Mastering Your Sourdough Starter - A deep dive into Flavor and Acidity

With this video you will learn all you need to know about the flavor and acidity of your sourdough starter. We will closely look at different sourdough starters and their role in the fermentation of your bread.

We will look at the products produced during fermentation, mainly ethanol, CO2, lactic acid and acetic acid. Then we will deep dive into different sourdough starter types and compare their respective fermentation. Afterwards I will give you some tips on how you can bake with local flours.

Links:

Also big shoutout to Jan-Pieter van den Wittenboer who helped me with the pH experiments!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:24 The microorganisms
1:17 The fermentation
2:00 Different starter types
3:33 The fluffiest dough
5:50 Achieving a more sour bread
7:10 My preferred starter

#sourdoughstarter #sourdough

[simplybeautifulsourdough]

This is very helpful, but I think I'm going to have to watch it about six times because it's early in my brain has not unfogged yet.🤣 Thank you very much for taking the time to make it!

[yananpu]

Thank you, Professor. I feel as if I am sitting in a lecture hall in a university of bread. I learned so much from your channel.😃

[alexandersolla]

This is probably the most helpful thing I have read about flavor influence! Thank you!

[lavague]

Wonderfull video. Very educative. I have used stiff starter in order to have more controlable fermentation acc. to your videos. A couple of weeks ago i ve started having inconsistent results and in one case i had complete degradation of the dough. We have 35 degrees in Athens this period and i assumed that this was due to elevated temperatures boosting lactic acid formation. Searching further, i have realised that feeding just before baking is one very efficient way to reduce acidity. Although at cooler periods i have using stiff starter, 1 week old, directly from fridge without any problem at all, that was not the case in summer period where fermentation temperatures rise kicking a boost in lactic acid formation. What would be intresting is to explore alternatives to control acidity by using buffers like baking soda. Sourdough is definately a challenging journey 😂 what makes it so wonderfull. Happy baking

[clarabartha]

Possibly one of the sweetest guys - and smartest - on the internet.

[carolschedler]

I just named my first sourdough starter “Hendrik” 😁 Thank you for sharing all your experience with us!!! He is five weeks old now .🎉. Thank you Hendrik!

[jamescolannino]

Your channel is amazing. I got really serious about sourdough a year and a half ago, but had a really hard time and gave up after a while. Your channel is giving me the confidence to try again. Thank you.

[jdxtube]

Outstanding! Content on sourdough starter is something I have never heard elsewhere before. Thanks from Australia.

[SPQRCenturion]

Thank you for these instructions and guidelines, they are very helpful. I surely do appreciate your time and effort in your videos. Keep up with good work dude.

[edwardlevitan]

I converted a regular starter to stiff about a month ago and I find it is much easier to manage. I skipped the liquid starter step and went directly from a rye regular to white bread flour stiff. The bread doesn’t taste sour to me at all. It makes great bread. I took a piece with my on vacation in my checked luggage on an airplane. That evening I mixed a dough using my friends American AP flour that afternoon. Continued the bulk fermentation in the fridge over night and baked a beautiful bread the next evening for dinner. The stiff starter is so much more forgiving and easier to work with, except for the need to knead it.

Thank you Hendrik I have learned a tremendous amount from you on my year long sourdough journey.

PS. I have some sourdough pizza cold fermenting right now after feeding that starter one more time with the same unknown AP flour.

[isabelab]

Great video as usual. I for me, the takeaway is to make liquid to regular to stiff to get the sweet notes. That said, my starter has been loving California coolness! New bread making experience for me. But with the solid foundation that you and Kristin provided, I can adapt and make great bread.

[ikvangalen]

You’re the breadmatician!
I very much like the approach on this!
Thanks for your effort!

[strangerintheselands]

Wow. This is superb. Once you get the mechanics of properties, you can play around however you like, really. If you don't get the principles, though, you are bound to stick to recipes and have no room ... for nothing really. Super helpful, Cheap German.

[einbisschenbullerbue]

Thank you so much! This finally shed some light on the mystery why sometimes my bread is quite sour (we love it!) and why at other times I just cannot figure out why it ends up being so different. I guess it's due to my non-measure approach...I just mix it together without a lot of fuzz 😉 - THANK YOU!!

[dereli]

Very interesting video.
One question: for how many cycles would you recommend to go through to go from normal to fluid to stiff?
Thank you!

[Daniel-medo]

This was amazing. Science helps breaks it all down. #chemistry. Well done.

[Jahloveipraise]

I couldn’t find a suggestion category in discord. But i was browsing through the fails/success and saw some beautiful scoring and was thinking it would be super cool if there was a section for decorative scoring where we could post our scores or discuss tips on how to score better. Just got on the discord channel tho. It is such a great community, i appreciate you making a positive constructive outlet for bakers around the world to discuss and share our adventures. As always thank you Hendrik!

[dbpike]

I moved from Canada to Spain last May and brought my starter and recipes with me. Sadly my starter died… RIP. For the last 10 months, my attempts at bread have ended up as pancakes. Flour? Water? Temperature? Relative Humidity? Sunburn? I experimented with all to no success.

However after creating a new starter with Spanish microbes and trying a stiff starter, I had my first success!

After downloading (and supporting ) your book and following your great channel, I’ve learned a few things:

1) I am spoiled coming from Canada with easily accesible, high gluten flours that can withstand the bacteria of a regular starter.

2) I was using bottled water but switched to tap water. Water in the Valencia region is extremely hard. So it probably raised the pH.

3) As you indicated, the stiff starter made a great open crumb even with the local Harina de Fuersa (bread flour). However there was no tangy flavour supporting your lesson.

4) Spanish microbes, like all things here, have a different rhythm of life. It is me that needs to adapt, not my starter!

My goal now is to slowly adjust the starter to find a good balance.

Thanks for all of your work. It is appreciated!

[Marianna]

This is very helpful. Yes, the strong gluten flour, in fact many good flour are very expensive in Asia, I've been trying to make a nice bread for over two years but never taste or look the same unless I'm using instant yeast. Until last month that I bought the French flour what is WAY more expensive, but the results is very satisfying. Now I'm trying many different bags of local flour to see which one have better gluten texture and this chart help me to understand why my dough is always sticky or very sour, some even taste like beer.

[DeannaWalsh]

Thanks! I’m fairly new to sourdough. I was wondering why some people’s videos are showing a soft, wet starter versus what I have. I have a fairly thick starter. It is like “the blob” and it seems to work well for me. I have a very simple way of using it and I don’t have to work with the dough much. I just make regular soft sourdough because my oven and my home cannot tolerate the very hot oven. So I’ll do things a little differently and it’s working out.