Sponge starter…

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi... I'm trying to shorten the time it takes to make rye bread.

I make a sponge from scratch and let it sit 18-24 hours. Is there a way I can turn this into a starter I keep around feed and then add to my recipe instead of making it new each time? Will this actually shorten the time?

Here is the starter:

1.25 cup of water
1 TBL yeast
1/4 cup first clear flour
1.25 cups rye flour
2 tbl caraway seeds

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[Mike Nolan]

Rye starters are definitely possible, Jeffrey Hamelman brought one with him when he went to work for King Arthur Flour that he's had for many years.

But like any starter, it needs regular feeding, probably several times a week. Will you be making rye bread often enough to justify that?

Although most procedures for maintaining a starter at home have you throw half of it away every time you feed it, commercial bakers don't do it that way (they couldn't afford to), so what they do is feed their starter anywhere from 18-24 hours before they plan to bake a batch of bread, doubling the amount they have on hand, then use half of it for their next day's baking.

[BakerAunt]

Stanley Ginsberg has a rye starter recipe in The Rye Baker.

Bernard Clayton has one in his revised New Complete Book of Breads that uses onions. It also makes 8 cups, at which point I figured that I would not be baking that nice wholegrain bread with Buckwheat recipe, since it requires that starter.

Jeffrey Hamelman has a rye bread recipe on the KAF site that uses some sourdough starter added to rye flour that is allowed to sit overnight before being used to bake rye bread. I've tried the recipe once, with modest success, but I think that I didn't get my timing right, and the house temperature was not what I needed. If you have a regular sourdough starter, that might be a way to short-cut without devoting yourself to a rye starter.

Here is the link:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/jeffreys-sourdough-rye-bread-recipe

I need to try this recipe again. I was using the ceramic bread bowl to bake it and had some issues. I also ended up calling KAF to find what temperature the bread should be, and they breezily told me that Jeffrey never uses a thermometer. I later found the recipe in The Baking Sheet (Summer 2000), pp. 23-24, and it states that it should be baked to 190F-205F.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

190-205 is a rather wide range. I don't doubt that Hamelman never uses temperature, he's baking in quantities and using equipment and techniques that help ensure consistency from one day to another.

In his book he says that the internal temperature of bread reaches a maximum of about 210 degrees. The surface temperature gets hotter, though.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. Thanks BA. I have a different Stanley Ginsberg book on Jewish Deli baking so I'll look in there to see what they have.

I'd like to make this a couple times a week. A few of us here are trying to start an old fashioned deli where we make our own meats and at least some of our own breads. Rye bread would be key to that. Also, no one here really makes a real rye with the right taste. The best bakery in town doesn't use starters for many breads and even their sourdoughs are very mild. If the starter is already made and already sitting and it doesn't require 12-18 hours we can produce more loaves in less time without compromising flavor.

[BakerAunt]

I note that even with the rye starters, Ginsberg's recipes usually have a sponge stage that is "overnight" or 10-12 hours.

He says that refreshing his starter once or twice a week "strikes a happy medium--as long as I make sure to build my sponges on cultures that have never gone more than 36 hours since their last feeding" (37).

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

I know one bakery whose sourdough feeding schedule is roughly this:

10AM: Feed the starter, doubling it in size. (He says he maintains about 40 quarts of starter, so after he feeds it he probably has 5 or 6 big tubs of it.)

2AM: Take half of the starter, about 20 quarts, as the beginning of that day's bread.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks. I have some experimenting to do. Also I don't have a book by Ginsberg but by George Greenberg and he does have a rye starter in it. So in addition to that and what's on KAF and what you've given me here I should be able to has something out.

Thanks again

[Author]

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