SC - Re: Bread making Platina style (long)

[Decker, Terry D.]

Lets talk a little bit about what is happening when you make a starter.

By combining equal weights of wheat flour and water and mixing them together
you start an amylase catalyzed reaction which converts the starch in the
flour to sugar.  Normally there are yeasts and lactobacilli in the flour.
These begin to use the sugars produced by the amylase reaction to grow
colonies.

When you beat the flour and water together, air is introduced into the
mixture.  The lactobacilli are aerobic in nature and begin to reproduce
first, when the air in the mixture is used up, the anerobic yeast (most
often a variety of Candida milleri, which is suited to an acidic
environment) begins to reproduce.  When the sugars are used up, the yeast
begins to die off.

The fermentation process in sourdough takes about two days to form a basic
starter.  Sourdough works best between 40 and 80 degrees F.  The higher the
temperature the faster the reaction and the faster the sugars are expended.
When I work with starter on the countertop, I feed it about 1/2 cup flour
and 1/4 cup of water (approx. equal weights) every 12 hours after the first
2 days.  If you put the starter in a sealed container in the refrigerator,
it needs to be fed 1 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water every 3 days.  I
personally prefer the countertop because it strengthens the flavor from the
constant change between aerobic and anaerobic environments, but it is a lot
more work.  BTW, I keep my starter covered with plastic wrap to keep molds
from forming.

In the case you describe, you kept the starter in a warm place for 3.5 days
apparently without feeding it.  I would suspect the fermentation used up all
of the sugar and the yeast began dying, so that when you made your bread
there wasn't enough yeast in the starter to leaven it properly.  

The sour flavor of the bread depends upon the lactobacilli.  Just because
the bread doesn't taste very sour does not mean you have a failure.  It just
means the lactobacilli in your starter produce less lactic acid than some
other lactobacilli.  The truly sour breads of San Francisco are that way
because they have the overactive Lactobacillus sanfrancisco in their
starter.  Even then, you'll find some commercial sourdough makers adultrate
their product with artificial souring agents.

Unpasturized ales and beers contain Saccharomyces cerevisiae and
Saccharomyces carlbergensis.  Adding these to a sourdough, is like adding
dry active yeast.  In fact, baker's yeast is a variety of S. cerevisiae.
Over time, they don't stand up well to the high acid environment of a
sourdough starter.  If you use them, don't adulterate your starter with
them, add a proofing step to increase your starter, recover a couple cups of
starter from the dough, then add your adulterants.

Depending on the activity of the starter, the first rise may be anywhere
from two to twenty-four hours.  Mine commonly run 8 to 12 hours and my
second rise usually runs 2 to 4 hours.  I've also had good luck letting the
first rise slump, then rejuvenating the dough with additional flour and
kneading.  

A slightly damp, cool room is best suited for rising sourdough.  It slows
and evens the rise.  Since I don't have that, I work at a room temperature
of 70 to 74 degrees F and seem to get reasonable results.

If you plan to keep working with sourdough, I recommend Ed Wood's World
Sourdoughs from Antiquity.  It is the best primer on sourdoughs I've found.

Bear