I am not sure if we are entering the alkaline starter realm again. I'll try
anyway...

At 08:49 AM 10/20/2004, "Dick Adams" wrote:

>"Samartha" > wrote in message
>news:mailman.1098245469.14661.rec.food.sourdough@ www.mountainbitwarrior.com...
>
>
> > To observe the current activity, it's probably a good idea to punch it
> down
> > in regular intervals ...
>
>I never heard about punching down a starter.

Hey - you are cracking me up :-) - that's almost like Roy Basan's statement
a while ago about watching German bakery sales beauties:

"I have been there and have notseen
or heard a costumer who will ask to the bakery salespeople if he/or
she is buying natural sourdough?"

If you have not "heard" it, maybe because this is a text based forum and my
web site is not yet acoustically equipped.

I do it all the time (deflating) when possible for the reasons given in my
first post in this thread and it's also shown on my growing a starter from
scratch web pages. Without deflating, it just would not work.

>Assuming that it is made to
>the consistency of being just barely stirable with a chopstick,

Incorrect IME - barely stirrable with a chopstick would be a hydration of
50-ish (at that density, a chopstick can be used by grabbing it two inches
above the lower end and using the lower inch for diving it into the dough
mass and stirring) and you won't see much rise at all with this density. I
have broken chopsticks preventing any further stirring at 100 % hydrations.
Using chopsticks for any argument of comparison is totally futile because
they can break easily.

>it will rise to
>a level where it will stay for a good while, notwithstanding that the optimum
>time to feed it or use it for inoculation is slightly before its height
>stabilizes.

If you only use rising height without punchdown (deflating) for determining
maturity, you are fooling yourself quite a tad more than usual. This
specifically won't work. You may reach maximum height and even partial
collapse way before maturity if you don't punch down and observe new gas
development. I find that without measuring pH, the only way to get a handle
on the maturity state is observation of gas development after punchdown.

> > Organisms benefit from oxygen.
>
>Not always. Our sourdough organisms are anaerobes for practical
>purposes, though yeasts may be facilitative aerobes. In fact, in dough
>and in stout starters (and unstirred batters) insignificant oxygen is
>available.

Incorrect, with established sourdoughs - always!

You may not be informed (->have heard) about foam sourdough procedures,
where in the initial (starter) growing stages, the starter is aerated by
stirring to obtain a foamy mixture. With this process, the obtained germ
counts are double of what normally occurs. To make a foamy mixture with
almost all the water of the dough and all the rye going in as a first
mixing step for the final dough appears to help and produces excellent
taste and structure in mixed rye/white breads IME.

Ds,styhs

(I know, I am off - but who ain't?)


remove "-nospam" when replying, and it's in my email address