Hi people, I´ve been trying to make a starter for several times, but it never went right. The first time I thought that it was ok to bake with it, the bread I made turned out to be very sour, and I wanted to know from people more experienced if the overall sourdough is that sour or if it is just slightly sour.
Thanks
Dúnia
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Replies
Hello Dunia,
In my case, the bread is only slightly sour and when fresh often has a hint of sweetness as well. As the bread gets older the sourness becomes more dominant but is never over-whelming.
In the scheme of things, I think the level of sourness of the bread depends on the time that it takes to develop and prove - the longer the time the more acid is produced and the more sugars are consumed. This might depend to some degree on the balance of yeasts and bacteria in your culture which could depend on the frequency and type of feeding and hydration that you use. Perhaps you could try varying your maintenance regime to see if that makes a difference.
For the record, I work with my culture at 100% hydration. I store it in the fridge and I only feed each time I make bread (every 4-7 days). I feed with 20%rye/80% white bread flour.
Judging by some of the discussions on the site, I think some people would kill to find out how you get to make really 'sour' bread.
Let us know how you go.
Farinam
Hi Dunia,
In my experience Farinam is quite correct.
I would add one other factor: some flour seems to favour making sour bread, other flour does not. I am eating a very sour buckwheat bread for lunch. Buckwheat tends to make a much more sour bread than millet. I make bread with gluten free flour, but I expect the same will apply with various flours that contain gluten. Farinam may be able to comment on other flour.
Staffo
Apologies if this is an old thread - it arrived in my mailbox today, but everything is dated in July. Anyway -
One of my books is 'The Village Baker' by Joe Ortiz - from that I learned that the amount of salt has to be increased to balance the sourness of the leaven. So, I suggest you try reducing the amount of salt. OTOH, my stiff wholewheat leaven (53% hydration) is never more than gently sour. But if I immediately refresh a piece of it with white flours to make whiteish bread, and leave it for a further 18 to 24 hours it is very sour. So, you could try building hte refreshment - but that takes time and is less convenient.
I also have a wholemeal rye leaven - that is refreshed at 100%, but diluted to 125% for easier storage (it may be up to a month before I need to bake rye again). This is somewhat more acid - perhaps a wetter leaven will tend to be more sour. Then again, maybe the small amount of live yoghurt I've added to the rye in its early days also plays a part. But I wouldn't add yoghurt to a wheat, or mostly wheat, starter.
[ hope there are no errors in that - this is the second attempt to post it, lost the first version when I tried to preview it, so I won't preview this one.
ĸen