Two interesting posts on Starter

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hi,

Saw two new things on Instagram on starter. One was a use for discard which is to dry it on parchment paper then grind it and use it instead of flour for dusting. I might try that. It's not as fine as flour and looks more like the BRM semolina I am currently using.

The second said that the reason to discard starter is to reduce the acid build up. If your starter is too acidic then it doesn't give your bread the rise it needs. It also says that after discard to increase the flour and water added.

Since I don't do regular discards (seems wasteful) I liked this combo of items. If I can refind them and figure out how, I will share them here.

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[BakerAunt]

Aaron--Today's email from King Arthur has a granola recipe that uses discard starter.

[Mike Nolan]

Let's say you have 200 grams of starter.

If you follow the traditional home method for feeding it, you'd use or discard 100 grams of starter, then add 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water to the rest, getting it back to 200 grams. You then set it aside until next time. (Whether or not you refrigerate it is a separate issue.)

But consider a different scenario:

You have 200 grams of starter. You add 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water, getting to 400 grams. 12 hours later you remove 200 grams of recently-fed and now quite active starter and use it to make bread.

You still have 200 grams of starter left, which was fed with a 1-1 ratio of water and flour. The difference is a matter of timing.

So figure out how much starter you need to make a batch of bread, and consider that your 'carryover' amount, each time you feed it you double that, then use half of it for making bread, getting back to the carryover amount.

I guarantee you that professional bakers are more likely to do it this way than to throw away half of their starter at each feeding.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. Thanks Mike.

Working with two bakers here I was amazed at the small amount of starter they used for relatively large amounts of dough. I think most of the recipes for home bakers I've seen use a much bigger ratio. One of the things I noticed about the Unified Mills recipe is the relatively small amount of starter added to the levain compared to my standard recipe.

The other thing is, bakers NEVER EVER through away ANYTHING unless it is a health hazard. Margins are small and tossing something that is useable or saleable - even as a sample - can affect the bottom line. Even giving out samples, while free, is still marketing and generates good will.

When Sam was home and I was making about 8 lbs of bread a week AND BA's crackers, I did not need to worry about discard! I may try starter chocolate chip cookies. I've heard so many raves about those.

And part of the "put started in everything" movement probably comes from not wanting to waste it and also the belief that starter has beneficial bacteria for the gut. I agree with the former. I am not sure how about the latter. Way more research needs to be done on that.

[Mike Nolan]

An article came up on my phone the other day with a headline about people are using too many probiotics and why that's a problem. I didn't read it, but I have read other articles suggesting this trend might be overdone.

But by the time the scientists can conduct and publish multi-year time studies on the impact of a heavily probiotic diet (assuming they can get funding for one), the foodies will likely have moved on to something else.

[Mike Nolan]

The Tartine books are interesting in that he uses very small amounts of starter in most of his recipes, and he prefers what he calls an immature starter, making a levain that has maybe 3-5% starter in it that is used for baking within a day

[BakerAunt]

King Arthur has some recipes that use a small amount of starter in the levain. I do think that their starter tends to be thicker--perhaps much more so--than my milk-based starter. I usually use a bit more when I bake those recipes, and I try to make sure that the starter has recently been fed.

I think that King Arthur had a blog post on keeping only a small amount of starter.

Aaron--maybe you need to send Sam a care package of crackers!

[Mike Nolan]

Retired as King Arthur's head baker, Jeffrey Hamelman made a post on the BGGA forums the other day that seems to suggest he keeps a starter that weighs only 15 grams in between feedings and I think he feeds it every day. I wonder if he refrigerates it at all? I'll have to ask him.

He build it up a bit ahead of baking, I think, but keeping a starter that small would minimize the waste of throwing out half the starter when it is fed.

[Author]

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