I’m new to bread baking and sourdough and although I read about the topic all the time I never see this question. After I feed my starter there’s the time a few hours later that the starter is at its best, all frothy and bubbly. Now when is the BEST TIME to make my dough so I get the most rise? When it’s all frothy? Or doesn’t it matter for _____ hours after? I know this is terribly simple but I cannot find the answer to this simple question. Thanks!
There’s no generally accepted simple answer to that simple question. Different sourdough bread bakers do different things with regard to when in that cycle they prefer to use their starter. You will see people refer in recipes to “young,” “mature,” before, at, or after “peak,” and so on.
But here is a way of thinking about the process of making a loaf of sourdough bread that might help. Starter is just flour, water, and some microbes that are metabolizing (eating) the flour, right? And when you “feed” your starter, you’re just adding some fresh flour and water so the microbes have more to eat. So what do you think is happening when you add some starter to the flour and water that is your bread dough? Basically, you are taking the starter you added and feeding it a large amount of flour. Or, looked at from the other side, you are making a large batch of starter. In other words, once you add starter to the dough for a loaf of bread, you have created a new, large batch of sourdough starter. Then it will take some hours (fewer hours the warmer the temperature, more hours the colder the temperature) for the microbes to digest all that new flour. As they do, they are releasing carbon dioxide and the bubbles of carbon dioxide, trapped within the elastic dough, is what makes your dough rise. The bread dough rising is exactly the same thing as what you are describing happening with your sourdough after you feed it.
So in my opinion, a more important question than when is the best time to use your starter, is when is the best time (in the cycle of your bread dough rising) to start baking your bread? If you start baking too soon, then the process of turning the dough into starter hasn’t gone far enough and you won’t get a good “oven spring” because the population of yeast is not high enough in the dough to make enough CO2 bubbles to make it rise. If you bake it too late, then the population of yeast has already peaked and started to fall off and again there won’t be enough CO2 bubbles to create a good oven spring.
Because that perfect moment to start baking depends on lots of things that are specific to your situation at the moment (temperature in your kitchen, type and freshness of your flour, microbial makeup of your starter, etc, etc, etc), there is no way to provide a time in hours and minutes that is the “right” time. You have to develop an intuition for it by baking loaf after loaf and paying attention to the characteristics of the dough as it rises. Over time if you pay attention you will start to get a feel for the process and will come to sense when it is time to shape and start the final proof and when it is time to go into the oven. There’s no substitute for learning this through experience. Although every loaf feels to me like a science experiment, it’s really more of an art than a science. Sourdough bread baking is anti-formulaic.
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Thanks Paul. I was looking for a simple answer and you made me realize there’s a bigger picture to consider. I’ve had the experience where a formula proofed much faster one time than another but I didn’t realize what that was telling me.
You have helped me profoundly. Maybe our paths will cross again Teacher. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. A friend always,
Frank
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