Is there an easy way to figure this hydration stuff? I made a stiff starter using my 100% starter (10g starter-10g water-20g a/p flour) I fed it everyday, 12 hr intervals, for a couple of days using the same formula. Eventually I ended up with a 1.75 Ziplock container full of stiff starter. Then, per a friends recipe, I took 30g of starter (the aforementioned stiff starter) -60g of water and 90g a/p flour supposedily making this starter 72%. Does this sound correct? Currently I have approximately 180g of stiff starter in a 1.75 Ziplock container and I believe it's more than I need to have on hand. Anyone have any suggestions as how to reduce this amount and still have a decent amount to build on when needed for a recipe ? Did I make any sense in this post???? Thanks.
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Hello Cajun1,
In reality you only need a few grams to be able to build a starter for a loaf of bread. You can go from say 7g of store culture to a 200g starter in 24 hours.
Once you have an established active starter, you can keep it in the fridge between bakes and feed it by replacing only what you take out. You could even only feed every second time for a while if you wanted to reduce the amount that you have in storage.
As far as hydration goes, it is just the percentage of water as a percentage of the flour in the mix. Where it becomes a bit complicated is when people only consider the dry flour and fresh water (or other liquids) that are used for the dough preparation. The calculation should take into account the flour and water in the starter as well. This is referred to as the Total Flour Weight (TFW) hydration
If you click on my name with this post it will take you to my profile page and from there you can go to a listing of my blogs. Recently I published links to a couple of spreadsheets for calculating hydration and building starters that you can download.
Hope this helps.
Farinam
Thank You ... I will surely check yor blog ...
Percent? I don't do anything but eyeball it. Keep it like thick pancake batter, or not so thick that the gluten starts to pull the dough together. Stir it well, and keep it in a warm place. (80F, or warmer) After a small learning curve, there is nothing more than how warm it is, and not making it wet enough. Not being wet enough, or hydrated, if that is what you want to call it, is simply a wide margin of wet, So I describe it as thick pancake batter. A little thicker, or thinner will not stop the process.
Joe