After having some problems with my starter staying in the fridge for a periods and getting some off smell and flavours, I started a new starter (using Hamelman's method) which has been making great bread. I feed it twice daily, with 15g old starter and 50g flour (half white / half rye or other whole grain) and 60g water, so 13% prefermented flour in feedings. It peaks at about 10h and then around 12h I give it another feed when the peak has slightly fallen down. I typically use room temperature or slightly warmer (30C) water.
I would like to reduce the feedings to once a day if possible so that I'm wasting less flour on feedings. Is this possible to do with doing 6% prefermented flour and/or adding salt to the starter? Hamelman recommends this in his book, and I'm curious if anyone has had success with it. I would like to avoid the fridge if possible.
It's possible to delay feedings by using cold water. if you are using room temp water, I'm not sure that this would cut the feeding times in half. However, if you are using slightly warmer water, this could solve that problem.
You can use less flour by only keeping a very small amount of starter (ie. using 10g flour) and increasing the amounts several feedings before you intend to make bread. I usually increase by no more than 4 times the existing starter at each feeding, so you would have to determine how many feedings you would need to get the amount you need plus the new seed and plan ahead.
Good luck!
Thanks. Hamelman also says:
Is there something inherently bad about having too low pre-fermented flour percentage to stretch the doubling time?
I think the Hammelman quote above is one of his more disappointing comments...esp. since there is no science provided to support it, just anthropomorphizing.
As long as you aren't repeatedly diluting the population of yeast and LAB's, and not letting their populations to rebound, you should be fine...why not try and see, as what matters most is your starter and how you treat it (rather than what others do or recommend). Not as proof that it will work well for you, or a prescription, just an example... I regularly use 5% mature starter with no problems (and that is feeding it 2x/day, at temps in the upper 60's F).
Also...see this thread:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com//node/10375/lactic-acid-fermentation-sourdough
such a great thread from Debra Wink. I had missed that one, and I much appreciate having it safely bookmarked now for future reference.
I am feeding my starter once a week and I use it daily. One day a week I take a sample of the old starter and feed it at a 1:2:4 ratio - starter, water, flour. I let that mixture sit at room temperature for about 8 - 12 hours then refrigerate it. When I need a natural leavening for baking I pull off a piece of the well-developed starter and use it to grow the levain. As the refrigerated stock (mother) gets below my safety zone I start the process all over again.
Some of my formulas perform better with a very active starter so I might go through a refresh cycle before building the levain. Again I pull a small amount from the mother and build a "refresher", which is usually somewhere between 70 - 100% hydration. The refresher may sit at room temperature for 6 - 8 hours and then I use the refresher to build the levain.
This procedure is working well for me.
Jim
I've resorted to pinching off a little dough after the bulk ferment and returning that to the fridge where it'll sit for a week. When it comes to baking again its normally still strong enough for a single feed to go onto the next recipe. If I think it needs more feeds and / or I'm building to another flour and/or hydration then I'll give it more feeds till the desired Levain is built. After which I'll keep a little dough back after the bulk ferment for the next bake and so on.
This is risky I'll admit as one can forget to pinch a little dough off before baking. But I am meticulous and so far no troubles. I might have a little excess dough for building the next stage (only a few grams) similar won't throw it away until I've remembered to keep some back so there is some back up.
Otherwise my other way has been rather like Jim's. I just bake less often.
who keeps the main starter in the fridge (and often builds the levain a few days in advance and refrigerates it, too), I have done a month or so of maintaining a starter at room temperature. My cheap little (frugal --- yeah, frugal) self is honestly appalled at the idea of either discarding 100g of flour per day or trying to come up with uses for it (there are just two of us here), so I'm quite glad that I never saw the approach that you're using before I decided to create a starter!
That said - my kitchen temps were around 65-68 deg F while I was maintaining the starter on the counter, and I fed once per day. I used 100% hydration, all freshly ground whole rye, cooled water (usually around 45 deg), and usually did a 1:4:4 feed with just 4g of starter. "Discards" of 16g flour per day all went in to the fridge and ended up with me using them as the levain for a second loaf on each weekly bake (I'd do a room temperature levain from the counter-starter for the first loaf). After a few weeks of proving to myself that the refrigerated "discards" were working just as well as the room-temp levain for raising a loaf, I ditched the hassle of daily feedings and just went the NMNF route.
I would suspect that the off-smell and flavours that you found with your refrigerated starter might have been the result of not letting it build enough LAB population before putting it in to the fridge, and not making sure that it was refreshed before it ran out of food. I find that I need to refresh more often in warmer weather (since the fridge temp fluctuates more and the door gets opened more often), and that it helps to make it 60 or 65% hydration covered in fresh flour (keep an eye on the dry flour, and refresh the starter once that layer looks absorbed).
Regardless, you'll find the starter maintenance that works the best for you and your working and baking schedules, so hopefully a try using cooler water, lower prefermented flour percentages, and overall less flour will give you what you want. There is no reason that any of those should have an adverse effect on your yeast and LAB populations when you build your levains.