Baking Bread again after a few years hiatus - starter questions
Hello all!
I stopped baking bread a few years ago and let my terrific San Francisco starter die :(
When I first got interested in sourdough, I would get really interesting and healthy natural starters going that would raise reliably and make really good bread but that didn't have the tang I was looking for. So I ended up buying a starter from Breadtopia that was the exact tangy flavor I was after. And what I noticed with that tangy starter was that it would not rise at all (or too slow to notice) in the fridge. I had to keep it about 85F in order to get it really active -- and then I would do my cool retard at about 55-60F. That gave me terrific results.
Now, fast forward to present day -- I asked around my community and got a few starter samples from neighbors. Starter #1 is so reliable you could set your watch by it. You feed it and it is ready to go right on time with large bubbles and the bread behaves just the way you want - but there is no sour tang at all to the sourdough. In fact it seems to make the bread taste sweet - almost like you had put caramel in it. Great bread but I crave the tang.
And starter #2 is very tangy smelling - but grows really slowly and makes tiny bubbles. Much more finicky about temperature. Seems to like it warm but not too warm --- I almost need to get a PID setup to keep the starter at a very specific temp. And same when my bread is rising -- just a few degrees too cool and it doesn't rise. The bread is delicious with the exact flavor I'm after (nice sour, tangy bite to it). I just find it really impossible to time and I just have to keep checking on it to time everything by how the starter is behaving.
I'm having the best luck by grinding my wheat and feeding whole wheat flour to the starter. It seems to behave much better on that than feeding it AP flour.
Well ... that's my long winded story. I bet some of you will have some great advice for me. I love how starter #1 is so reliable and predictable - I know exactly what time to start my bread based on when I fed the starter - and I know exactly what time the bread will be ready to go in the oven. And the flavor is something that I bet many would be really happy with - it is very good - I just have this craving for very sour San Francisco sourdough.
I'm still doing the loaf pan sourdough - one small loaf everyday - where I put an inverted breadpan over the top to steam it for the first half of the bake.
Thanks in advance for advice on best routine with my starter #2 that is so fussy and hard to time