I also don't like pineapple that much so I stick with mango most of the time. While nothing appears to be happening, the first wave of bacteria (determined by pH and the microflora in the flour) are waking up, sensing their new environment and preparing to grow. I'm sure it will come around. It and my old refrigerated starter smell strongly of ethanol, so it's difficult to discern a yeast aroma. I don't know, but waiting for the pH to drop does increase the likelihood that the yeast will wake up in the company of lactobacilli, with which they seem to share a complex and mutually beneficial relationship. This site is powered by Drupal. -Debra Wink. Chelsea Green Publishing Company, White River Junction, VT. 6. I figure it's better to give all the organisms a fighting chance and reach an equilibrium than to bias the result from the start. There are other possibilities for lack of success. It seems obvious but I need to be hit over the head multiple times before I get it. Nevertheless I wish this post had been available to me back then. Hope that helps. It was rough going at first. 5. Is it a survival mechanism? ), Many thanks. Mike, it's good to hear your starter has taken off. (Or use water if you prefer, and don't mind the odors and delay.)
Allow it to rise as high as it will (without stirring), and feed before it collapses too much.
With all that new information I felt encouraged to have another go and seven days later my starter is doing fabulously. Most will not grow below pH 4.8, and this one doesn't appear to be an exception. You'll never hear me say that pineapple juice is necessary in creating a starter---only patience. Each has its time, and each lays the groundwork for the next.
water (2 tablespoons). Flour and water is all you need. The Fresh Loaf is not responsible for community member content. You can increase the refreshment (or decrease the ripe starter) until you find a feeding rate that works with your schedule. If it gets stuck here for 48 hours or more, make sure there's still enough whole grain in the mix and give it more time between refreshments.
Although I was there to take advantage of what he had to teach, pineapple juice did come up once. As the paper I linked to indicates, there were other acids present in the Larraburu sample in minute quantities. Mold is the biggest stumbling block for procedures in which a young mixture is allowed to sit idle for two or three days at a time. Thanks Debra for your work and for taking the time to post it here. The starter goes through each phase laying the groundwork for the next phase.
Lots of this goes right over my head but like Hammelmans book every time I reread it I get another tidbit or gem.
Maybe even lighter.
I'm very interested in what you wrote about the appearence of LAB Sanfrancincensis: that generally it appears after 2 weeks of daily refreshments at room temperature. Here is the updated version marrying the two. The abbreviation for Lactobacillus is simply L. or Lb. The whole grain started growing yeast on day 7, while the 50/50 mix took 10 days. These first few days don't really benefit from being particularly fussy with odd or precise measuring, so make it easy on yourself. After 4 hours my starter has doubled. It's just a question of when. The lactobacilli certainly fall under that heading, but so do many other genera, including Leuconostoc, Weissella, Pediococcus, and many others that are commonly found in sourdoughs and other fermented or spoiled foods. The precise mechanism whereby these compounds trigger spore germination is not clear."[6]. Tom Chandley 3 Deck Compacta Oven (Scotland, UK), Durum Semolina Bread with Black Sesame Seeds, Sweet levain French style boule, Forkish style, yet again, Dutch Oven Baking - Atta Durum Flour and K.A. That may help to put it in perspective. It has been several or more weeks now and I've been using both starters and re-building them about every 4 to 5 days. Food Microbiology Fundamentals and Frontiers, 2nd ed. My starters sort of liquefy the day before yeast starts to grow. However, the requirement for activation varies widely among spores of different species. [3] I wish I could have all the organisms identified at every stage, but there aren't any laboratories in my area that are equipped to identify wild yeasts or sourdough bacteria. ...just fine. and yeast could be weakened in such a low ph environ. I would have to send flour samples to the California Wheat Commission to get falling numbers, which I did at a later time. David, good to see you again, and thank you :-) The flavor changes are a bit beyond my scope, but I think this has more to do with chemical changes happening in the bread as it ages, rather than bio-chemical action of living organisms. It will get bubbly and expand only if the pH is not low enough to prevent growth of gassy bacteria, otherwise there won't be much to see. Peter Stolz told me that it takes about two weeks of repeated inoculations to get a good 'sanfranciscensis' sourdough."[5]. I don't have access to the whole article, but the abstract provides a nice summary. I have baked for quite a few years now and I am more excited now than I was when I first started this whole process. Room temperature is different from one kitchen to the next, as well as season to season. For maintenance, I ferment and refresh it at room temp---maybe once a day or three times a day, but I let it live its refreshment cycles on the counter to promote and balance the right organisms---only chilling it when I want to arrest it again. The Fresh Loaf is not responsible for community member content. The gaps in progress just magnified from there.
I know the more you read, the more confusing it can get. It was bubbly with leuc activity on the second day and is still bubbly and vigorous after a week and a half. Hi Debra, and thanks for these fantastic posts! So changing your maintenance routine may be all it takes to bring about a change in the character of your starter. That said, I guess 4 days could be considered "temporary" if it is not warm enough for the starter to deplete itself in that time.
The quote I pulled encompasses all spores in a general way, but it was because low pH is sited as a common activator that it caught my attention. After 3 days it is usually acidic enough for yeast to activate, but may need a refreshment for them to germinate and take off.I switched from whole-wheat flour to either all-purpose or bread flour with "malted barley flour" on the ingredient label. (On a side note I want to take 1 of the lights out of the bottom oven and see if it sits at 80). If you do that though, you should feed 12-24 hours later with plain water and flour to bring the pH back up above 4 again to give lactobacilli some latitude to grow. One more thing I have found is that with regular feeding at room temperature, new starters seem to improve and get more fragrant right around the two week mark. There are many, many substances consumed and created during lactic acid fermentation besides lactic and acetic acids. I'm pleased to say that from mixing up a crazy brew of 11 grain 'seed culture', I now have 5 healthy starters.
Enterobacter produces gas, but since it was present in only a scant amount compared to the others, I think it safe to say that the Leuconostoc was responsible for the majority of it. That is one of the reasons I wrote the article. 1.
But you can often fix an existing starter faster than you can make a new one and get it to where you want it. The early expansion is caused by a prolific gas-producing bacterium which many mistake for yeast. Note that lactic acid doesn't have much aroma, and so smell is not a reliable way to judge the level of sourness. 7. I think if I were to have the ability to control all of "this wild yeast stuff" and turn out cookie cutter bread everytime I would get bored with it. Powered by vBulletin® Copyright ©2000 - 2020, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. All times are GMT-8. You can increase the refreshment (or decrease the ripe starter) until you find a feeding rate that works with your schedule. Whole grain flours don't need added amylases for this. I then either measure out the same weight in starter (Or double) and wash out my container. I think we all did---'cause that's what cookbooks tell us. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking---how to get it out of the container? The lines represent the predicted growth rates. I have not heard of people doing this though. Try it both ways and see which you prefer. So the goal should be to cultivate the right kind of environment to foster the desired organism profile. [4] Because I prefer to seed a new culture with whole grain flour for at least three days, there are more cereal enzymes present than in a starter fed with white flour (most of them are removed with bran in the milling process). My husband's a former bakery owner and he's wild about your post also!! if that is a true representation of the flavor, it may be worth a try. There are bacteria in flour that prefer the more neutral pH of freshly mixed flour and water (like Leuconostoc and company). I tried whole wheat and white whole wheat with no success in either case. Of course many sourdough bakers have pointed out that you can't tell how sour your bread will be until at least the day after baking. So, what can we do instead to facilitate the process? While they produce substances as metabolic by-products that we consider flavorful, exploiting that is not the primary goal at this point. I tried whole wheat and white whole wheat with no success in either case. Did it also fail in breads leavened with commercial yeast? I covered the vessel and left it to sit in an environment where the ambient temperature at this time of year is about 82 degrees F. I will stir it once per day, giving it no refreshments while it ferments. Pineapple juice is a simple solution to a problem that many people encounter while trying to start a sourdough seed culture from scratch. It takes weeks of regular refreshing for a new starter's microbial community to completely transition and stabilize no matter how you create it. Thanks again, David and everyone. I guess now we can simply extend the time over which flavors change, and as you said somewhere, remember that one culture's spoilage is another's flavor perfection! Use primarily AP flour and the population diversity is skewed differently than if you use a rye flour component.