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Sourdough (rec.food.sourdough) Discussing the hobby or craft of baking with sourdough. We are not just a recipe group, Our charter is to discuss the care, feeding, and breeding of yeasts and lactobacilli that make up sourdough cultures. |
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Semi-newbie starter and sponge questions.
Hello everyone.
I have a nice starter running, but I have some trouble baking with it sometimes. So I have some questions for you. (The trouble is that, despite a very active starter (or sponge) my doughs does not raise well. Maybe temperature is my problem. Maybe I make my doughs to dense. Sometimes it does work. Sometimes not. I usually add yeast as it seems that my starter is too weak.) First of all, let me point out that the starter is alive and well. Whenever I feed it, from the fridge or keeping it running at room temperature, it becomes very active and raises and looks really frothy. I usually feed it every 12 hours. This is a cyclic behaviour. When a recepy states that I should use the starter, where in this cycle am I supposed to use it? Is it critical? The same goes for sponges. When should I use the sponge? When it peaks or when it starts to get active? Thanks Karl |
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At 04:12 AM 11/22/2004, Karl wrote:
>Hello everyone. > [..] >This is a cyclic behaviour. When a recepy states that I should use the >starter, where in this cycle am I supposed to use it? Is it critical? > >The same goes for sponges. When should I use the sponge? When it peaks >or when it starts to get active? If you don't like it, I guess, it's "critical". Typically you may want to use your starter when it has the highest number of organisms and that's about when the activity starts to decrease. Note, that you have to deflate the starter - take the gas out - in order to determine it's activity. The gas bubbles stay in the starter and you think it's active where in reality it is not. Apart from the number of organisms, other properties can be influenced by promoting aspects of a starter, maybe rising by promoting yeasts, taste by promoting LB's. This can be accomplished by using different temperatures and hydrations when growing the starter in stages. The parameter changes are quite subtile. A change of a few degrees of centigrade promotes one component over another. That's a big can of worms. I beat that whole issue by using the Detmold 3-Stage process and that works just fine. On my SD web site (http://samartha.net/SD/ ), you can see under "References" "SD-Definition" the Microbiological growth curve which is relevant for starter growing and under "Procedures", the "Detmold 3-Stage" which takes care of the can of worms. It also works great for white flour starters. It may not be necessary to go through all those hoops but with your issue, it may help to take a look and find some regularity with your starter growing and what's good for you. Samartha __________________________________________ >Rec.food.sourdough mailing list remove "-nospam" when replying, and it's in my email address |
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At 04:12 AM 11/22/2004, Karl wrote:
>Hello everyone. > [..] >This is a cyclic behaviour. When a recepy states that I should use the >starter, where in this cycle am I supposed to use it? Is it critical? > >The same goes for sponges. When should I use the sponge? When it peaks >or when it starts to get active? If you don't like it, I guess, it's "critical". Typically you may want to use your starter when it has the highest number of organisms and that's about when the activity starts to decrease. Note, that you have to deflate the starter - take the gas out - in order to determine it's activity. The gas bubbles stay in the starter and you think it's active where in reality it is not. Apart from the number of organisms, other properties can be influenced by promoting aspects of a starter, maybe rising by promoting yeasts, taste by promoting LB's. This can be accomplished by using different temperatures and hydrations when growing the starter in stages. The parameter changes are quite subtile. A change of a few degrees of centigrade promotes one component over another. That's a big can of worms. I beat that whole issue by using the Detmold 3-Stage process and that works just fine. On my SD web site (http://samartha.net/SD/ ), you can see under "References" "SD-Definition" the Microbiological growth curve which is relevant for starter growing and under "Procedures", the "Detmold 3-Stage" which takes care of the can of worms. It also works great for white flour starters. It may not be necessary to go through all those hoops but with your issue, it may help to take a look and find some regularity with your starter growing and what's good for you. Samartha __________________________________________ >Rec.food.sourdough mailing list remove "-nospam" when replying, and it's in my email address |
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