Barm Commentary
| This formula and associated commentaries are published here
with the kind permission and through the continuing generosity of Chef Peter
Reinhart. The information is taken from his book Crust & Crumb. If you are
interested in wild yeast, sourdough, preferments and bread baking in
general, you need to buy this book. There are 48,000 books on bread (I own a
lot of them); most provide a collection of recipes. Crust & Crumb will SHOW
YOU HOW to bake bread. These commentaries will provide much need comfort during the growth of your starter. |
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Commentaries
The main reason to use organically grown wheat flour on the first day is to protect against the slight chance of contamination. I have seen many starters made with regular commercial flour and rarely is there a problem, but "purer is better" is a healthy rule. The first stage of building a starter is crucial because the various organisms are just getting established, so the healthier you can make the medium the better your chances for success. Whether you are using wheat or barley malt, it is important that the diastase enzymes are alive, as they are in diastatic malt. ( When the malt is roasted to create richer flavors, the enzymes cook, creating nondiastatic malt; it is a wonderful flavoring agent and sweetener, but does not provide the enzymes needed at this stage.) Sprouted wheat flour, because it is not roasted, is diastatic. Beer-making supply houses are a good source for malt, as are natural food stores and The Baker's Catalogue. Honey is an excellent yeast food and is added in the first stage to encourage yeast growth. It is not necessary once the starter is up and running. I use raisin water on day one because raisins, like the grapes they once were, are a home for wild yeast cells. The yeast, which reveals itself as the powdery white bloom in grape skins, loves to feed on the grape sugars. This is why grapes left on the vine beyond harvest time will ferment on their own. Wine grapes are popular for inoculating starters but they are not always available. Raisins, however, are available year-round and work just as well. Soaking the raisins in warm water (not hot, which would kill the yeast) draws both the yeast cells and some of the natural sugar into the water This infusion of helps jump-start the sponge. It will work, albeit more slowly, to use plain water because the wheat also provides yeast, as does the air. But the raisin water strengthens the presence of the S. exiguus yeast, making it difficult for other strains of yeast to establish themselves. If you have wine grapes simply plunge them into the sponge and fish them out after about 10 minutes (it is not necessary to crush the grapes to release their juice; their prime purpose is to provide added yeast cells). As with flour, purer is better, so use organically grown raisins and grapes if possible. Both the wild yeast and the lactobacillus organisms prefer a cool environment; 65 degrees F is ideal. Warmer temperatures encourage other more acetic and less flavorful bacteria. Many brands of bread flour are already malted, meaning they have a small amount of barley malt in the blend (the ingredient list will say "malted barley flour"). This is great for your starter but not essential. If your flour does not include malted barley it will still work. On day two, the sponge will be made slightly thicker. The thicker sponge encourages more of the sweeter lactic acids, while still promoting sourness. As a rule, lactic acid-producing organisms prefer drier sponges and acetic acid (sour) producers like wetter, looser, more oxygen-rich sponges. This is a wet sponge because you want a sour sourdough. Later in the process, as you elaborate this barm sponge starter into an intermediate firm starter, it will develop more lactic flavors. By day three, the sponge should be double the size it was on the previous day. As you build the size of the sponge, you start using doubling as the standard feeding format. Wild yeast starters like a consistent feeding pattern and adapt themselves to the rhythm you establish. The organisms need enough fresh nutrients to keep themselves busy for a while. If they wipe out their supply, the cells begin to die and the starter develops a flavor like nutritional yeast (nutritional yeast, also called brewer's yeast, is just dead cells of the cerevisiae yeast strain, full of vitamin B but no longer alive to ferment bread or beer). Should you find yourself overwhelmed by the volume, you can also double your starter by discarding half and building back to the current level. By day 4, the pace of development is beginning to pick up. You discard half to keep down the quantity. You also wean the starter from honey and malt supplements because there is now enough enzyme activity in the sponge to quickly break down the starches. By day 5, the starter should bubble up much more quickly, and in larger quantities, take longer to cool in the refrigerator. This means it will continue to ferment for an hour or two after you put it away. The acidity takes up to two days to peak, but the leavening capability stays strong for up to two days from the time of bubbling. During refreshment, it is important not to feed the starter more than once every 24 hours; it needs time to use most of the new food first. As with some people, overfeeding a starter can cause sluggishness. When building a dough, if the starter is cold, your dough will be cold, extending the fermentation time. If time is not a concern, you can use the cold starter and give the dough longer rising time before moving on to the next step. I like having a large supply of starter because I can make larger batches of bread. However, you need only 2 cups to make two to three loaves of bread, so 4 to 6 cups of starter is enough for most home bakers. The problem with a large batch is that if you don't use it, you have to throw away a lot when you refresh it.. I have kept unused starters in both my refrigerator and freezer for six months and made great bread from them after just a few days of refreshment. Freeze a starter only if refrigerator space is an issue or you know it will be months before you plan to make bread again. The starter will probably last longer than six months, but I hate to make guarantees beyond what I have experienced.
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