Is my sourdough spoofed?

J

Jonathan Loesberg

Jonathan Loesberg
One of the consequences of staying in France for 3 months is that I have to start new sourdough starter everytime I go to France or come back to the US. My starter in the US this past year was a particularly good one, so I dried some of it up rather than just tossing it, brought it to France and added it to the starter I started up there. That starter was even better so I did the same thing on returning here. It occurs to me, however, that, while I'm not using store bought yeast, I am using my own dried starter. I don't know that I'll change depending on what people say here since I like the results (it's what's under the butter that counts as the wine critics say)but I'm curious as to whether people think this practice passes muster or not.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Is my sourdough spoofed?One of the consequences of staying in France for 3 months is that I have to start new sourdough starter everytime I go to France or come back to the US. My starter in the US this past year was a particularly good one, so I dried some of it up rather than just tossing it, brought it to France and added it to the starter I started up there. That starter was even better so I did the same thing on returning here. It occurs to me, however, that, while I'm not using store bought yeast, I am using my own dried starter. I don't know that I'll change depending on what people say here since I like the results (it's what's under the butter that counts as the wine critics say)but I'm curious as to whether people think this practice passes muster or not.
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Sourdough is a co-ferment by wild yeasts and lactobacillus, so I can't imagine that your transnational population of microbes could be construed as any form of spoofulation. It may lack the "terroir" of a San Francisco sourdough culture, but if you like it who cares?

Mark Lipton
 
Some of the microbes will grow better at the temp of their French environment, for instance. You may select subpopulations by dehydrating them--some may survive better.

Maybe this selects a population you prefer?

Can you freeze the culture? I ask from idle curiosity, not that I argue for that instead.

But it's pretty hard to do a spontaneous ferment on flour, or so I'm told.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Some of the microbes will grow better at the temp of their French environment, for instance. You may select subpopulations by dehydrating them--some may survive better.

Maybe this selects a population you prefer?

Can you freeze the culture? I ask from idle curiosity, not that I argue for that instead.

But it's pretty hard to do a spontaneous ferment on flour, or so I'm told.
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If by culture, you mean the dried up sourdough starter (we bakers have our own technical terms, you see), sure you can freeze it. You can also not freeze it. It's dried up flakes and it hangs around just fine.

The strange part of this experience is that the US starter, which I liked, resulted in the strongest (in terms of rising power) and best tasting one I've ever had when I used the flakes in France. It's too early to tell about taste in the US, because I've only made one batch and it usually takes a couple for it to stretch its joints. But the rising vigor is certainly there.
 
The flour might be the key variable in this equation. I've noticed significant differences in general happiness depending on the brand (King Arthur is my preferred - produces less vigorous growth than other brands but the starter seems stronger and more resilient overall).

My starter is about to celebrate its 16th birthday, which makes me very wistful at the thought of just discarding it. I stick it in the fridge from June through August when it's too hot to bake; it takes about a week of feeding to resuscitate to full strength. That doesn't address your problem in France, but it does give you something ready to go when you get back to the US.
 
Before we started summering in France, I had starter that was over 20. But mine won't last for 3 months if you don't use it. It turns black.

In the US, I use whatever store brand unbleached white I come upon. Name brands like King Arthur haven't worked as well for me. In France, all the stores near me seem to have the same brand of bread flour.

Of course, that's for white. I also use rye frequently.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Before we started summering in France, I had starter that was over 20. But mine won't last for 3 months if you don't use it. It turns black.

In the US, I use whatever store brand unbleached white I come upon. Name brands like King Arthur haven't worked as well for me. In France, all the stores near me seem to have the same brand of bread flour.

Of course, that's for white. I also use rye frequently.
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Yes, it should have a layer of dead yeast cells (that are black or dark grey) floating on top and then a layer of whitish-grey sludge (at least, that's what mine looks like). Just mix it all up and proceed with your feeding schedule. It won't show much response for a couple of days but I usually find that within a week it is back to life.

As I understand it, store brands of bread flour are calibrated for bread machines and often have conditioners to promote faster yeast growth (malted barley powder being one example). Those make the starter grow faster, but they're basically just a sugar rush. I find noticeable differences in smell (more sour, less yeast) and texture (thinner, less well-developed bubble structure) when I have to substitute Pillsbury or another store brand for King Arthur.
 
Another vote for no spoof; I've been baking sourdough for more than 20 years, fwiw. Mixing cultures is no big deal (though you may blur the terroir expression of the wheat :)

Spontaneous fermentation on flour is a cinch with modest attention over a period of a few days. Best with organic, whole-grain - I've always assumed some yeast falls naturally on the wheat berries, as it does on grapes, and is not affected by cold-milling.

'Bread flour' usually just has a slightly higher gluten content, ideally due to wheat strain, rather than additives. By contrast, cake flour has little gluten, as the chewy quality conveyed by kneaded gluten, while appealing in bread, is undesirable in cakes. All-purpose flour is a compromise. King Arthur used to make a machine bread flour, iirc, which was simply extra tough with gluten in order to accommodate the merciless mechanical kneading inflicted by machines. The package ingredient list should show whether sugar or anything non-wheat has been added.

Freezing works, not sure if it's better than drying. There was a guy who used to sell different sourdough cultures on-line - Egypt, Syria, Norway, San Francisco, etc. It was a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure he dried his stuff and made tiny bricks out of it for mailing.

The best flavor results come from giving the dough a long (24-hour) rise in a very cool environment (bottom 'fridge shelf works). I think the idea is that yeast activity is retarded by the low temperature, while some of the other small organisms present carry on; it's their processes that create the distinctive sour flavors. (Although it's not clear to me now that their metabolic rates would be less affected by lower temperatures than yeast). I would surmise it is variation in this population, more than that of the yeast, that accounts for regional variations in taste.

The proof of the bread is in the eating! Cheers.
 
I ask about freezing and so on in part because Francis Boulard was trying to figure out how to save a ferment to use the same vintage's yeast to carry out the second fermentation of his Champagnes. His current practice is to use the active ferment from the next year's primary fermentation. But this involves an insane amount of work at harvest, and also involves a violation of vintage hygiene.
 
originally posted by Brian Loring:
It's not the yeast that makes it spoof, it's the chapitalization and amelioration.
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Now, you see, it's this reply that started my question. People who use non-local yeast additives, will always argue that that yeast is still yeast; it's just from somewhere else. And they add it for flavor control. Now all the breadbakers out there distinguish between starter and the store bought stuff (which adds a distinctive flavor, but not one one always or ever desires). But they don't distinguish, as we do here, between using local stuff or not. I'm not a chemist and so I will guess that store bought yeast and non-local wine yeast that one buys and adds may also go through processes to preserve and protect their qualities in addition to drying or freezing. But, as some of you note offhandedly, what I'm doing is surely highhanded with regard to terroir. I'm not in the camp of thinking adding non-local yeast doesn't matter in wine (and the notion that it doesn't affect flavor seems to me empirically absurd), and I'm not looking for position statements in an old argument. I'm just wondering why all of us bread types aren't in that camp with regard to bread. To really do what we want winemakers to do, we should make dough with a new starter each time for that dough (easily possible, just time consuming and less reliable, depending on where you live and what your indoor yeast population is like). I'm not in that camp with regard to bread either, but I don't know why.
 
Starter and wine are in very different biological situations.

Native yeasts on grapes are very diverse. Different ones will grow at different points in the fermentation, each contributing their own smellies. Something alcohol-tolerant like cerevisiae will finish. But then you are done, there is no continuity.

Starter is selected for what grows on whatever you feed it, selected for generation after generation under relatively constant conditions. Things that don't grow well vanish from the population and won't contribute to the bread. But it becomes unlikely that you have a complex polyculture (I guess?), since something that grows a bit faster will dominate.

Or so I guess. Is that the story on starters? Or is there an ecosystem where the growth of one thing depends on another, so they both survive?
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
I ask about freezing and so on in part because Francis Boulard was trying to figure out how to save a ferment to use the same vintage's yeast to carry out the second fermentation of his Champagnes. His current practice is to use the active ferment from the next year's primary fermentation. But this involves an insane amount of work at harvest, and also involves a violation of vintage hygiene.
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Yeah, my knowledge is way too casual for professional use, of course, but I'd imagine that drying would work. Or freeze-drying. Naturally, you'd want to do a certain amount of testing before committing to the process.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Starter and wine are in very different biological situations.

Native yeasts on grapes are very diverse. Different ones will grow at different points in the fermentation, each contributing their own smellies. Something alcohol-tolerant like cerevisiae will finish. But then you are done, there is no continuity.

Starter is selected for what grows on whatever you feed it, selected for generation after generation under relatively constant conditions. Things that don't grow well vanish from the population and won't contribute to the bread. But it becomes unlikely that you have a complex polyculture (I guess?), since something that grows a bit faster will dominate.

Or so I guess. Is that the story on starters? Or is there an ecosystem where the growth of one thing depends on another, so they both survive?
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Good question. It seems to me that sourdough is a selection massale, which we all recognize to be the antithesis of spoofulation. And if the selection massale in France is distinct from that in VA, vive la différence!

Mark Lipton
 
I'm under the impression that a sourdough starter will pretty quickly begin to reflect the environment it is being grown in for exactly the reasons SFJoe mentions. So it might have been non-native the first few days, but after feeding it for a little while it will reflect the microbes that grow best in your current environment. Its why selling starters is a little bit of a scam. I'd point you towards old sourdough threads on eGullet - lots of papers from microbiologists on the subject were posted there.
 
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