Starter suddenly sluggish and how I dealt with it along with some pH information

Baking Techniques
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I’ve been using my starter named John Dough for over 1.5 years now and in the past 1-2 weeks I’ve noticed that it is very sluggish. This is either the second or third time that I have noticed this happening. The last time was early this summer, at that time I fed it rye for several days and then went back to my usual regimen of feeding it whole red fife once a week keeping it in the fridge between feeds. I would then make levains from it once or twice a week.

Now that this has happened twice I am starting to think that maybe whole red fife isn’t the ideal food for my starter. I do have a proofing box in case anyone wonders if the cooler weather is the cause of the sluggish behavior.
Rye seems to be one of the best flours to use to boost the growth of a starter and it worked so well the last time this happened so I’ve decided to switch my starter over. Over the past day and a half I’ve given it four feedings and with the third and fourth feedings the starter grew to 4 times. I’ve never had that with my old starter, at most I’d see a 3 times increase in volume. So I am thinking that switching to rye has already boosted my starter’s potency.

Now one very odd thing that I’ve always noticed with my old starter is that when I need to make an all white flour levain, it would never double. I would always have to add at least a small portion of some whole grain to it in order to get it to double, not ideal. So to test the new John Dough I decided to do a test levain feeding it 1:1:1 with white flour. Incredibly after 2 hours it doubled and after 3 hours it had peaked at 3 times increase in volume. I think that satisfies me that my starter is much improved at this point.

I have also been interested in the pH characteristics of my starter for some time and have been collecting data over the past few months. The reason I became interested in this is that I was concerned that my only weekly feedings were causing the starter to get too acidic. The concern with this is that if one transfers too high an acid load to the levain then the dough will be far too acidic. Not only can this affect the flavour but it can affect the crumb. As you may know, the proteolytic enzymes in the grain become more active once the pH is < 4. So if we transfer too much acid and the pH drops really early in the process of bulk or during final proof, the gluten network can be damaged and the structure of our bread and its ability to hold the gases will be harmed.

OK I’ll cut to the chase, by feeding weekly and keeping the starter in the fridge, the acid load did not build up over time, the pH did not get lower and lower each week. That was reassuring. So I wanted to see what the pH characteristics of the rye starter are.

When fed whole red fife I would see pH of about 3.6 one week after last feeding. Immediately after feeding pH would be around 5.2 then at peak after feeding pH around 4.2.

I’ve only measured on two cycles but after feeding rye immediately the pH would be around 4.65 and then at peak 3.6. I surmised that rye isn’t as good a buffer for the acid compared with red fife and that red fife has better buffering abilities than rye.

To test my hypothesis that red fife is a better buffer of acid than rye, which could explain the rye starter having lower pH than red fife starter I just did the following measurements.

Red fife 1:1 water pH 5.9

Rye 1:1 water pH 6.15

Our tap water pH 7.12

White vinegar pH 2.14

I diluted the vinegar 1:3 with tap water pH 2.39

Red fife pH 1:1 with diluted vinegar pH 3.63

Rye pH 1:1 with diluted vinegar pH 4.0

So I was quite wrong that red fife is a better buffer of acid than rye. The red fife starts at a lower pH than rye and the pH falls more than the rye when an equal acid load is added to it.

So why then does the starter being fed rye have a lower pH if it is actually a better buffer? The reason is this, because rye can buffer more acid, it allows the LAB to continue to produce more acid when fed rye and ultimately the pH drops more because the TTA (Total Titratable Acid) of the starter fed rye is higher. The LAB are actually more negatively affected by the acid in the starter/dough than the yeast are. So because the rye is able to buffer the acid produced by the LAB more effectively and longer, there ends up being more LAB in the rye starter and the total acid produced is higher eventually overcoming the rye’s ability to buffer the acid. With the lower buffering ability of red fife the LAB will be negatively affected by the acid sooner so their population will be less and the total acid produced will be less.

I think this is one of the reasons by I have always found that breads made with a portion of rye are more tangy than those without. Anyhow I hope some of you might find that interesting.

Benny

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Interesting post. I had a similar problem this summer when I started feeding only Red Fife. I like a pronounced tang to my bread and noticed that I lost it over the summer. My starter seemed weaker too.

I have tendency of tasting and smelling my starter. It definitely tasted less tangy and more raw flour like than before. Since the only thing I changed was the feeding flour. I went back to 50/50 AP and Bob’s WW. I seemed to do the trick.

I will try feeding with rye as I am just now venturing into rye breads. I just did a pumpernickel loaf and built my levain 1:1:1 with rye. It grew about 4x overnight at 65f.

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James interesting that you’ve found the same thing with your starter being fed red fife. I still love red fife for its flavour it adds to breads but I won’t be using it exclusively to feed my starter anymore.

I will continue to feed with rye unless something similar happens with my starter and feeing rye, but I’m not expecting it.

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This is interesting to me. I’ve maintained a rye sour for probably 25 years and use it to build levains for whatever bread I happen to be making. I prefer the non-glutinous texture and the smell of rye starters and I do bake a lot of deli-style ryes, so it has worked for me. I used to keep it in the fridge, but felt that it was prone to developing off-flavors over time so, for a number of years, I’ve fed it 2x daily and kept it on the counter. Much better. Still, my breads sometimes taste sharper than my family likes. Occasionally, I would refresh it 3x daily to reduce the acid load, but I’m not interested in feeding 3x/day on an ongoing basis. Additionally, I felt that I was never going to produce a truly mild sourdough using a whole grain rye starter. So… within the past few weeks I put my beloved rye starter in the fridge and converted a piece of it to a stiff white starter. The first couple breads came out great with a flavor my family preferred, but the next couple loaves were denser than I like. Maybe I just had some bad bakes, but after reading your post, I’m wondering if there’s more at work here. I’m glad I saw this thread, because I was thinking of going back to my tried and true rye starter and instead of feeding it 3x/day, maybe giving it a stir between feedings. This idea came from Daniel Leader’s Living Breads, where he advocates for stirring the starter so the critters are exposed to a fresh supply of food after they’ve consumed what was nearby. Certainly easier than doing a full feed. Given what you’ve said about rye’s buffering ability, I wonder if this could make my rye sour milder without constantly feeding it. Or am I connecting all the wrong dots?

Editing to clarify that this is strictly a flavor issue for me, but I associate flavor with acid load. The rye starter has always performed well in terms of rise.

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Glad my post was of interest to you. When I wrote it I wasn’t really sure that anyone would be interested but thought I should share my findings regardless.

If you want to have less acidic breads but continue to use your vigorous rye starter you could simply build a levain using a very very small portion of your rye starter I suppose. Alternatively you could do a two or even three stage levain build to reduce the acid and rye component. Not sure if that helps or not. I’m sure you’ve thought of those ideas already.

Edited to add:
I see that I didn’t address your idea of stirring the starter to ensure that all the available food is available to the microbes and whether this would make your starter less sour. I don’t think that would reduce the acidity because as the microbes have more available food, in their metabolizing the food they would produce more acid thus increasing the acid load further assuming that the pH hasn’t already dropped to 3.4 or so where the LAB are no longer reproductions actively.

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I have tried using less starter and more starter and am not sure I noticed much difference. The multi-stage levain is something I haven’t tried. I will definitely give a try. In the meantime, I’m going to try baking again with the stiff white starter (which rises somewhat inconsistently in the jar) to see if I can get it to do a better job of raising my bread. Perhaps it was just user error; after all, it seems odd that its performance quickly dropped off after such a great start.

I have one of those portable pH devices, which tells me my rye sour is usually right around 3.8 at maturity, so it sounds like those LABs are still doing their thing. I was under the impression from Daniel Leader’s Living Breads (I misspoke in a previous post and referenced it as Local Breads so I will go back and correct that) that a starter’s pH should not fall below 4.0 - but since I was never able to get it above 4.0 at maturity, I thought maybe his comment was not applicable to rye starters. (When I think about this stuff too much, I swear my brain hurts, hahah!)

Thanks for the thought-provoking post and for your help.

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As I stated earlier, I’ve only recently converted my starter to rye so haven’t collected a lot of pH data on it yet, however, both times at peak the pH was 3.6. I will be interested to see over the coming weeks how consistent the pH at peak will be.

I’d say if you want a less sour levain then using any flour that is less of a buffer will work. The buffering ability of a flour is related to its ash content, which is related to how much of its bran is in the flour. So the flours with the least amount of bran would be white flours. So your idea of using a firm white levain which could be built from a two or three stage levain build should really give you a less sour levain which should help give you a less sour bread assuming the bread itself is also mostly white flour.

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Benny,
Thanks for the tips. Your guidance is much appreciated. Based on your suggestions, I’m making Hamelman’s Pain au Levain today, which is intended to be a mild sourdough, calls for a stiff levain, and is made with 95% white flour. Should be just what the doctor ordered, right?

This is one of the formulas I made last week using the stiff white starter that barely rose. (The other was Hamelman’s Vermont Sourdough.) I nursed the bulk along for an extra 2½ hours. In the end, there was very little expansion during fermentation and virtually no oven spring. For today’s bake, I started earlier and am prepared to stick with it no matter how long it takes. (FWIW, the Pain au Levain formula was new to me, but I’ve made Vermont Sourdough dozens of times and never had a failure until last week.)

Thank you again for your explanations and suggestions. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Benny,

That’s cool research. Thank you for sharing it. Can you tell me if my takeaway is correct:

A peak rye-fed starter will have both a lower pH and more lactobacillus than a starter fed with a flour that has less acid buffering ability.

My entire jar of starter (all 100g it so of it) gets pulled out of the refrigerator, warmed up, and fed (sometimes twice) about three times a week. Nowadays a 50:50 whole rye:bread flour mix. It’s got a nice lifestyle :slight_smile:

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Yes your understanding fits with what I believe to be the case, the rye fed starter will generally have a lower pH (and more total titratable acid TTA) and more LAB than a starter fed with a flour with less buffering ability when compared at a similar degree of fermentation for example at peak.

My starter routine is typically a once a week affair. So now I’ll have to see long term if my starter can remain vigorous being fed only rye. It is hard to imagine that it won’t but the proof is in the pudding.

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I have at times in the past fed my starter 100% whole rye flour. I have no numbers to report, but the pH testing apparatus I keep on my face (nose and tongue) agrees that rye-fed starter seems to be more acidic (more sour) than either various whole grain wheat flours (next most acidic) or refined white bread flour (least acidic).

My experience with rye-fed starter is that it seemed to be faster fermenting altogether than wheat-fed starter.

With my slow, lazy micro-inoculation leavening strategy, I want my dough fermentation to be slower. Also, having a white mother starter on-hand somehow seems more generic and easier to quickly convert to a purpose-built levain using a particular whole grain than with rye or another whole grain as the mother. So I currently feed my starter refined white flour (either bread flour or APF), even though I mostly build 100% whole grain doughs.

But if I wanted to have particularly vigorous, fast-acting, more sour-ish starter, I would definitely go back to feeding whole rye flour.

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Interesting analysis. I’ve not encountered that over the 30+ years that I’ve maintained my starter, but I expect that’s because I always discard all but a tablespoon or so of starter before feeding with fresh water and organic wheat flour – about 40g of each. I do this after every bake. The refreshed starter goes in the fridge. Since I only bake once or twice a week, I generally will refresh that starter in the same manner before building my poolish. This method more or less eliminates the issue of acid build.

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Responding particularly to your experience with the stiff starter giving you the desired milder sour for a few bakes before getting sour again:
Stiff starters are used in a number of european traditions for less-sour breads. One practice that seems to go along with some of these traditions is to occasionally give their starter a “bath” to cut back sour build-up.

You basically put a few pieces of your starter into water for a few minutes and then throw away the water before using it for a refresh as usual (you have to compensate by using a little less water, since your starter pieces will have absorbed some). I’ve tried this and it seemed to work.

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Interesting information, Benny!

I believe you said in a previous post that you had a pH meter intended specifically for bread making. I have a pH meter that is definitely not geared for bread making and I’ve been afraid to get it gummed up with dough. It basically has a bulb that is meant to be immersed in some liquid to read the pH. Do you have any experience with using this kind of meter for measuring starter or dough?

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Eric I also have a bulb type of pH meter. The issue with it was cleaning it while the Hanna bread and dough meter has a sharp easy to clean tip. The other issue with the other unit is that I’m not sure that the materials are food safe while the Hanna unit is food safe.

I’ll have to try putting my stiff starter in water measuring the pH before and after to see if that will actually raise the pH.

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I’d be very interested in the result! I tried it again recently and tried a test with the old tongue pH meter and couldn’t really tell, it was still perceptibly quite sour. Of course the process could also have some function in clearing away some other waste products.

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@ericjs, Many thanks for this useful tidbit (your comment on 9/21/21 about the “bath” for reducing accumulated acids) and many apologies that I failed to notice it sooner. It sounds not unlike the water bath component in pasta madres and similar products. I had not thought of applying it to “ordinary” starters. I will most definitely try this.
-AG