Top 6 Questions About Sourdough Starters

My biggest project for 2010 was the Starter-Along series on Serious Eats, where I posted a photo and description of a growing sourdough starter. I also included a few extra facts about sourdough when the starter was in the middle stages, when it was just a matter of feeding and stirring on a regular basis.

I also republished that series here, on Cookistry.

That series generated a lot of extra traffic for me, and apparently it was good for Serious Eats as well, since it was the #3 post on Slice for the year. A mention on LifeHacker helped boost its popularity, but even before that, it was having a pretty good run based on the traffic that trickled through to Cookistry.

And then, there were the questions. I’ve gotten them at Serious Eats, on my Facebook page, at Cookistry, and in person. Based on my unscientific polling software (my memory) these were the top six questions asked, along with my answers:

My starter doesn’t look like yours. Have I done something wrong? Should I start over?

No, nothing’s wrong unless you’ve got mold growing on the starter, or unless you’ve got no activity at all after about five days. Starters are all different because the flour, water and environment are different at every location. That’s part of the beauty of a sourdough starter. It’s unique to you and it can be a little bit different every time you use it.

Also, the photos I posted were just one moment in time. After feeding and stirring or later in the day, the bubbles probably looked a bit different. In general, the bubble activity should be increasing every day, but sometimes things stall. And if the starter is very active overnight, it can wear itself out and look quiet in the morning. Shortly after feeding and stirring, it should become more active again.

It’s bubbling, but it’s not rising up in the jar. What should I do?

When the starter is active enough to rise up in the jar, then it’s ready to use. That might happen in as little as a week, or it could take longer before it gets to that point. If your starter is still plugging along, bubbling but not getting increasingly active, I’d suggest dumping half to three-quarters of the accumulated starter, and then continue feeding and stirring the remainder.

The removed starter can be added to a regular bread recipe to flavor it. I have recipes here and here for using not-quite-ready starter.

It also might be the case that your starter is rising, but you’re not there to see it. If you feed at night, it might be rising up while you’re asleep, and by morning it has fallen again, so it looks the same. It might be a good idea to feed at a time when you can check the starter in an hour and see what it looks like at that point.

There’s liquid at the top of the starter. What’s that?

There are two causes. One is that the starter is too wet, so you can add a bit more flour to it. It should be a little thicker than cake batter. Almost muffin batter.

Second, that liquid might be what’s referred to as “hootch” and it accumulates when a starter has been sitting around a while and the critters have gone dormant. This might mean that your starter is much more active than you think. You can dump out some starter as I suggested above, and you can also increase the amount you feed. You can feed more at each feeding, feed more often, or both.

Does room temperature affect the starter activity?

Yes, very much. The starter will be most active at warm room temperatures, so if you keep your house cooler in the winter, it might be less active simply because of the temperature. You can move the starter to a slightly warmer location. The top of the refrigerator is good, or if you’ve got some other appliance that’s a little bit warm, you can move it there. Near a computer might be good.

You don’t want to get it too warm, so the top of the furnace or water heater might be overkill.

Having it develop slowly isn’t a bad thing, if you’re not in a hurry.

I made the bread, but it’s taking forever to rise. What’s wrong?

You might have harvested your starter before it was fully active. After you’ve had a starter going for a while, you’ll have a better idea what it looks like when it’s fully enthusiastic. But a slow rise isn’t a bad thing. Just let it rise at its own speed.

If it’s a matter of bad timing and you don’t want to stay up all night waiting to put it in the oven, you can put the loaf in the refrigerator for a really slow rise, and bake the next day.

Some sourdoughs rise slowly and don’t seem to want to double in size, but then they get tremendous oven spring. Yours might be like that.

The bread isn’t as sour as I expected. Can I fix that?

Sourdoughs are all different, but the sour flavor that people associate with sourdough comes from the bacteria that produce different acids at different points in the process. You can create a much more sour starter by stopping the feeding and letting the starter go hungry for a while. You can do this for a day or so at room temperature, or put the starter in the refrigerator for a little longer.

Sourdough starters develop more flavor as they age, so what you get from that first loaf isn’t what you’ll get after the starter matures for a while.

Also, you’ll get more flavor from the bread if it has a long, slow, cold rise – just like any bread. Rather than letting is rise on the counter, put the dough in the refrigerator and leave it there for a day or two before you form the loaf and let it rise for baking.

One thing to keep in mind is that all starters are different. The schedule you feed at, the flour and water you use, and the environment all change the way the starter behaves. Some are naturally more sour, they rise at different rates, have more or less oven spring, and produce different crumbs and crusts. That’s part of the fun of having a local starter.

And of course, the flour makes a difference. If you’re ready for it, you can start a new starter with whole wheat or rye flour, and see what new magic you can create.

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Bulking Up

This was published in the January issue of the Left Hand Valley Courier as part of my Vicinity and Beyond series.

If the words “bulk food store” make you envision a behemoth warehouse filled with giant bags of rice and restaurant-sized jars of pickles, you’ll be in for a surprise when you step into Simply Bulk in Longmont. The “bulk” in Simply Bulk means they buy in bulk so you can buy in any quantity you want, whether it’s five pounds of flour, or a couple ounces of a spice you don’t use often.

The business is owned and run by Phil Bratty and his wife, Georgia, and it  has been open in Longmont since March 1, 2010. Phil Bratty said that it may be the only business in the country that is entirely bulk products.

Bratty isn’t a newcomer to the food industry. For the eight years before opening the store, he worked for a natural food chain in the bulk foods end of the business, and he spent a total of about 30 years in the food business.

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Technique: The Role of Fat in Yeasted Doughs

Fat isn’t required in bread dough, and some might say that it doesn’t belong at all in pizza dough. Whether – or when – you use it is up to you. But since it’s so common in so many doughs, we might as well discuss it.

Of course, there’s flavor. Butter adds its own distinctive creaminess, while olive oils add their own notes. When you’re using fat in small quantities, though, it might be hard to tell the difference between a bread made with olive oil or one made with butter. Then again, you can also use infused and flavored oils to easily add flavors to your bread.

Besides flavor, fat affect the texture of the finished bread. The fat coats the gluten strands and makes the finished product more tender – both the crumb and crust – and it makes the crumb more fine grained. It also makes the loaf seem moister. Breads that are made with fat in them don’t dry out as quickly, so the shelf life is improved.

When you add the fat to the dough is also important. You get better gluten development if the fat is added after the gluten has been developed than if you try to knead a dough that has the fat already incorporated.

When fat is added early in the process, it coats the flour and makes it harder for the flour to absorb water. The fat also bonds with parts of the gluten that does form, so the gluten that exists can’t easily bond to other bits of gluten to form long strands. What this means for doughs with just a little fat is that you'll probably need to knead a little longer to develop the gluten.

When bread recipe has a lot of fat in it, the effect is more pronounced. A dough with a lot of fat can take much longer to rise, and that issue is complicated by the fact that many fat-laden breads also have a lot of sugar. The excess sugar also retards the rise.

For brioche-like breads with a lot of butter in them, you can manipulate the texture of the resulting bread by changing when the butter is added. If the fat is added at the beginning, before the dough has been kneaded, the texture will be more cake-like. If the gluten is allowed to develop before the butter is added, the texture will be more bread-like.

While some fat-laden breads can be dense, a small amount of fat – and particularly a solid fat like butter – slightly improves the volume of the bread.

The fat you choose can also affect the color of the bread. Vegetable shortening won’t impart any color at all, while a deeply colored oil has more effect. I’ve used very green grapeseed oils that made the loaf a golden yellow color. Besides adding a little color to the interior of the loaf, butter also helps the crust brown.

Technically, different fats aren’t completely interchangeable in bread recipes. For example, liquid fats are 100 percent fat, while butter contains some water and milk solids along with the fat, and vegetable shortening has quite a bit of air in it.

In practice, though, the small amount of fat in most standard bread recipes means that you can substitute the fat you prefer without the need for major adjustments. There will be subtle differences in the finished bread, but it won’t make it go horribly wrong.

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