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Hi Melissa. . . . as always, I am learning from your blog. I have just started using the stiff starters. . . I would like to know the formula to create sweet stiff starters or stiff starters at any percentage. Your article refers to a 52% SSS. So how much water and starter and sugar? And if I wanted to move to a 48% sss, how would the formula change. I guess what I need is the ratios? Water, starter, sugar and the flour. Thanks
Marcy
Good question! I’ll add the info to the blog. (You can find it in action in the challah recipe, hokkaido milk bread recipe, and some others.)
72 grams all purpose or other flour (1/2 cup)
32 grams water (2 Tbsp)
24 grams sugar (2 Tbsp)
24 grams starter (2 Tbsp)
100% flour
44% water
33% sugar
33% starter
With the starter as part of the flour and water
100% flour (84g)
52% water (44g)
3328.5% sugar (24g)
For the stiff starter builds in the tests in this blog post, I used 60% hydration.
For the first feed (30/50=60):
40g flour
20g water
20g 100% hydration starter
For subsequent feeds when the existing starter is already 60% hydration, you can feed it
X = flour
X * 0.60 = water
so I misunderstood… I thought the best results were achieved with a 52% SSS, which by my method shows 17g starter, 52g flour, 23g water, and 12g sugar?
Best results were with SSS for sure – I’m sorry I confused you.
I gave the other, not-sweet stiff build info in case you wanted it.
52g flour 100%
23g water 44%
12g sugar 23% <— your sugar amount is on the low side, I think it should be 52X0.33=17 grams
17g starter 32%
I just saw a mistake I made in the reply above and will fix.
This is so interesting!
Question: when using a stiff starter to make sourdough bread (lean dough), and let’s say the recipe calls for 75% hydration, is it necessary to add water to compensate for a lesser amount in the starter?
Thanks!
If you’re trying to follow the recipe exactly, then I would add those extra grams of water to the dough that are missing from the starter you’ve built.
Will it make much of a difference? Probably not, unless the recipe calls for a very large amount of starter to begin with.
Interesting! I was completely unaware of the interaction between pH and Maillard browning and was surprised that despite adding sugar to the starter and final dough, you could still get a pale loaf. Especially with an egg wash. Thank you for sharing your research and the results of your well-thought-out experiments. I can only imagine how much time and effort went into this quest!
Your discussion of pH and dough acidity made me remember a couple interesting videos I saw on this subject a few years ago. They were recorded during a workshop on sourdough led by Karl de Smedt, the curator of the Sourdough Library. Here are the links:
Acidity of Sourdough Part 1
Acidity of Sourdough Part 2
In them, he discussed the difference between pH and acidity, characteristics of stiff vs liquid starters, homofermentative vs heterofermentative lactobacillus and the effects of temperature on all of the above.
Those videos might shed some light on at least one other factor to consider relative to your discussion of why bread made with a stiff starter (which should produce more acetic acid than lactic acid) might be perceived as being milder: it may just contain less total acid. De Smedt mentions that the more liquid medium in liquid starters makes it easier for the sourdough flora to access the organic nutrients it feeds on, so it can produce acid faster than a dryer, stiff starter can. Especially with a refrigerated liquid starter. More acid = more sour. (If I put too much balsamic vinegar on my salad, it tastes too sour. If I am more moderate, it tastes just right despite using vinegar with the same pH. Remember pH measures the relative strength of an acid, but acidity is a measure of the total AMOUNT of acid present.) He also mentions in passing that you can reduce starter acidity by feeding it frequently and giving it a “bath” from time to time. I use these last 2 strategies when prepping my “lievito madre” for making panettone without adding any sugar to my starter and there is no noticeable sourdough twang in the final product.
But back to the Maillard reaction, if it wasn’t for the sugar in the recipe, I would have probably tried to add some diastatic malt powder to free up some more simple sugars. And if that hadn’t worked, I would have just been left scratching my head if it wasn’t for the info in your blog piece. Thanks again!
I’m glad you enjoyed the blog post. I need to try washing starter soon. That would have been a fun test to add to the experiment.
Thanks for sharing those links. Total Titratable acidity (TA) vs pH is something my beer brewing husband explained to me. How more acetic acid compared with lactic acid is needed to drive down the pH of a solution – even though the sourness perception, measured as TA, might be higher for acetic acid. He’d pointed me toward articles in the brewing world like this one:
I look forward to hearing bread talk about it from the sourdough librarian.
Thanks for link. It’s interesting to read about the flavor profiles of acetic vs lactic acid (and combinations of both) from a brewing perspective.
While stiff vs liquid starter is one way a baker can influence acetic vs lactic acid production, de Smedt also talks about using temperature to further modulate the ratio of these acids in sourdough. He draws a 4-quadrant graph where left half is for stiff starter and right half is for liquid starter and top half is for warm proofing temp (85F-95F: favors homofermentative bacteria) and bottom half is for cooler temps (68F-77F: favors heterofermentative bacteria). Cooler temps for a stiff starter maximize acetic acid production and warmer temps for liquid starter maximize lactic acid. However, I wonder if keeping a stiff starter at the warmer temps (which you do for panettone) would skew more toward lactic production (favor heterofermentative bacteria and less vinegar twang). I have read that the Italian master baker Piergiorgio Giorilli is very particular about controlling hydration and temperature during proofing because he is after a specific flavor profile that comes from a particular ratio of acetic and lactic acids. Interesting stuff!
BTW, here are links to a couple more videos about washing your starter from the same de Smedt workshop as the other videos I shared.
Bathing Sourdough Part 1
Bathing Sourdough Part 2
I don’t generally wash the starter quite so vigorously. I usually just soak it. And others have suggested adding a pinch of sugar as well. Also, to preserve the hydration level, I usually measure the weight of the starter before dropping it into the water and then again after squeezing out the excess water. This allows me to see how much water has been absorbed during the bath, so I can adjust the water in the dough accordingly. Hope this helps.
I am no expert and i’m just quoting what i’ve heard. Malliard is not solely sugar but it’s the reaction of sugar and amino acids. However the acid in sourdough affects the amino acids thus preventing browning.
I’m assuming you keep a low hydration stiff starter.
Thanks for the clarification Abe!
And to Abe’s point, when I wash my starter, I am keeping it at 40%-45% hydration.
@djd418 Thank you for the additional videos. I like the pre- and post- soak weighing idea. @Abe I kept a 60% h20 starter for a few weeks when doing the challah test bakes. I guess I should drive that down to the 40-45% Dan does if I plan to wash it and not have it dissolve away when soaking.
Here’s a fun video on Instagram of @evabakesbread washing and feeding her pasta madre.
I only recently learned there is no agreement on what ‘sour’ is. Apparently, people taste sour things differently. We can all taste the same things as being ‘sour’, but we do not necessarily agree on which is more or less sour.
A few years ago Karl de Smedt did a 3 ½ minute video on how and way to “give a bath” to a sourdough starter, then walks through the process, summery at the end. The video is in the Puratos collection of videos on YouTube.
I think washing a starter could be important to a commercial bakery. But, personally, I would not wash my starter, except to say I did it. It is just too easy to make a new starter from scratch if the current starter becomes unusable for any reason. Commercial bakeries may differ in that they manipulate their starter to a specific flavor profile, and try to maintain that balance. Home bakers do not do that.
Oh, and from the above video, we know Karl’s starter is named ‘Barbara’, and Barbara’s pronouns are ‘her’ and ‘it’. Barbara is a hefty one … it looks like it weighs at least a couple pounds.
That is so interesting. I love that there’s more variation in human taste perception than we’d expect or previously thought. We know people like different things, but that’s chalked up to exposure–and I bet that IS a huge portion of the taste variability but not the only reason for it. The idea that someone might like/not like something because it actually tastes different to them is cool. Kinda related to how hormones in pregnancy or covid in the respiratory track can change flavors dramatically e.g. compost flavored coffee for someone who usually loves coffee 
Otis, I find bathing my starter (Sherlock Foams) to be very useful when I am preparing it for making panettone, even though I’m just a hobby baker. The day before mixing my first dough, I start feeding my starter every 4 hours to increase its leavening power and to reduce the acid load. But since I value my sleep, at night I bind my starter tightly in a stout towel with a strong cord at room temperature to slow the fermentation process. Then in the morning I give the starter a bath to remove any excess acid that built up over night before resuming my 4 hr feedings. The resulting panettone has no noticable sourdough twang. That said, that’s the only time I ever give my starter a bath. 
According to Giorilli and other leading sourdough experts, the best ratio of acetic acid to lactic acid is 1:3.
Unfortunately, his books are only available in Italian. In case you or someone else can read it, I leave here the titles of the books that contain an important scientific-practical part besides the recipes:
Panificando (it’s a textbook)
Il grande libro del pane
La mia pizza
Another very interesting expert is Giambattista Montanari (not to be confused with Massimo Montanari, a food historian and prolific author published in English).
His two books (in Italian only) are also available digitally.
They are pH 4.1 and Omnia Fermenta. The first book has over 500 pages and the second over 600. In both cases the first half is dedicated to explaining everything related to fermentation. Omnia Fermenta includes topics such as no gluten and low gluten fermentation and the effect of fermentation on bean flours and other non grain flours.
Master pastry chef Iginio Massari has also written two books on sourdough and breads. His book Cresci (Rise!) is published in a bilingual Italian/English edition. The translation is bad, but it’s still worth reading. There are only about 30 introductory pages. Among his recipes are about ten variations of panettone.
Unlike Giorilli, who is a bread baker, Montanari and Massari are pastry chefs, so their recipes are mostly for sweet breads, but their knowledge of yeast and sourdough is equal.
Here are the links to a four-part explanation of sourdough by Massari, including when and how to wash it. It’s in Italian, but you can use an online translator.
On the same DolceSalato website, Giorilli explains autolyse:
Thank you Leonardo for the info and book titles! They sound interesting. I studied Italian during my college years, though reading 500 or 600 pages in Italian does sound a bit daunting.
A few years back I read the Massari Dolcesalato pieces and I have been using one of Massari’s recipes for panettone for the last 8 years or so. Thanks also for letting me know about Giambattista Montanari. I hadn’t heard anything about him before and I’ll probably start doing some research on him. Thanks again!