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Hi Melissa,
Excellent experiment. All my sourdough equipment is from Breadtopia, with flour from KAB, (for disclosure). Maintaining a liquid starter with bread flour (1:1:1) was problematic as it didn’t react after weekly feedings as quickly as a stiff starter using whole wheat flour (1:2:3).
Bubbles I has been retired as it was sluggish, less reliable, and needed the boost of hours in the oven with the light on; Bubbles II rises within four hours after a weekly feeding. Kitchen is 70-72 degrees, during all seasons. It is easy to convert the stiff starter to a liquid one: three parts starter to one part water.
Bubbles II successfully raises a variety of breads using a variety of flours; its discard is used in crackers, cinnamon raisin bread, and cookies, with a conversion of stiff to liquid, as needed.
Thank you to you, Eric, and other bakers for creating a new passion and educating me.
All the best,
Ronnie
Hi, Melissa…
Thanks for this great review! After many years, and many tries, of making starters of different combinations of flours, my favorite is a 1:1:1 ratio of starter, water and flour (a 50:50 combination of Cairnspring Mills AP and Bob’s Red Mill Whole Dark Rye, for disclosure). Granted, adding the rye makes it a relatively stiff starter, but the aroma and tangy flavor profile are well worth the effort. And the resulting bread is the best of all the starters I’ve made. However, to get the most from this starter and the dough it’s mixed into, I retard the fermentation in bannetons overnight for at least 16 hours. Then, I score and place the cold dough (no bench warm-up) on the preheated baking steel in the 500 degree oven, place an old blue-with-white-speckles enameled roaster lid over them (to trap steam), turn it down to 475 for 20 mins, remove the roaster lid and bake for another 20-25 minutes, and VOILA!
Stay healthy and safe!
Jim B.
Personally I have tried so many different combinations including whole rye I can’t count them. Last year after reading “The Rye Baker” I also decided on a 50/50 whole grain hard white and rye starter. I use it for all my sourdough.
Hi Melissa,
Excellent article! The kind of flour used in the starter really is important, and it’s very welcome to see some careful experiments.
In the case of Eric’s Poilane-inspired recipe, one of the things that brought it alive for me was to culture the starter on Warthog. When I use that starter to preferment the first part of the flour that goes into the recipe, if everything has gone well, it smells wonderful. If it does, the bread will be good, and if it doesn’t, there’s no point in continuing. It’s a crucial part of the final flavor.
In general, though, for what it’s worth, I tend to favor rye. This is partly from experience, though nothing as systematic as what you did here, and partly a matter of personal taste. More interestingly, a friend of mine in Sweden got into a conversation with a professional baker there, who said he liked to culture his starters on rye. He’s someone worth listening to.
In any case, if you’re using much rye in a recipe, it does make sense to preferment at least some of it first. It improves the flavor, and the acidity of the sourdough helps to regulate the enzymes present in rye flour, which could otherwise make the bread a little gummy.
Best,
Brian
@ronnieviv Great starter names. Bubbles II sounds like a champ.
@brdbkr Voila indeed! I like baking cold dough when possible too.
@DennisM Sounds like a flour combination that the microbes would love, lots of whole grain goodness. (I should have a corn hydration report in that other thread soon.)
@brianwhite142 Interesting info. Next time someone asks how to make their rye bread less gummy, I’ll suggest prefermenting some of the rye flour (along with my usual: make sure you let it set for 24 hours before cutting).
Very cool experiment Melissa! I am glad that you enjoyed that article. So did I. I applaud your curiosity, your experimental method, your hard work and the fact that you share your results with the rest of us. Thank you!
I agree with your your statement that the relative sourness of the bread flour starter could be related to the extra hour or two duration in the proofing of that loaf. When I am optimizing my my starter to make it triple in volume in 4 hours, I find that it takes 3 hours to double, but it only takes one more hour to triple. I would guess that the relative acidity could be increasing significantly in the last few hours of proofing as well. Also, like you, I would guess that the sweetness you tasted in the sprouted wheat starter is due to the additional enzymatic activity and the associated extra available simple sugars.
I have become fascinated by the subtle nuances between different starters, even using exactly the same flour. This past summer I created 2 starters using basil water that ended up acting very differently even though I used the same basil leaves and flour. The only difference was that I started the first one with plain water and the second one with lemon juice for the first 3 days to jump start the acidic environment (to bypass the leuconostoc bacteria phase). The first starter took around 6 or 8 days to settle down, but the second one was doubling after about 3 days and tripling by the following day. A few days later I triple fed the second starter to try to reduce the lemon content and it rose about 5 times its original volume! It also was less acidic than the first starter. After a couple weeks when both starters had stabilized, the second starter was still more active and less acidic. The 2 starters also smelled subtly different, and do even to this day.
My current working postulate is that when you create a new starter, there are many strains of wild yeasts and bacteria that all start vying for dominance. As certain strains start to dominate, they crowd out some of the weaker performers and then those die off. The byproducts of those dominant strains can also change the environment (pH and other organic substances), which can then start favoring other strains. If all goes well, eventually some strains will increase the acidity level until wild yeasts and lactobacillus bacteria win the battle and subdue all the other strains. My second starter bypassed the leuconostoc bacteria phase (produces cheesy odor) and may have allowed other strains to survive (that didn’t in the first starter) and some of these may have ultimately became the dominant strains in my second starter. Sound plausible?
In any case, I am really excited to try this new starter in my panettone this year!
Thanks, Dan. You have a lot of interesting info to add to this topic.
Your experience with the two basil starters is really interesting, and it’s good to know the name of that cheesy bacteria phase! That would be the stage in which I cooked my not-right injera and dosa years ago. I think I need to inoculate those batters with my starter, or let them transform over more days to crowd out the leuconostoc bacteria.
Your postulate sounds reasonable to me!
Hi Melissa,
Here are links to a 2-part discussion on sourdough starters from over at the Fresh Loaf. That’s where I learned about using acidic fruit juices to inhibit undesirable flora in favor of the desired combination of wild yeasts and lactobacillus. They used pineapple juice, but lemon juice worked fine for me. I checked the resulting pH with some pH paper and it showed the pH in the target area of 4.0 to 4.5. Here are the links I mentioned.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10856/pineapple-juice-solution-part-1
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/10901/pineapple-juice-solution-part-2
Hello, I have an active starter but it only doubles after feeding. How do I get it to triple or quadruple? Thanks for advice.
Many factors will dictate on whether a starter doubles or tripleds after feeding. From flour to water to ratio of fresh feed. What is more important is whether your starter makes nice bread!
Abe, this says SO much to me! My Cyril rarely, if ever, doubles and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him triple or quadruple. What he does do is bake beautiful loaves for me. As far as I’m concerned, Cyril is my happy starter. Power to the wee beasties!
Blessings,
Leah
…and vice versa Leah. I’ve seen many questions as to why a bread failed when the starter appeared healthy and tripled. At the end of the day it’s the success of the bake that counts.
I agree with what’s been said above about expansion not always indicating microbial population (especially in wetter starters or if you’re doing small refreshments), and about the dough expansion itself being the best thing to focus on.
However, it can be interesting and informative to play with starter feed approaches, so if you want to try to get tripling, I’d lower the hydration of your starter (e.g. feed 50g starter with 60g flour and 50g water) to allow more bubbles to be trapped in the paste. Then I’d do a series of well-timed feedings to get the max amount of microbes: discard and feed when the starter has peaked, not letting it drop much or at all. I tend to leave very little starter in my jar after baking, so I don’t need to discard. I just do maybe 20:20:20 grams, then 60:60:60 grams at the second feeding.
Here’s an FAQ about feeding and ratios How to feed starter | Breadtopia
@Fermentada Melissa, as wonderful as my starter, Cyril, is I felt that he was struggling a bit these last couple of months. When I fed him, he only seemed to snack on his feeding instead of heartily eating. He was only rising about 30% in his jar and he was getting a little “hootchie” which had never been an issue with him. I’d been pouring the hootch off of Cyril because I don’t like the alcohol aroma and definitely felt like Cyril needed a change, a boost. I just wasn’t sure what! Then I saw your posting that I quoted this morning. So today I fed him but I changed his jar so he’d have a clean house and decided to lower his hydration to encourage better expansion in his jar. He’s easily doubled in his jar! In fact,
Cyril has filled his entire jar! He has SO many bubbles he looks lacey and airy and spongy and so incredibly happy!
Woah that’s a big bubbly jar of starter! Glad to help. Did you mix up a dough with it?
@Fermentada After Cyril heartily ate yesterday I just put him into the refrigerator where he resides. I plan on mixing up a dough with him today and baking tomorrow. I just have to decide what I’d like to bake. I’m going to enjoy my morning coffee 
, pet a puppy 
and peruse some of my fav sourdough recipes. Hmmm, maybe a nice rye bread. 
I haven’t made a rye bread in quite a while.
Baking blessings,
Leah
I’m having a similar hankering for rye and was looking at a recipe that used buttermilk as the hydration.
@Fermentada I love a good rye and buttermilk rye is spectacular! We may both be making rye breads! With my husband’s dietary needs, I’ll be sticking to my "standard’ rye bread.
Blessings,
Leah
May I suggest this site for some lovely rye recipes?
I have done many of the recipes which were very enjoyable and delicious. However here is a recipe which has caught my eye but haven’t gotten round to trying it yet. An apple rye baked in a wooden frame. While the wooden frame is traditional I can’t see why you couldn’t bake it in a regular loaf pan. I’m curious about adding apple to rye bread.
