January 23, 2015 - 6:18am
Help with sourdough
I am having trouble getting my sourdough bread to rise. I have had my starter now for about 2 months and feed it regularly (about once a week). When I use it I always make sure that I feed it several hours or beforehand so that it is very active when I use it. I get good oven spring and a great flavor but the proofing of the dough takes forever!
I have made sourdoughs before but never have I kept a starter for this long. Usually I just make one and then use it all right then and there. So maybe I am doing something wrong without realizing it. Any suggestions?
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... do you consider "forever" to be?
For me, my dough takes some 8-10 hours to rise at a temperature of about 22C. A bit cooler than I want it to be, but it's fine as that's effectively overnight. Typically I make up the starter some 5-6 hours before kneading (so with it now at 15:50, I made up the starters just over half an hour ago), I will use them to knead the doughs starting at 9pm, so they'll have had over 5 hours to mature - then they'll be left overnight and at 6am tomorrow morning I'll start to scale/shape and leave them to prove for a further 1-2 hours and have them out of the ovens by 9am.
Good bread takes time!
-Gordon
you should refresh your starter at least 3 tines before proceeding to make your levain. And no going back in the fridge. Keep it at room temp and regathering your yeast colony. This should make your culture much more likely lively and predictable. This implies feed culture until peaked, repeat at least two more times. Then build your levain. Culture kept in the fridge is damaged and out of proportion.
hope this helps
josh
... get 13 replies.
You don't have to do anything - you should find a method that works for you. I occasionally use my mother directly from the fridge into the dough then 8-9 hours overnight then scale/shape/prove and out of the oven 2.5 hours later.
What works, works.
-Gordon
I use my sourdough straight from the refrigerator and often without refreshing it. Regardless of whether I refresh it or not, it seems to work to provide live yeast. I've had a hard time killing my yeast culture (also called my mother, my sourdough starter, or that smelly goop in the jar in the fridge that my family never understands except that they love my bread). I don't really worry about refreshing it before making a dough. I do, however, refresh it now and then. But here's a little story I've told before on this site: I gave my brother some of my culture with instructions on how to refresh it. Three months later he found it in the back of his fridge, long forgotten and never refreshed. At my advice he refreshed it as I'd instructed months earlier. It worked!
All this said, I think all that stuff about refreshing a culture in the day before using it has only some value. Since its true function is as a carrier of live yeast, it may be the case that the younger the culture the more yeast organisms you add per dose. I think of it as using more active dry yeast. I do that if I'm in a hurry and don't want any sour flavor. For example I use lots of yeast when making challah because I want no sour flavor at all. When I don't have time for a slow rise, regardless of the loaf, I'll double the yeast and choose a very warm place for the bulk rise. But when I want a more sour loaf I cut the yeast amount by half or even more and let the dough have a lengthy bulk rise in the fridge. An example here is Reinhart's pain a l'ancienne's recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I use half the recommended yeast and put the dough in the fridge for twice the time. I get a great sour flavor and have no trouble with the duration of the rise because I'm never in a hurry for it.
For me, a good part of what I've learned over the many years of practice is that there's lots of manipulation possible once you've an good understanding of the science of what you're doing.