In this episode of The Free Culinary School Podcast, we kick off our baking and pastry series with a podcast on Sourdough Starters and Pre-Ferments. If you’ve ever wanted to make your own artisan bread, then this episode will lay the foundation to help you achieve that goal.
In This Episode
Discussion Segment
- Learn about the four major ingredients of bread making, flour, water, salt and yeast, and the importance of their interaction.
- The difference between Instant Dry Yeast, Active Dry Yeast, Cake Yeast, and which type you should be using.
- The Different Types of Flour Available and which is the best for baking bread.
Technique Segment
- Learn about the “baker’s percentage” and its importance.
- The different types of Sourdough Starters and Pre-Ferments used, how best to use them, and which is the right one for you.
- How to make and maintain your very own sourdough starter.
Do you use Sourdough Starters or Pre-Ferments when baking bread? Which do you prefer, and what are some of the problems you’ve encountered along the way?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I just started with baking sourdough bread this summer, so this (long awaited) podcast is much appreciated. Looking forward to listening to it. Thanks, Jacob! I’ll probably come back with further questions/comments after listening.
So far to answer your discussion question: I use my own starter (it’s about four months old now, I feed and use it regularly and I already given some of it away to people interested in baking their own bread). No serious problems encountered so far, after initial testing the bread now rises predictably and is uniformly fabulous, as confirmed by a lot of my friends and family members (“best bread ever” is a commonly used phrase, actually
).
OK, here’s a thought and a few questions:
A thought: I’d probably advise against using apple peel/grapeskin for starting the starter unless you know how exactly were the fruits treated. A content of herbicide and/or fungicide could probably inhibit the growth of bacteria and impart off flavors. Not sure if it’s always the case but I guess it’s good to be on the safe side. Moreover, you don’t really need them, the flour+water can do the trick without any help. I’d probably resort to grapeskins/peels only if the pure starter fails (for me it worked on the first try though).
Questions:
1.) You haven’t really mentioned too much about water used to start and feed the starter. Is tap water OK? I use boiled water to get rid of chlorine (my logic was that “chlorine kills bacteria -> starter contains bacteria => chlorine kills starter”), is that an unnecessary step? What kind of water are you using for feeding your starter?
2.) I’ve been always wary of using scrap dough as a starter due to salt content. Does the salt make any problems with keeping the scrap dough active? Should I add some more water (creating a sort of poolish) just to be on the safe side?
Always eager to learn new bread-making stuff, so I’m looking forward to the next podcast.
@Wanderingtaoist,
You make a good point about the peels; I should’ve mentioned that whenever I use peels in my starter I make sure that they are 100% organic and from a reputable source. And yes, mixing the water and flour together usually is sufficient, the fruit peels are more there for insurance purposes than anything else. This way, in two weeks when the next podcast episode drops, everyone who wants to will be able to play along at home.
To answer your question about water, I use regular tap water and have never had any issues with it. Like I mentioned in the podcast, if you live in a heavily populated area with poor water quality, you’ll definitely want to use bottled water.
As far as the scrap dough goes, the salt content contained within the dough isn’t enough to kill the yeast, just to slow down its development. So in fact, the salt actually helps to keep the scrap dough a little less active so it won’t burn through its entire food supply before you use it next.
Usually when using scrap dough, you’re using it to bake the same bread recipe over and over. So if you’re using a 100%, 60%, 2% bakers percentage (Flour, Water, Salt, respectively), you would just continue to use that ratio each and every time, adding the scrap dough in during the mixing process as your leavening agent.
Hope this helps, and we’ll be getting more in-depth into the actual process of baking and different percentages next episode.
I have loved your podcast for awhile and anxiously awaited new episodes – I am so glad we’re starting off with this bread series! I will be getting my starter together tonight. I wanted to ask what kind of container would work best for storing the starter, or does it matter?
Finally, at the risk of sounding like a crazy person, you may want to check out the difference between the words artisan and artesian. A Google search reveals that artisan vs. artesian is a very common search. I grimaced each time you pronounced artisan as artesian. Sorry to be a pain.
Anyway, thanks again for all the great information!
Heidi
Ahh yes, my impeccable linguistic skills strike once again
. I’ll be sure to mention a correction next episode. Glad you’re enjoying the podcast.
Jacob,
Thanks much for the podcast. I do, however, have a question.
For a long poolish pre-ferment, you said to use about “point two percent” yeast by weight, which is .2% or .002. However, for a shorter pre-ferment, I’m not sure if you accidentally mixed mixed percentages when you said to use “one point five percent” yeast by weight, which is 1.5% or .015.
Since a shorter pre-ferment, it would seem, would need more yeast, I thought maybe you did mean 1.5%. But if it doesn’t require more, but requires less yeast, then you would have meant .15%.
My question, then, is did you mean to use more (1.5%) or less (.15%) yeast for a shorter pre-ferment?
Thanks,
Starkman
@ Starkman,
I think you’re confusing yourself by trying to convert the percentage into decimal. For a shorter fermentation you need more yeast, about 1.5% (.015), as opposed to a longer fermentation that requires less yeast, about .2% (.oo2). 1.5% is greater than .2%, just as .015 is greater than .002. Hope this helps to clear things up.
Oh, that’s clears things up, for sure. I just wanted to be very sure that it was, in fact, 1.5% and not.15% that you meant to say–it made sense to me that you had probably meant 1.5% because of the shorter period requiring more time.
Thanks,
Starkman
I have my poolish starter well fermented but it is far more liquid than yours on the video. I don’t have a mixer so work by hand. This morning when I added the ingredients for the bread to the starter it was very sloppy and didn’t come together like yours. What am I doing wrong. Love the videos and the clear instructions we are given.
Thanks very much.
It sounds like you’re probably storing your starter at room temperature (which will give it a more liquid consistency), and letting it go too long between feedings. Onc of the byproducts of yeast fermentation is CO2 (hence the bubbling) and alcohol. If you let your starter go too long between feedings, the yeast is taking the starch in your flour (a solid) and turning it into alcohol (a liquid), which in turn throws off the moisture content of you starter, making it more liquid.
Try getting on a more regular feeding schedule just for the next couple of feedings (about once every 1-2 days), and then store it in your fridge immediately after you feed it. If you want to store your starter at room temperature, then you will need to feed it every 8-12 hours.
Let me know if this helps.
Jacob
Thanks for your help. I have done what you suggested but my starter still seems too soft. Is is alright to throw away any liquid when I take the starter from the fridge before I feed it or start to bake? Also when I take the starter from the fridge to get ready to bake do I allow it to come to room temperature before I start. I am having more successful loaves but not as good as yours. I have found that putting the loaf into a casserole dish for its last prove then wetting the lid and covering the loaf seems to give me a better loaf – the crust is not too thick and hard.
Thanks for your help.
Irene
@ Irene,
I prefer to use my starter straight from the fridge, and that’s also how I did it in the sourdough video. If you’re finding that your starter is accumulating some moisture on top, then you need to pour off that moisture before feeding it; don’t stir it back in. Make sure you feed your starter about 8-12 hours before using it for best results.
Also, baking in a casserole dish is a nice technique.
Let me know how your next batch turns out.