Creating a starter.
Refreshment 0.
20 g flour, rye, whole-grain
240 g water, 25ºC
Combine ingredients in a large Ziploc bag and seal,
removing all excess air. Fill a large,
plastic container (such as a cooler) with water that is 37 ºC, ensuring the
temperature is exact. Drop the bag into
the water, placing something heavy atop it to prevent it from floating. Place the container’s lid on, and let the bag
sit for 18 – 24h. Check the water’s
temperature often, adding more hot water as needed to maintain a constant 37 ºC.
Refreshment #1.
100 g flour, wheat, whole-grain
Remove the Ziploc bag from the water and add all of
the whole-wheat flour. Seal, once again removing all excess air. Lay the bag on a flat
surface, and, using your palms, squish the bag back and forth in order to
create a homogenous liquid. Place back into
the plastic container, adding enough hot water to reach 32ºC. As before, check the water’s temperature
often, adding more hot water as needed to maintain a constant 32ºC. Allow to sit for 18 – 24h.
Refreshment #2.
100 g flour, wheat, whole-grain
45 g water
30 g starter, from refreshment #1
Combine all three ingredients in a bowl, and then mix
thoroughly until a homogenous texture is achieved. Let ferment for 24h at 20 - 30ºC.
Final dough temperature. 30 ºC.
Refreshment #3 - ∞.
50 g flour, wheat, whole-grain
32.5 g water
4.125 g starter,
from refreshment #2
Combine all three ingredients in a bowl, and then mix
thoroughly until a homogenous texture is achieved. Let ferment for 24h at 20 - 30ºC in an air-tight, plastic container.
Final dough temperature. 30ºC, if day's high temperature is below 29ºC, and 20ºC if day's high-temperature is above 30ºC.
Thank You!!! I will try it.
ReplyDeleteThank you for all your articles, I love reading them and thinking about the new ideas that you introduce. You are magical. Thanks!
I'll try it too, once I get back from where I'm going for the next week. I have the ingredients on hand!
ReplyDeleteOK, I'm in, I'll try it.
ReplyDeletehello again!
ReplyDeleteI have successfully created a starter using your recipe and it seems indeed to be san-francisco style starter, i.e. with LB SF.
Everything went perfectly well, according to your schedule and this starter has great leavening power and bakes beautiful bread with smooth pronounced acidity, very lovely.
Several of my friends from different countries also tested your recipe along with me and we all got a good starter going within 2 or 3 days. I have pictures of the entire process from step one to the finished loaf, so if you need any of it, I can submit them for you.
Thank you for your pioneering ideas and generocity in sharing them with us. Thank you!
Thank you so much for trying this. Would you mind posting a photo-documented blog entry about the process, along with your thoughts? I'm sorry I have not answered your other questions. I will. I am very, very inundated with personal endeavours, all of which will be documented very soon on another blog. I still do not have a fast-enough internet connection to do much more than e-mail, so please forgive the lack of updates. They will be coming. Soon. Please, keep sending any questions you have. I will get around to answering everything anybody asks (like your good questions about adapting a starter, which has to do with the question: how do you breed a wolf into a chihuahua?).
DeleteI am working a lot right now, and I am just now realising that the methods of milling and procedures for blending different wheats affect the outcome of the starter, even down to how ultimate grit-size advantages one organism versus another. Researchers have not taken this into account, and so more than half the studies out there done on starters must be viewed as flawed or limited because of the access to substrates.
OK. Thanks! I have documented everything in my blog, but in Russian, so I will create an entry in English in my blog to give you and other English reading folks a link.
DeleteAlso, in the next few days I will test your starter in rye bread dough, to see if it gives rye dough proper reological qualities and acidity, flavor, rises according to the schedule, etc. That would be the ultimate test of its properties. Very few people care about very acidic white bread, san-francisco Budin bakery style. But rye bread must be acidic to be tasty and not-gummy and good rye bread is impossible to make well without LB SF starter.
Your formula for LB SF starter in 2 days along with Eric Kaiser's procedure for French fermentolevain starter in 2 days are real breakthoughs. Your approach is very modern and powerful. I loved it. Should you provide us with a method to make your starter non-acidic, to create a chihuahua from a wolf, so to speak, but with full fragrance of a freshly created starter, that would be great!
I can imagine how busy you must be in your personal and professional life right now. On top of that tons of interesting ideas about LB SF to pursue in literature and in practical tests! Please, don't overexert yourself. We will wait for your articles patiently. Please, take good care of yourself. Best wishes.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteMy experiences with creating a starter using this method are documented here
http://mariana-aga.livejournal.com/190167.html
THANK YOU!
"... and let the bag sit for 18 – 24h."
ReplyDeleteHow do I know when to do the second feed?
after 18 to 24 hours.
ReplyDeleteSo at any point between 18-24 hours. Easy enough. I thought there was another indicator to look out for. That's all.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI just found your blog and went through and read all the posts. I've been looking for a more scientific explanation of sourdough methodology and yours looks interesting. I've made several sourdough cultures in the past and have always had eventual failures for one reason or the other, and would like to get a good starter going again, so I'm interested in trying your method.
I have a question about the continual maintenance of the starter. You've said here and elsewhere that you feed your starter once every 24 hours. Under step #3 in this post you show a specific 4.125 g starter used, but elsewhere I believe you specify a 5-20% inoculation. Or perhaps it was 5-40%? I can't remember where I saw that. I think it may have been on TFL that I saw you say that you vary your inoculation % based on what temperature the house will be that day. And that seems to make sense if you are always feeding with a 24 hour schedule. Do you have any data/chart that would help us decide what our inoculation % should be based on the temperature? For example, it is winter here and the house is at 69F / 20.5C so I would imagine I would probably want to have a higher inoculation? Thanks.
It took an extra day, but I think it's done. I'll be trying my first bread today, or tomorrow if I decide to retard the dough overnight. Thanks for the formula.
ReplyDeleteI made this starter the past week and the process went fine. I've fed the finished starter twice so far but haven't made bread with it yet. One question though -- to feed I take a small amount of the starter and mix in some water to dissolve the starter in it as best I can, then add the flour. My house, being about 20.5C, means that I would need to use about 45C water in order to achieve a final temperature of 30C. Is it OK to use that hot of water or do I risk killing things? I thought the death point of yeast was somewhere around there, and I'm not sure when the lactobaccili die. Should I use cooler water and not worry about it getting all the way up to 30C? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI tried this method of creating a sourdough starter with gluten-free flours, and it worked splendidly. I actually made two starters, one with 100% dark teff, and the other with a blend of glutn-free whole grains and starches that I use for making bread. While both starters worked, the teff starter was better flavor-wise. Both grew yeast easily on the third day. I was able to get some of the most flavorful loaves of gluten-free sourdough bread I've ever made using this starter, and they rose well too. They had a very rounded-out lactic-acid flavor.
ReplyDeleteI am doing some more research and experiments concerning the best way to make sourdough loaves gluten-free. I may try some modifications to the method to see if there are any parts of the process that can be changed to suit gluten-free grains. This method of creating a starter was part of my research and it has been very informative to read your blog. Thank you for the ideas!