Taste the Difference

Diane,

In the case of # 1-3 below, these are at room temp. In my process I feed w/KA Bread Flour and leave the culture at room temp for 4.5-6.5 hours or so. I find it takes about 4.5 hours at room temp after a 1:2:2 refreshment (starter:flour:water by weight) for my culture to double. At that point it is still yeasty smelling and only has a hint of sour smell/taste. By 5.5 hours, there is a more distinct sour smell/taste but it's still mild. By 6.5 hours, the sour smell/taste is bolder, but it's still pleasant. After that it starts to head toward what I would describe as too ripe and it no longer rises or even starts to fall by about 9-10 hours.

I believe that is the case, although the impressions of sour taste/smell are an hour apart. However, what I plan to do at some point, inspired by your early posting is to stagger the feedings and see if I can get all the starters to the line at the same time so I can really compare them simultaneously instead of waiting.

The # 4-6 are interesting to me, as I often let the culture age in the refrigerator for a day or two or three. Again, as a qualitative matter, I know that if I refrigerate my culture at about the 5.5 hour point, I can then get a more sour, more complex flavor each day over the next 2-3 days. However, once again, I've never arranged it so I could taste all those variations all at once. And, as you mentioned there is something very good about getting an independent assessment that's "blind", so they don't know what you're expecting.

So, one of these days, I'm going to try staggering all these to get them to be ready at one time and see what happens.

I'm curious what the results of the taste test were. I have a culture from SDInc. that I just activated and I'm waiting to bake with my homemade one before I can taste test.  I also plan to freeze some early baked bread so I can compare it down the road with my starter to see if the taste changes.

Ed Wood says that the cultures becoming saturated with local yeast is a myth. This is what he wrote me:

LOCAL ORGANISMS/BALANCE

I am frequently asked if local organisms will replace the organisms from a culture moved from another area such as San Francisco, for example.  I have long believed that San Francisco bakers were responsible for that myth to persuade the public that to get an authentic sourdough bread, one must go to San Francisco.  I think that stills plays a part in keeping the myth alive, but there is something else involved.

It is well established that the organisms of a sourdough culture function in a delicate balance.  When a culture becomes too acidic from the metabolism of the lactobacilli, the wild yeast are the first to be inhibited.  When the acidity increases even more, the bacteria are also adversely affected.  In either case the culture is out of balance. 

Simple things including prolonged refrigeration with long dormancy can trigger such an imbalance.  Over dilution of a culture can do the same thing.  Even using a very large container can produce an overly acidic culture following multiple feedings.  Each new feeding causes a small increment of increased acidity which in time inhibits the culture.  A quart jar which requires discarding some of the culture after two feedings offers just enough dilution to prevent this.

These imbalances often cause of loss of sourness or failure to leaven properly.  However, they are almost always blamed on some local organisms displacing those of the culture.  It doesn’t happen.  It is a myth!

One of the best ways to cure the imbalance of a culture is to get it fully active then develop (proof) it for 8 hours at 80oF.