wild yeast bread

since october, i've engaged several attempts to capture wild yeast with a sourdough starter. first let's getd something understood. sourdough starter does not mean sourdough bread. i think the term sourdough starter is redundant. the starter is a sour dough - or is it that sour dough over there we are going to use to start the bread? i like to call it a culture. a micro-ranch of hungry farting creatures. however, for so long it seemed like i could only make wet flour - with a culture of flies and maybe sometimes just a fart smell. confusion, doubt, complacency and an overall lack of scientific instruments had almost overwhelmed my efforts. now that i've successfully developed a culture i can say this, it was just as easy as it should be. i had several failed starter attempts  based on recipes from around the internet, burdened by measurements of mass and the strict schedule. my sources often provided metric proportions and a many of them advocate weighing out equal amounts by the scale when feeding the culture. i don't have a scale so i converted these recipes to the american bastard system of cups. since a cup of flour weighs different than a cup of water, i had often begun my process in error.  to reach my success, i discontinued working with the internet guides and sought a more local perspective. The fellow running the Phoenix Rising bakery in my town was kind enough to talk shop with me on the subject of wild yeast. what i got from him was the notion to relax. so i did. i stopped measuring and watching and stayed patient. instead of miscalculating measurements of flours and water, i mixed for a certain consistency - a spongy batter. the following is going to be a restrospective in notes - i scribble things down on paper all the time but rarely retool the words and numbers to make it coherent, so this should help me as well as it could help my lovely reader. 

i only used rye flour and added what seemed like proportionally more of it in water. 

i used tap water (no water softener) which i boiled and let cool. 

the total amount of my initial mixture equaled about a cup. 

i mixed this on a day of mild temperature, medium pressure in the midst of a baking session. 

(i understand the yeast start to jump around during and after baking.) 

the mixture sat in a wide ceramic bowl covered in cheese cloth. 

during the following days, the temperature began to drop. 

all i did to my mixture was stir it once a day for the next four days. 

during these four days, i saw no activity what so ever

 - no rise, no bubbles, no bacteria foam (which is common in the first few days). 

on day 5 i found bubbles. 

inspired by chaos, i added about a quarter cup of rye flour and water each without discarding any of the original mixture, 

even scraping down the crusty stuff into the mix. 

on this day i also baked. 

the weather has become troublesome, 

it's near freezing every night and the barometric pressure is higher than a week ago

(harsh elements to loaf in for central texas.) 

i did nothing but stir the mixture the next day and observed increase in bubbles. 

the photo at the top of the post is how the starter looked at this point

on day 7, i discarded some  of the culture, keeping about 0.8 cup. 

i then added that amount in equal parts of rye flour and water. 

i then had approx 2.5 cups of mixture. 

the bowl i had been using is now cleaned and the newest mixture pour in and covered in cheese cloth. 12 hours later, day 8, incredible activity, slight increase in starter, lots of surface bubbles. 

i removed about a cup and saved it. 

i want to experiment with ingredients and make two different starters. 

i have created two mixtures which i dubbed "light" and "grainy"

"light" one has equal parts starter/water/flour(rye and white whole wheat) and totals about 3.5 cups. 

"grainy"  has equal parts starter/water/flour (rye, coarse whole wheat, bulgher wheat) - about 2.5 cups. 

the following day, both starter batches had slight increase and continued activity

the "grainy" mixture had apparently hydrated perfectly by the late afternoon 

it became a spongy mass similar to the inside of a well fired marshmallow. 

i used the starter discarded from it's evening feeding to make my first batch of artisan beard

i got an interesting multi grain bread going by intuition alone

it was dense and sweat - not my preference but it was my first go so it was eaten quickly

so, this is day 9 and i got a working starter
note, the weather has become warmer with the preassure still high.

the next two days, i made 3 more batches with a better concentrated effort

i continued regular feeding and stored some in the fridge to see what it'll do.

at the end of the marathon i created these specimens:

flax seed rye bread using multi grain starter

semolina sourdough using light starter

acorn squash whole wheat using multi grain starter

the formula for dough now is so simple. 

think about it for a second - flour is represented in orange, starter is green and water is blue - accept that the standard system is bullshit and the the metric system is too expensive - measure all ingredients in ratios to each other and you can't loose. starter to water will typically be 1:2 - adjust this ratio to accommodate what flours are to be used in the bread - less levain generally means longer fermentation - take considerations on the hydration of the starter when adding the water - add salt and other favoring elements in discriminating proportions , olive oil can be added but the dough usually picks up enough when it ferments in an oiled bowl. 


flours i used:
 hodgeson mills natural bread flour
 hodgeson mills natural stone ground rye
 king authur organic white whole wheat
 king authur natural all purpose flour
 arrowhead mills organic stone ground whole wheat
 bob's red mill semolina
 bob's red mill vital wheat gluten

now, real quick, right this down - cause i'll only type it once - mix and autolyse, 20-30 minutes - fermentation, 2.5-4 hours with folds at first and last hours - divide/shape, bench rest, 20 minutes - proof, 50 min-2.5 hours - bake, 30-40 minutes.

i hate to be so cryptic, but i do it to myself too - i should give some credit to Susan who authors the Wild Yeast Blog. she has extensive information on the subject of wild yeast and baking with sourdough starter, or cultures as i prefer. she has several recipes posted calling for starter. i picked up the semolina sourdough off her pages and referred to her rye/whole wheat recipe for my flax seed rye bread. the squash bread, if i may gloat, was my own madness.

well, thanks for checking me out, whoever reads me. the C-7 series has come to a close - in case you were wanting to see some tiny insects enlarged to 800x533 pixels - stay tuned, i've got something around the bend - by the way, the cucumbers may not survive the winter but there's one that is holding out. okay, that's all for now - peace - kevo

by kevin walsh, 2010