Help !! Oven spring and refrigerating your starter

Hello lenohbabe,

Oven spring and the width of the grigne are not necessarily the same thing although they can be correlated.  It is possible to get a good increase in volume of the loaf in the oven without the grigne opening much at all.  Conversely, it is possible to get a very wide grigne with a very flat unsprung loaf.  Basically it is a combination of factors as I understand it (and I am prepared to be corrected).  These are, not in any particular order, the quality of your shaping and the skin of the loaf that is formed in the process, the depth, angle and pattern of your scoring of the loaf, the correctness of your dough development and proof, and the duration of maintaining a flexible crust when the loaf goes into the oven.  Most of these, I would have to say, come mainly from practice that is best served by selecting a simple recipe and making it multiple times to minimise the effects of recipe variations.  Once you are comfortable with knowing the look, feel and smell of the dough during its preparation you will probably find that your efforts will be rewarded.

On your second question, I assume that you are talking about your stock that you keep between bakes.  My usual method is that I draw an aliquot from my stock that I feed to form the levain for my dough.  That usually sits on the bench until it is well grown (often overnight).  I replace the material removed from the stock with fresh flour and water and the replenished stock goes straight back into the fridge.  Occasionally, and particularly if I am planning sequential bakes, I will leave the stock out on the bench to give it a holiday from being locked away in the fridge.  If you happen to be talking about the levain that is to be used to make your dough, I think it could be used straight from the fridge as the other ingredients would raise its temperature pretty quickly.  However, I am not sure why you would be retarding your levain.

Hope this helps and good luck with your projects.

Farinam

Thank goodness for farinam and people like him. I am still working on getting good oven spring and a good open grigne myself. I'm glad he mentioned the shaping because I think that is one area where I really need improvement.

As for storage starter, I put it straight into the fridge after feeding, because I tend to go a while (weeks to months unless I am bingeing) between bakes. It continues to ferment in the fridge, just not as quickly, and the longer it is in there unfed, the more chance you have of it getting taken over by bad bacteria or just losing its "oomph." That said, I have left mine alone for over six months and with about four feeds (every 12 hours is what I usually do unless it is very warm in the kitchen) it was as good as new. For the most part I take it out 24 hours before I want to prep my dough and do two feeds to build it up to the amount I need and to refresh it for use. The amount I keep in storage is only a couple tablespoonfuls or so.

The terminology isn't precise amongst all the various authorities, which is why it can get confusing.

The stock that you keep between bakes can be variously called "mother culture", "stock", "starter" or "starter culture", along with many other variations. Individuals usually try to keep their own terminology precise, though.

The first stage of a dough - a pre-ferment - can be a levain, which usually means specifically a sourdough preferment, and is usually called a sponge. However, "sponge" can also mean (in at least two of the books I've read) a specific type of preferment, usually a high hydration one of 100%. This can also be called a "poolish", although that term is also used for preferments which aren't specifically sourdough (and in some cases it's assumed that a poolish ISN'T sourdough). A stiffer levain/preferment is called a "biga", although again, some people use that to mean a yeasted low hydration preferment rather than a sourdough one. On this site, the various stages of building a dough are usually called "stage" or "sponge" or "sponge stage X", and the hydration of each stage is stated specifically.

Hope everything is clear as mud now!

As for your original question, you can put your stock in the fridge directly after feeding as it will still actively rise in the fridge, albeit much more slowly. You could wait until you see it start to rise before you put it in - it really doesn't matter that much. I wouldn't wait until it has peaked, because that leaves you no extra time and rather defeats the purpose of refrigerating it - at this stage, all that will happen is that the yeast will go dormant and the bacteria will increase the acidity, but that may have other effects on the dough stages.

I don't use mine straight from the fridge because it can be difficult to see what stage of activity it's at when it's cold. You usually try to use the starter at its peak of activity and before it dies down; if you're confident you know what stage your starter is at straight from the fridge by all means, go ahead and use it then. You may find you need to allow extra time in your dough steps but if you're not too worried about the schedule and aren't aiming for a specific flavour profile it should work out OK.