievito Madre, started in January. Just this past weekend I converted it to the traditional Italian starter. It is fun to bake bread using this. Keep at it and be patient with the process. COLIN
Hi!
i have inherited some lievito madre from italy from a German baker. I missed up the ratio of keeping it alive as it’s the first time I am feeding it.
I used 100g starter 100g water 100g flour
but the recipe is 100g starter 100g flour 50g water
it should be thick but mine is softer. Can I save it and bring it back to life? I’m thinking I should feed it in 4 hours again with the proper ratio?
Before you panic, remember this starter is like having a pet. It won't starve to death or become ill that easily. The feeding you did would be like you having a sandwich for lunch with a BIG glass of milk instead of a little glass. If you habitually feed the culture this way, some of its attributes may change but you won't harm it. Peruse this site and decide what will work for you-there are MANY different ways to maintain a starter.
BTW, I received a starter from a friend who claimed it had been in her family for over 70 yrs. She, also , said she didn't feed her starter-ever. WHAT???? She had the family bread recipe. SHe was told that when she was ready to bake, she took all the starter, added the flour, waited a while, put some starter back in a jar for later and then proceeded to make the bread. I believe what she was actually doing was building the levain and using a small amount of the levain ( now that it was refreshed) as a continuation of her mother starter. She would put that back in the refrig. for a later use. Using it this way, the starter will live a long time -as long as you bake fairly often. It will definitely die if it is left for weeks or months without being refreshed and then you can try and salvage it but it may have starved to death. Amazing how important vocabulary is. She never "fed" the starter, she just "used" it. In actuality, she was feeding it every time she baked-fairly often.
I guess there are a LOT of different ways to maintain a mother starter.