Substitution of dry yeast for a starter

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Hanry on 11 May 2020 at 21:09

Can someone help me with this. I read that you can make every bread that calls for dry yeast or fresh yeast with a starter. Just need to make some changes on the flour and water on the recipe. Is this correct? This is what I found, please advise if this is correct or I have wrong information.

Sourdough Starter 100 grams =I nstant/DriedYeast 5 – 7 grams, Fresh Yeast 12 – 15 grams.

Thanks

Hanry

If you have an active sourdough starter, you can use it at about 20% of the weight of your flour. So if you had 1000 grams of flour in your dough recipe you would use 200 grams of starter. If you had 600 grams of flour you would use 120 grams of starter.Yourdough may be a bit wetter from the water in the stater you can add a few tablespoons of extra flour if you want.

Keep everything else the same, but realize that the first (bulk) proof may take an hour (or three) longer than when you were using dried yeast. Put the dough somewhere warm and check on it when the recipe says and then at half hour intervals. After that first proof it will behave about the same as it did with dry yeast.

Hi one more quiestion. If its 1000gms flour and I will be using 200gms starter. then I will have to subtract 100gms of flour from the total flour? and also with the amount of water is that correct? my starter is 100% hydration

and what about if my kitchen is around 85F-90F how long will you bulk ferment? and how many folds? and how often? 

Thanks Again

Hanry

Instead of reinventing the wheel, there are lots of good sourdough recipes on this forum and all over the web.  Pick one that has already been worked out and run with it.

Hi Hanry,

PeterS isn't wrong. I was assuming you had a yeasted bread recipe you were already accustomed to baking and wanted to convert that particular bread to sourdough. 

If that's so, you can convert as we discussed, without making any other adjustment other than perhaps adding a bit of extra flour to correct the hydration (assuming your recipe isn't at 100% hydration.) Personally I wouldn't bother as the addition of the extra water in your 100% hydration levain isn't going to affect your overall dough hydration much. The key is, you should add some flour if your dough seems unusually wet and isn't behaving/looking/feeling the way you expect after you mix in the levain. This is a judgement call. 

On the other hand, if you're new to bread baking, please disregard all of the above and simply choose a sourdough bread recipe!  It is challenging to learn to bake sourdough bread, and it's best to follow a tried and true method and recipe when you're first learning. You might want to do this even if you are an experienced baker, just to get a feel for how sourdough behaves. 

I hope this helps -Jess