Bread with sour dough starter

[huntinlever]

I was taught to NEVER add salt to the water and starter, add it on top of your flour and work it in from there... adding it before raises the salinity of your starter and can kill yeast!

Mary, my post crashed. It was quite technical and lengthy, so probably just as well. Just to let people know that salt is actually used quite commonly in sourdough starters, usually around 2% of the total starter weight. In German, it is called the "Monheimer Salzauer Verfahren," after the German baking scientist Herr Monheimer, who also gave the world the 1, 2 and 3 stage starter processes (basically, 3 stages where at each stage varying starter thickness, temperature and time optimizes yeasts, lactic acid bacterias, and acetic acid bacterias at each stage).

Yeast can tolerate a fairly high amount of salt - IIRC, up to 8%. So at 2%, they're fine, though they ferment at a much slower rate. Which is why this process is useful. Say, you want to bake next morning at 8 am. Say you have only so much oven space, but want to bake more than one type of sourdough. Normally, without salt, you might take your starter and do a pre-dough starter at room temperature and have a fairly tight window of 12 hours, before the starter is past its peak development and starts to recede.

The salt-sourdough process gives a huge window, anywhere from 16-24, before it starts to weaken and slack. So you can very easily plan for multiple loaves the next day.

The other thing about salt in starter is that whereas yeast has a fairly high salt tolerance, the lactic and acetic acid bacterias have a much lower tolerance. So, by adding a small amount of salt, you are really slowing the bacterias, and consequently limiting the acids produced - which really helps the yeast out.

A lot more, including the way traditional French bakers use salt in making and managing the initial stages of new starter, but that's probably enough here. If people would like more, including specific processes and recipe examples, please let me know.

[huntinlever]

YOU should offer classes on how to do this ? I would gladly attend ??

Thanks Blahut, very kind and I'm actually working on a plan for a very (I mean, like, micro small) bakery for our area, 2-3 neighborhoods only, where I bake and sell directly, to a base of customers. Classes would also be a part of it. I've got a few hundred people interested, which actually kind of blew me away from an initial query to the community. So, very early stages and working on a space. Glad to help out here whenever I can!

[pmer]

These are fresh out of the oven. 100 grams starter, 10 grams salt, 325 water and 475 grams of Big Box Store bread flour. [Added the flour last and it was that fresh disgard]

https://imgur.com/a/IJ8GSQ8

[huntinlever]

These are fresh out of the oven. 100 grams starter, 10 grams salt, 325 water and 475 grams of Big Box Store bread flour. [Added the flour last and it was that fresh disgard]

https://imgur.com/a/IJ8GSQ8

Beautiful, pmer. I could down a loaf in 2 minutes.

[Hogtamer]

Y’all have got to lay off the pictures! I’m gnawing my screen now!

[C.F.Plinker]

Right now I have 4 starters in the refrigerator the youngest of which is just over 40 years old. I keep them in the plastic refrigerator bowls in amounts of either 200 grams or 300 grams depending on the size of the container. I have found that I need to either use them of feed them once every 4 weeks.

To feed them I will add 200 grams of bread flour and 200 grams of water to the starter and let the mixture rest overnight in a warm place. In the summer I can get by if I warm up the oven for 1 minute and put the bowl in to the oven. The rest of the year I maintain a little bit warmer oven by either putting a 15 Watt bulb in the oven overnight OR a 25 watt bulb that is controlled by a baseboard thermostat in the oven. I do this because the starter grows better at 75-85 degrees. The next morning I put the original amount back in the refrigerator container and refrigerate it. This keeps the starter alive and ready for the next batch.

I now have 400 grams of activated starter which is half water and half flour. Take the amount of water that is in the recipe (less the 200 grams that is in the starter) and add any sugar or salt that the recipe calls for. Mix to dissolve the salt and sugar and add this to the starter, mix well. Now add the flour, (remember that there is 200 grams in the starter) mix and knead until it is all mixed together. Add in any oil that is in the recipe and knead until it is also incorporated. You add the oil last so it doesn't coat the flour and keep it from absorbing the water or milk. Do 4 stretch and folds an put the dough back in the oven for the first rise.

After the dough has risen until it is about double in size (2-4 hours) take it out, do 4 more stretch and folds, shape it into loaves, put into loaf pans, and let it rise again until double. This will take 1-3 hours. Take the light bulb stuff out of the oven along with the now risen bread.

Preheat the oven, bake, bake and enjoy.

[pmer]

My sister in law wants some starter. What would be the best way to do that? Should I just take fresh discard and feed it like normal starter? Then I'd have 2 jars of starter going till she picks hers up?

Today I'm trying the "My Best Sourdough Recipe" from Perfectloaf.com. The Levian is going and Autolyse starts in 5 minutes. This recipe seems a little more strict for time and temperatures. Should be fun to taste this one.

[BLAHUT]

Right now I have 4 starters in the refrigerator the youngest of which is just over 40 years old. I keep them in the plastic refrigerator bowls in amounts of either 200 grams or 300 grams depending on the size of the container. I have found that I need to either use them of feed them once every 4 weeks.

To feed them I will add 200 grams of bread flour and 200 grams of water to the starter and let the mixture rest overnight in a warm place. In the summer I can get by if I warm up the oven for 1 minute and put the bowl in to the oven. The rest of the year I maintain a little bit warmer oven by either putting a 15 Watt bulb in the oven overnight OR a 25 watt bulb that is controlled by a baseboard thermostat in the oven. I do this because the starter grows better at 75-85 degrees. The next morning I put the original amount back in the refrigerator container and refrigerate it. This keeps the starter alive and ready for the next batch.

I now have 400 grams of activated starter which is half water and half flour. Take the amount of water that is in the recipe (less the 200 grams that is in the starter) and add any sugar or salt that the recipe calls for. Mix to dissolve the salt and sugar and add this to the starter, mix well. Now add the flour, (remember that there is 200 grams in the starter) mix and knead until it is all mixed together. Add in any oil that is in the recipe and knead until it is also incorporated. You add the oil last so it doesn't coat the flour and keep it from absorbing the water or milk. Do 4 stretch and folds an put the dough back in the oven for the first rise.

After the dough has risen until it is about double in size (2-4 hours) take it out, do 4 more stretch and folds, shape it into loaves, put into loaf pans, and let it rise again until double. This will take 1-3 hours. Take the light bulb stuff out of the oven along with the now risen bread.

Preheat the oven, bake, bake and enjoy.

My starter is documented back to the Alaskan gold rush of the 1800; has been sitting on a shelf high up behind the wood stove or on the counter for over 100 years, fed every day with a tablespoon of bread flour and a tablespoon of un-chlorinated water and a little sugar at times; I have eaten sour dough for over 70 years from all over the world; this is the best tasting I have found; when people taste the bread; they cannot believe it is sour dough.........

[Shiloh]

Sourdough 15% rye flour.

[Good Cheer]

Found a manual flour mill to complement our electric.
Looking forwards to experimenting with some multi-grain as well as coarser grinds.