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1. Introduction




Description

This article is from the Sourdough Starters FAQ, by Brian Dixon briandixon at hotmail.com.

1. Introduction

What is a starter? It's a growth environment produced by a baker
that wild yeast and lacto-bacillus cultures like calling Home. It is
a mixture of (usually) water and (usually) wheat flour in which these
little beasties like to live and perform their magic (flavor, flavor,
and more flavor!) This soupy mixture of critters, flour, and water
is used for both flavor and leavening of various bread products that
just can't be made in any other way. This environment, this starter
mixture, is actually a symbiotic blend of microorganisms. Wild yeast
is able to metabolize complex sugars and starches and helps to
produce the food supply that the lacto-bacillus needs, and the
lacto-bacillus produces an environment that prevents mold growth.
Since molds and bacteria are two of nature's enemies, having the
lacto-bacillus in the starter actually helps preserve it. Remember
penicillin? It's a powerful anti-bacterial that originally came from
... mold!

The hard part of all this is that succeeding at this hobby requires
knowledge that is hard to gain. But once learned, maintaining
starters and baking with them is actually quite easy. That's where
the information contained herein comes in. It was produced with the
intent to help close the knowledge gap and to promote baking with
sourdough. Why not? It'll save you money (don't have to buy yeast)
and it tastes great!

When you are getting started, or when you are trying to troubleshoot
a starter, then the first thing you need to do is accurately
determine what state it is in. I've noticed that many people,
including people with more experience, still have questions about
determining what the current state a starter is in based upon visual
clues. I'm sure everyone knows at least most of the following
material, but there should be a little something for everyone in it.
Neophyte sourdough bakers or people starting new starters should find
the most use out of this information. Finally, although these
techniques work well and are well-proven in my kitchen, they are by
far not the only techniques which work. They are good guidelines
though and the neophyte should at least try following them before
experimenting with other methods.

Most books unfortunately, do not go into nearly enough detail when
teaching us about starters, how they work, and how to care for them.
One of the best books I've seen so far though, is the book called
"Jake O'Shaughnessy's Sourdough Book" by Timothy Firnstahl (San
Francisco Book Company, San Francisco, 1976 - now out of print). As
a result of the lack of good information in cookbooks, people
interested in baking with sourdough must learn everything the hard
way through years of experience. Or, live out their baking lives
with false knowledge and inaccurate concepts about how it all works.

I've been baking for 23+ years and most of that time has included
baking with sourdough. I've started many starters from wild yeast
found in the air of the area where I lived, and have started and
restarted lots of starters from other sources, i.e. dry, fresh,
seemingly-dead, etc. And I have also helped a number of other people
get their starters going ... usually right from the air in which they
live. The following is a summary of my learnings and I hope that
it's helpful to you as you go through the process of starting your
starter, or just plain keeping your own good starter going.

Starting a starter from scratch can require some patience on your
part, but if you stick with it, you will (not can, but will) succeed
in producing a strong, vibrant starter that can be the joy of your
kitchen for years on end. Maintaining and using sourdough starter is
really quite easy once you've established an active fresh starter.
And once there, then there is never any reason to add commercial
yeast as a booster to your recipes.

Commercial yeast is not only unnecessary, but it will change the
flavor of your sourdough products and will make it difficult to
produce a good-tasting stable starter with the characteristics that
you expect, e.g. the taste of natural airborne yeast and the tang of
properly matured lacto-bacillus in the starter (more on this below).
I believe that the reason so many books suggest using commercial
yeast in their recipes are two-fold: 1) the author of the book does
not trust sourdough and wants to guarantee the success (ahem!) of the
recipes in his/her book, and/or 2) the author of the book does not
have a good understanding of sourdough or lacks enough experience
with sourdough. The same goes for starters which begin their lives
as mixtures of commercial yeast and flour(s). Real sourdough is
defined as a combination of natural (non-hybrid) yeast plus one or
more other microorganisms (lactobacilli) living together in a
symbiotic growth environment. A symbiotic relationship is one in
which each element with in the relationship provides something the
other elements need and/or prevent things that would prevent the
other from living as it should. In the case of sourdough, the
relationship between the yeast and other microorganisms in the
starter result in a stable, unchanging (for the most part) mixture of
microorganisms in the starter.

And speaking of growth environments, that's really what it's all
about. Bakers don't make sourdough starters. Wild yeast and
lacto-bacillus make the starter, and bakers just facilitate the
process by providing a great growth environment!


 

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