August 23, 2024 - 5:35pm
Did I use my starter at the right time?
Hi!
I was wondering if you could help me identify when my starter is at peak as it is really hard to know...
I fed it with a 1:5:5 ratio, AP flour (12-14% protein) and let it rise 12h30 at 24C.
I have ordered some ph paper to help me understand what's happening in there, but I'm still waiting for it to arrive...
Here at a few pictures of the different stages of the rise. I stopped at 12h30 as I needed to prepare a levain and go to bed, but maybe I could have pushed it a little further?
Sorry in advance for the HUGE pictures!
Thanks for any insight!
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Peak is really a relative term. To me (and I'm not speaking for the populace) - peak is just that - all the food is used. Reality is more like maybe 50% - which is about what you got. Be like that (consistency is a virtue) and you'll be good. Enjoy!
Thanks!
Your starter looks good in the pictures. People talk about using their starter at "peak" but that can be a slippery concept. Let me illustrate.
You have a starter using all purpose flour at 100% hydration. After some number of hours it stops rising, so most would call that being at "peak", right? But if you had mixed up that starter with bread flour instead of AP, it would have kept rising, probably for several more hours. Is that now the peak? If you had used bread flour and 90% hydration, it would have risen more slowly and stopped rising hours later than the 100% AP version. Is that the peak?
You want your starter to have created a high and active concentration of yeast and lactic acid bacteria by the time you use it to make bread or a levain. It it's been rising well and is still active so the yeast aren't going to sleep for lack of food, you are there. Gas production in a starter isn't needed for making gassy bread. It's used as a way to assess the yeast in the starter.
"Peak" in a starter is not all that helpful a guide. Activity is.
TomP
Thanks, Tom! So based on the pictures, what would be the optimal range to use my starter? Was it already good to go at +10h30?
I did not see any dome forming at any time, but in the last picture you can see that the starter is starting to deflate a little and the smell was still quite sweet, maybe a hint of acidity but very subtle
I think the 10:30 picture looked good.
Think for a minute about what would happen if you were to use the starter "early". If it were so young that it had a low yeast concentration, then after you mixed the dough (or levain) the dough would take a little time to build up the yeast concentration to what it would have been with a more aged starter. Then everything would proceed as before.
If the starter were so old that it had been deflating for a longish time, maybe the yeast would have started to get inactive. If so, it would take extra time after mixing the dough for them to become active again and then everything would go on as before. There would probably be more flavor byproducts from the lactic acid bacteria, and the starter would be more acidic than it would have been earlier. That might affect the end flavor. If the starter were very old the acidity might have gotten so high it would be bad for the protein. You'd have to have used the starter when it was way over-developed for that to happen, though.
As I see it, if you don't use the starter at it's "optimum" moment, whatever that might be, your dough will take a little longer to develop and possibly the flavor might be affected a small amount. But the usable time window is fairly wide. If you use the starter let's say 45 minutes before "peak", then the worst that would happen is that the dough would take 45 minutes more to develop. So the overall process time wouldn't change much.
You can verify what I have suggested here by thinking about what happens when you refresh your own starter early or late. We've all done that. It still starts to grow, and there may be a shorter or longer time before it really gets going. But the refreshed starter, if it hasn't been too abused, will pick up and chug happily along. It will be like that with your bread dough too.
It totally makes sense! Thanks a lot for your help and you time, Tom, this is extremely helpful and very much appreciated.
I have taken my very first 2 loaves of bread out of the oven since I tweaked my old very acidic starter, and they look beautiful! I can't wait to see the crumb!
Hopefully the ph paper will arrive sometime this week and I will be able to run some experiments next weekend!
Glad to hear how good your loaves look. Please show us pictures and let us know how it tastes.
Rather happy with those 2 loaves!!!!
That's about as good as it gets.
All that angst over the starter, and here we are. Nice!
Thank you!
Blisters. I like'em. Job well done.
Thanks a lot!!