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This channel is honestly the best sourdough baking resource on the internet. You cover SO many more real ingredients and techniques people want to experiment with and compare end results, something even the best books out there don’t do (at least that I’ve found).
I really love this channel and The Bread Code. Both have helped me achieve aaaaalmost what I'm looking for. My bread still lacks the sour/tangy quality though and I cannot for the life of me figure out why
My understanding from the old Usenet days on rec.food.sourdough is that the ash content of the flours used has the largest effect on total titratable acid because the ash acts as a buffer and allows the lactobacilli to produce more acids before the pH reaches a level at which their activity would be inhibited. A low ash dough and a high ash dough might have the same pH, but the high ash dough will have higher titratable acid. This is why, for example, whole grain sourdough breads have more sour flavor. I have found this to be the case when comparing breads made from regular supermarket bread flour and more “artisanal” bread flours such as Type 85 flour, a high ash flour that isn’t exactly white flour but is a far cry from whole grain.
Oh... and a primary reason why very sour sourdough breads often are not very lofty is that acid degrades the fractions of gluten proteins most responsible for loaf volume (see, e.g., Preston et al. “Effects of Acid-Soluble and Acid-Insoluble Gluten Proteins on the Rheological and Baking Properties of Wheat Flours.” Journal of Cereal Chemistry 57:314 (1980)).
Thank you for this explanation. I have long searched for an explanation on this. I have noticed that when I used a flour with high ash content the bread becomes much more sour compared to when I use normal high gluten white flour.
One time, I did a 1% inoculation and let it bulk ferment at room temperature overnight and then put it in the fridge for 24 hours after shaping. As it was baking, you could smell the tanginess. It tasted great, too!
I've found if I abuse my starter and not babysit I get more sour in it. This means not feeding it twice a day, not caring it the temp is perfect or warm enough etc and let it sit in the refer a while with out caring for it. I hope this makes sense. I'm actually microbiologist and have played with all types of fermentations. I think once the oxygen has been spent and goes anaerobic ( as long as you don't stir it) it has made food for and then lets the lactobacilllis do it's thing;)
I abuse my starter all the time. Leave it unfed for a week on the counter. It gets super sour, but when I bake with it, even unfed, the resulting bread is a mild sourness :) I've also tried over fermenting the dough (less oven spring, but not gluten breakdown) and it doesn't change the taste a lot :)
As an experiment please use the starter on different stages, when it is doubled, tripled , at peak and when it is fallen. That would be interesting on taste (and also the effect on the oven spring)
I just let my started go past peak by 24 hours and fall back to original volume. Very sharp on smell and very sour. Now if you used this for leaven for the dough it would certainly ferment in the fresh dough and I would expect it to bring in that sour flavor. But it is such a small percentage of the total dough, a predominant sour flavor might have to happen by changing other fermentation variables. Anyway, I’d like to see this experiment using rising, peak, and fully fallen starter.
Another trick for very sour bread is using a large amount of discarded starter. Sourest bread I ever made was about 50% discard. The discard gets extremely sour sitting in the refrigerator. I've also gotten very sour bread when I put it, underproofed, in the refrigerator and let it slow proof in there for a few days.
@@andrenio depends on the method you use for feeding your starter. If you feed it every day, but don't bake every day, you need to remove most of the mature starter before feeding it fresh flour and water. That mature starter you remove before feeding is called discard, and you can save it in the refrigerator and there are many ways to use it in place of flour (it just has weak gluten because it's fully fermented already, and you need to account for the water in it).
I always make 2 sourdough loaves at a time. I sometimes bake one loaf the same day (day 1) but usually the dough goes into fridge and I bake one the next day (day 2). The second loaf gets baked on day 3 or day 4 depending on whether I need a fresh loaf. The sourness of the bread increases the more the bread is left in the fridge. There’s a huge difference for me between loaves made in exactly the same way but rested in the fridge for different lengths of time before baking.
I like my sourdough bread not so tangy as i like to taste the favors of my freshly milled grains, but my son loves his sourdough very sour. So to achieve this i cheat a bit. I make my dough with less of a fresh, young, inoculation, perhaps 10% rather than 15-20% but then I add some 3-4 day old refrigerated sourdough discard. Best of both worlds so to say - new starter for strength, old for flavor. I then procede as normal.
Try going up to 30%. You'll get a really sour bread. But there is another fact I learn a few months ago. The stiffer (less hydrated) starter creates more acetic acid. Which makes bread more sour. While liquid (100% hydrated) starter creates lactic acid. Which adds that yogurty taste.
The health of your starter definitely plays into it. When I'm feeding my starter perfectly to a schedule, it's difficult to get even a remotely sour bread, but if I get lazy and start skipping days the starter itself starts to smell significantly more sour. If I use the starter when it's like that (for even more effect, use it slightly past its peak) I get a more sour bread.
Yesterday I went through my sourdough making process as usual, planned to have it in the fridge at about ten for its rest overnight but then I forgot! Work up at around 2:30 am and remembered. Shoved it in the fridge in its proofing container (unshaped etc) and took it out this morning, shaped briefly then in to bake. The result, a slightly smaller but incredibly well fermented loaf with a significantly more sour taste than usual. Turns out that 15% starter fermenting for 10 hours isn't too bad 🤷🏼♀️
Agreed, the more Ive stopped rigidly following popular recipes and letting my bread ferment at room temp for way longer, the better taste and texture I’m getting in the bread. In usually end up mixing the dough at around 14:00, and between stretch&folds + bulk it spends about 9-10 hours at room temp (or in 30 degree oven if the weather is cold), then I put it in the fridge usually just before midnight, and bake at lunchtime the next day.
Wow, this information is so very helpful. Just started baking 18 months ago, (at the ripe age of 70!) . I like my sourdough, but it's flavor is mild. Since my kitchen is about 64 degrees F these days, I will try much longer fermentation. Many thanks from an old Army Sgt!
@@AlwaysPeacefulMaDeuce Yep, my reading supports your statement. I read a scientific paper on lactic acid production in sourdough, which documents that the lactobacillus (which produces “tang”) has two different biochemical paths that it can follow during fermentation. The path that provides the most acetic acid (or “tang”) requires flour with a higher “ash” (i.e. mineral) content than typical white flour. In the absence of the “ash”, the lacto bacilli still ferment, but they produce by-products other than acetic acid. This holds true even when other conditions for lactobacillus growth are optimized. In other words, you can boost lactobacillus activity WITHOUT boosting acetic acid production if the required “ash” is not present. Again, according to my reading, whole grain flours (like rye) have a much higher “ash” content than highly-processed white flours because the “ash” (read minerals) resides in the bran layer of the grain kernel.
Stiffness and kept in the coolroom. I used to use left over from my sd mix(salted) and i used to keep it in the fridge. The flavour was quite acetic, compared to a liquid levain .
It's generally the stiffer the the sweeter if kept in optimal condition. Look up Desem bread or pasta madre. I keep a stiff starter for sweeter bread. But!!! If you have to go over time loads due to less water then you'll end up with more sour. So stiff start kept at decent temp will give sweetest/malty bread. For my micro bakery bread I'm always try to hit min sourness. I use around 30g of starter per 1kg of dough and it's bulked in 4 hours
After watching Sune's experiment on using a well fed vs starved starter, I've always just stopped caring about having it well fed. It takes a bit longer, but if you don't count the waiting on getting your starter going, it's not much difference. Also, the flavor is awesome I think.
Sune, you might find an article in Scientific American interesting, with regards to how one might control the kind of flavor one gets from their sourdough starter. According to the science they cited (preliminary results... the paper was still under peer review when this article came out), the key to controlling the flavor involves the microbiology of the starter combined with the proportion of water, and the temperature. You can control the microbiology of the start to some extent by the frequency at which you feed the starter. Daily feedings cause Kazachstania humilis and lactobacillus sanfanciscensis cultures to win over the other that might otherwise dominate the culture (but this isn't necessarily great, as lactobacillis doesn't generate as much flavor, as it has fewer metabolic pathways for it use to generate much flavor). Kazachstania humilis can't use the sugar maltose, which makes it more available to lactic acid generating bacteria (so more of a yogurty flavor). If you prefer species that work with acetic acid for a more vinegary note, you can aim for a different species profile. All-in-all, I thought it was an interesting read. Perhaps you can make something more of it, having more experience in these matters than I: www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-of-sourdough-how-microbes-enabled-a-pandemic-pastime/
I find that when I extend the fermentation time the longest, that is when I get the most pronounced sour taste. I leave my bulk fermentation on the counter just long enough to get it going, about 30 minutes, and then I put it in the fridge over night. Then I shape, put it back in the fridge for 12 hours, then I bake.
Hello. I experimented with more sour bread in the summer, when high temperature and humidity made my normal sourdough go moldy in 4-5 days to get some more shelflife out of it. I got good results with spiking my dough with old starter. I would feed my base-culture on Wednesday morning or tuesday evening, let it develop in room temp till friday and they make the actual starter for the bread from this. When I make the main.dough later friday, I would instead of 200g starter i normaly use go 100g starter and another 100g from the base-culture which is super overfermented and sour at that time and just infuses the bread like a flavour bomb. You can change the ratio between starters to adjust to taste, maybe even use variations of the temperature you keep the base culture to mod it, but it was hot and I didn't go too deep into the idea. Maybe you see some ideas to go from here on. Best wishes
My tangiest sourdough breads are the result of prolonged second risings in the refrigerator. The loaves that stay in the refrigerator for two, three, or four days are more acidic than the loaves that stay in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours. There may be a limit to how long one can wait before baking. After about three days in the refrigerator, oven spring is less. So the loaves are a little flatter. I'm not really sure what's going on chemically, but I'm guessing that the acids that are generated during extended cool risings destroy or weaken the strands of gluten. (My typical sourdough bread is similar to Sune's: 83% - 86% hydration, 20% inoculation, 2% salt, and ever-changing blends of unbleached white and whole wheat bread flours -- usually 50%/50%, but sometimes 10% whole wheat, and sometimes 100%. The greater proportion of whole wheat I use, the higher the hydration I chose. My 100% hydration starter is made only with whole wheat bread flour. I feed the starter 1:5:5 (starter:flour:water) eight or ten hours before I incorporate it into the dough. The starter triples, or nearly triples in volume after the feeding.)
Hi Sune. Could you do an experiment with freezing as a conservation method if you bake loafs in bulk? Maybe in this arrangement: 1. A fully baked loaf which is frozen. 2. A half baked loaf which is frozen and then finished in the oven. 3. A dough that is frozen when the dough is ready to be baked, and then baked in the normal way.
Add Diastatic Malt Powder 0.37% to 0.4% of total flour weight 11% very active starter with 25% of flour as rye. Slow fermentation at room temp 75F with 3 stretch and folds starting with 2 hour fermentations between STF ending with stretch and fold before pre shape rest 30-60 min before final shape; rest 45 min before overnight cold fermentation at 42F 18-24 hours bake 450F 20min covered or with steam, then 25-28 min uncovered
One thing you could try to get a more tangy bread is increasing the water temperature. With a dough that has a temperature of 26/28 degrees C, you will get something that will be more sour than if your dough is at 23/24C. Also, there is a process of making bread called Respectus Panis which uses very low inoculation, low salt as well as no kneading. Here's an example of this process (english subtitles can be enabled) ruclips.net/video/9N-mSdh9QVw/видео.html
Inoculation percentage isn’t a valuable independent variable for sourness unless the starter itself is sour or not sour. The amount of starter is mainly going to have an impact on time. Now.. Given that time impacts sourness, inoculation percentage has an indirect impact on sourness, but again, far less impact than the most important factors to control, which are time and temperature than inoculation percentage.
I suspect this is the way to go, its the time of the total fermentation of the bread. If you put less starter it takes longer to ferment, if you use a more sour starter it again will take longer to ferment the bread since it has less activity, so it will make the bread sourer not because it is sour, since it is a small amount in the total recipe, but because it takes longer for the bread to prove. I made two months ago a very tasty sour bread: 12 hours bulk fermentation at 20º plus another 12 at the same temperature after shaping, it was delicious although it did not raise as much as normal, little oven spring, l since it was over fermented but is was spongy enough
I agree with others here. I would like to see the sourdough starter 20% but unfed and at peak. This is an interesting series I would like my bread more sour.
Same for me too! I feel measuring to the nearest gram on ingredients gets negated if you don’t actually use all the ingredients measured. Water in the recipe is a great way to be sure you don’t leave any carefully measured ‘soldiers’ behind.
I think a different proofing temperature will make a bigger difference. Try looking up the idle temperature for Lactobacillus Fermentum. Love your videos 👍
@foodgeek 5% inoculation is capable of producing very tangy bread. The reason you didn't get much tang is your temperature. At proofer temperatures (in the 80s F) you're favoring yeast activity over lactobacillus. Therefore your bread finishes its fermentation (as measured by volume) long before acids can build up. I think your focus on lactic acid over acetic acid is a little misguided. While lactic acid certainly provides tang (as it does in yogurt), acetic acid is vinegar, and anyone who tastes vinegar would describe it as sour or tangy. Both acids will be present in the finished loaf, and both will contribute to a sour or tangy flavor, so there's no reason to favor a higher temperature in pursuit of more lactic acid (this actually backfires for the aforementioned reason). By the way, I've heard using a stiffer starter or a starter after it's fallen helps.
First off, I LOVE your channel and it has helped me take my SD to the next level, thank you so much!! I have been trying to get my bread to be more sour as well and have not been successful...until today! I was in the fridge digging around for some sour cream and I came upon a starter that I had put in there quite awhile ago...it had a 1/4" layer of "hooch" on top of it, but no mold. Just as I was about ready to stir it back into the starter and feed it, I had an epiphany... what if I poured this stuff into my current starter and see what happens? Well, I immediately setup to make a boule and when it was time to add starter, I took about 150g of starter and added about a tablespoon of hooch to it. I stirred it real good and then took out 106g of starter for my boule and proceeded to bake the bread. After cooling, I cut a nice thick piece and the flavor was amazing and very sour!! This is how I like sourdough and for the f irst time, I achieved it. Have you tried this? Now, I am trying to figure out how to make hooch faster and then do some more testing. I'm guessing all hooches are pretty much the same, so the main variable to change would be amount of hooch for each test boule. My presumption would be that if you use have the hooch, the sourness will adjust down accordingly. Anyway, let me know what you think. One thing to note, it seemed like my dough raised much faster and my loaf came out slightly less round, but it still had a pretty open crumb. It is very possible over proofed my dough slightly. Thanks again for the hard work you put into making this channel so great!
I just use a sourdough that has been fed and then refrigerated - a few days after feeding. I let it come up to room temp prior to use. It will rises the bread but is much more sour.
I believe that will lead to over- or under-proofed bread. The time spent during bulk fermentation is based on the natural expansion of the dough, not on a predetermined schedule (that's why Sune felt he overproofed the 5% inoculant). A very long fermentation time will be flat, overproofed bread--but it will certainly have a lot of tang! The question is: how do we get a very tangy bread with a high rise and open crumb?
@@Theseventhknight I think Sune is controlling for that during bulk ferment in his proofing boxes; he just forgot to check on the 5%. The idea with long ferment on the *inoculent* is to build up lactic acid that the bread inherits. This is a good page that discusses the controlling factors, the most important of which seems to be whole grain: www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10375/lactic-acid-fermentation-sourdough
Referring to Sune's observation at the end of his video about the fermentation time of the 5% inoculum, it wouldn't take twice as long as 10%. Instead, the difference would be the culture's doubling time. This is because, at the start, the 5% dough contains half as many microorganisms as the 10% dough. Let's say the population of microorganisms doubles every 1 hour, then just 1 hour of extra growth will allow the 5% to catch up with the 10%. In other words, if the 10% completes bulk fermentation in 4 hours, the 5% will do so in 5 hours.
Great video as always, Sune. Although you made this video a year ago, I am just now seeing it for the first time. Of particular interest to me is the bread knife you were using in this video. Could you please provide the brand and the model name/number of that bread knife? Thank you.
Rhinehart, Baker's Apprentice, advises low refresh rates will be more sour. That is a refresh rate for 1-1-1 (starter, water, flour) rather than 1-2-2.
Baking steels retain more heat and give it off more easily than baking stones. Also, they will never break. In a professional baker's oven the tiles are better, but for a home baker steel is the way to go :)
I’ve found that my over fermented loaves are tangier. I’m thinking of keeping my discard for a feeding or two and adding it in with my mature starter for my next bake. That way I keep the spring and enhance the flavor.
Makes sense I suppose, but using very mature discard to make crackers produced the tangiest thing ever, tasted like cheese crackers but had no cheese added. Adding discard to a load would likely give similar results, but I guess you can’t use too much since there’s basically no gluten left in old discard
@@dlf_uk Right, there must a point of diminishing returns where the loaf becomes... what... some form of over-hydrated/over-fermented...? That might make an interesting experiment.
I follow King Arthur Baking Extra Tangy Sourdough recipe, except at stage #6, I keep it in the fridge for 24-48 hours, then bake right out of the refrigerator. 48 hrs will give a super tang! It’s a bit over proofed but it can be baked in a loaf pan for more rose. I may try doing a shorter bulk ferment and see how that impacts the long proof in the fridge.
Love the channel. I worked for the Danish ingredient company DANISCO for 25 years in the bakery group but I have been able to learn quite a bit from you. As for more tang I sometimes use more starter than you do, and sometimes chest with citric acid and or DATEM.
3 года назад+1
I get my tang from sticking to roughly 20%, but then I do a slow ferment at about 4°C for up to 72h in my fridge. I use active malt powder (light for wheat breads, dark for rye) at ~20g per kg to ensure the yeast doesn't die. Long ferments mean incredible flavor development.
Hello Sune. Enjoy your experiments - I have learned a lot from watching them. Two observations I have for sour flavor. Sometimes I need to make the bread a little faster than letting it sit in the refrigerator for a couple days - basically bulk rise overnight, shape in the morning, cool for a couple hours, then bake - good tasting bread fresh out of the oven, gets the tang a day or two later. If I can put the dough in the refrigerator for a couple days after shaping, the sour flavor sets in well and is present fresh out of the oven.
Foodgrade lactic acid is available in brewshops. It is used to create the optimum pH for enzymatic activity, esp. amylase. Maybe interesting to use as part of your experiments in this series. There is also foodgrade phosphoric acid, but it adds only acidity, no taste.
Also the feeding ratio seems to have an influence. The less sourdough you use at the beginning (say 1:5:5 ratio), the less there will be bacteria growth, compared to a 1:1:1 ratio regeneration.
Thank you SO MUCH for pursuing this line of inquiry! I’m a San Francisco native and have been in love with tangy sourdough bread for more than 50 years. My efforts to produce it “at home” have made great loaves (especially since I found your RUclips channel); but, they unfortunately lack most of the sour tang I crave. I like really “in-your-face-sour” sourdough. The pandemic has given me a chance to improve, and I’ve had some success tinkering with the same variables you’re looking at. I am VERY EXCITED to have the Foodgeek on the job! I sense success (and much tangy bread) on the horizon. Good luck, and I’ll be watching!
I’m pretty sure the “secret” is in a longer, cooler fermentation which favors the bacteria producing lactic acid. The trick is figuring out time, temp, and when. I’ve purchased a proofer to have more control over temp, but have gone back to work so my “experiment time” is limited. Check in again. I’ll keep trying.
With the usual 1:5:5 starter and your standard Artisan recipe I have never been able to significantly change the sour taste. On the other hand the sourdough discard, left in the fridge for a week, can make plenty sour pancakes. The discard is, of course, flat, and spent, useless for rising bread, but sour.
I am using my discard and then feeding it to create the lavain (1:1:1 ratio). Let it double/triple in size to it's peak (prior to falling) and use that to inoculate. The float test seems perfect. Seems to work fine and the flavor is just fine. I've also tried 2x feeding of the starter discard and the same results with a slightly tighter crumb. All this is with only strong white flour. No rye or whole meal.
Sune, thank you for such great work. I find your videos valuable because of the scientific approach that you take. There are so many variables when it comes to making sourdough bread that if you change more than one at a time it is nearly impossible to determine what happened. I suggest an experiment with varying the hydration levels in your levain. Something drastic like 33%, 100% as the control, and 300% might be interesting. Then perhaps a second experiment of varying the fermentation temperatures like 20˚, 30˚ and 40˚ or something like that.
You are one of my favorite sourdough scientists. Thank you so much for sharing your experiment results! Regarding conditions that favor production of acetic acid (sourness) over lactic acid (tangyness), you covered parbaking in a separate video. In addition to time, inoculation, flour choice, and temperature, I’ve also read that sourness is increased when fermenting using a “hungry” starter rather than a well-fed one (presumably because the hungry starter both contains acidic hooch and increases fermentation time). I’m curious whether you agree with that advice?
This has certainly been my experience. I've tried adding acedic acid, but it really retarded the rise. I think I added to much. And it didn't improve the flavor. Mind you, I'm doing this for others who have requested "sour" bread. Myself, I like it just like I make it... not sour!
Im not sure what is going on with my loaves. I am having a heck of a time getting consistent bulk fermentation. My starter is fed and grows more than double in 3-5 hours. I make the dough and follow all the steps, keep the temp in the needed range, but bulk fermentation is NEVER done in 1 hour... hell, one loaf may take 8 hours and the other loaf takes 12 hours... with same recipe and same starter.
When I'm letting the bread proof, how do I know when it's done and not over-proofed? Do I just wait until it stops rising and starts to deflate? Or do I let it rise and then completely deflate?
If you let it grow until it deflates, there's no rise left in it for the bake and you get a flat bread. I try to aim for a growth (after the starter is added) of 25-50%, that seems to be the sweet spot :)
@@Foodgeek thank you for your reply! Should I aim for baking the dough once it doubles in size? That is what we've been doing but I want to proof it for longer to make it more sour. Our bread used to be really sour but it's been very mildly sour for the past several months. I don't know if it's the temps in the house or what. I've been following you lately and I want to try proofing it for a longer period of time but the coldest place in our house is the basement and during summer it's only down to maybe 70 or 75 in there.
I really think you need a sour levain to get where you're trying to go. Maybe you can amp it up with innoculation or some other mean/s but building a good strong and sour culture is going to be key. How you do that is up to you though, Maestro. Great experiment!
I think he was specifically trying to amp up the lactic acids in this case, so it wasn't going to be truly "sour", but rather "tangy" as he calls it. However, I've gotten really sour bread just by changing my starter flour. I usually feed it with plain white flour, but switching to feeding it with whole grain flour makes my bread sour, after just the one feeding of whole grain. The type(s) of flour in the final dough makes no difference, only the starter flour does. My wife doesn't like any tangy or sour flavor in the bread at all, so I use my normal starter, add a few percents of sugar in the dough, and get no sour at all.
Interesting. It seems that none of the variables in this experiment or your other experiments makes any difference in taste or spring. Bread is just going to do what bread wants to do. 🥴🤔😋
Hello, Thanks for the great video ! The breads look all amazing. Do you bake it straight from the fridge ? Or you let it sit for a while to get to room temperature?
Hi... back in April you tested the effect water temperature has starter rise time. I believe the temperature of the water for the starter and water for the bread could also affect the sour flavor I have seen a German sourdough video in which they explain warm water supports the "milk acids" and makes a softer dough, while cold water promotes more "vinegar acids" and give a more sour and firm dough.
@@N9524Q I know the idea is to let it ferment 24 hours. The most I have gone is 16 and it was over fermented. I do it around 12 hours - the temperature in my kitchen is between 20 and 22 degrees. I am no expert, I have only been making sourdough bread for few weeks, but 12 hours fermentation 1% inoculation has given me the best results. It is not as good looking bread the foodgeek's, but it makes delicious toast.
Once (a few weeks ago LOL ) I had a dough in the fridge for 5 days, the gluten was dead eaten by the bacteria but somehow I did got it in the dutch oven. It was flat like a pizza. No open cumb, very tough/hard compared to usual but it tasted sour. It was eatable or was fine actually and... had a sour taste ;) Wouldn't do that again though. Can't imagine I only have the dutch oven for just about 5-6 weeks... couldn't live without now. ;)
EXPERIMENT TIME: Same starter, same dosage, but take samples of the starter each day for X days after its last feeding. The hypothesis would be the more starved the starter, the more sour the bread will be. I love your empirical approach to baking!
sune, you read my mind!! i've been playing around with this same thing, but so far no real luck. looking forward to what you do. i've noticed that the flavor gets a little tangier a day or more after baking, have you saved your test loaves to taste test them again the next day? so far i've been experimenting to boost acetic acid, but yogurt (or kefir) mixed with water as the hydration would probably work to boost lactic acid production. i've done a batch with biga/levain fermenting for 12 hours at room temperature, but this process really changes the proofing time (mine overproved in the fridge overnight), and the flavor change really wasn't as significant as i thought it would be. i've also changed the feeding cycle on my starter, letting it go longer between feeds to promote more LAB production and yeasts that like that environment, but that really didn't make a noticeable difference either (maybe my starter is just too young still). since then i've been adding cider vinegar and playing with that.
In Germany a quite traditional method to give really nice taste to bread is a three-step cultivation of a rye sourdough starter for the bread... If you use this additionally to your 10% inoculation bread, you could hit it on point. Example: for the first step use 64 g rye flour, 96 g water and 32 g starter and ferment at 26°C for 5-6 hours. Second step use complete first step, 800 g rye flour and 480 g water and let ferment at 24 °C for 20 hours. Last step use all your second step, 2160 g rye flour and 2160 g water. Let ferment at 30 °C for 3 hours... This is scaled for bakery production but I think you're quite good with maths 😉 this method gives you really good balanced lactic acid, acidic acid and yeast. I just described one simple way here, there is a whole science behind this. Try it,I would be happy to watch.
Microbiologist here. Lower pH = tangy taste. Also, lower pH reduces the gas from yeast fermentation (mostly CO2). Higher fermentation from yeast give more etoh, lowers the growth of lactobacillus microbes (l. plantarum , etc.), also slightly higher fermentation temp favors lactobacillus,because there is less oxygen present in the dough. So I would say slightly higher temperature, lower enoculum, and check pH with papers strip to make sure you keep it on a range 3.5-4.1.
Since testing inoculation % didn't seem to have a dramatic impact - might the temp during bulk fermentation? I live in SF, and bulk ferment on my kitchen countertop where it's 62-65f most of the time. I then shape, reshape and final in the refrigerator overnight to bake in the AM. My bread is sour. I've also read that it might matter where the starter is in it's maturity when added to the bread mixture - we're supposed to add when it's mature - e.g. float test. But what if it's more tired and hungry? Also - might how it's raised matter? e.g. Did it grow up in a cold environment (stored in the fridge - might this develop more sour flavor) or in a more neutral environment (always on the countertop - might this develop more lactic acid tang)?
Are you trying to develop more tang, or more sour, or both? I'm thinking the tang is a more cheesy taste, and the sour a more sharp acetic acid. I wonder if trying a thinner starter would lend itself to a more tangy note, in contrast, a thicker starter might lend itself to a more sour note? Also, I wonder what changes a 100% whole meal starter, or a 100% rye starter, might achieve? You are playing with both a warm environment, within your proofer, and then a cold environment within the fridge, so, maybe you are increasing both the tang and the sour in this way. I think, 1%, or 2%, inoculation is a good idea! Perhaps, with a very ripe starter. Thanks for trying this Sune! Very interesting experiment!
Heard you let the starter starve, form hooch, and feed it a day or two before use. How much of the sour flavor is a function of which type of lactobacilli (e.g. Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis) versus how much is due to the equilibrium or disequilibrium of the bacteria and yeast? Or, activity (or dormancy) of one or the other? It would seem the system seeks to maintain equilibrium at a particular pH and you are trying to achieve and bake at the moment or range of maximum disequilibrium/maximum acidity. What buffers the lactic and acetic acids of the bacteria/Lactobacillus? Continued thanks!
I accidentally ended up with a real nice sour but not over powering bread. How, I forgot to feed my starter for 2 days, it smelt sour. I fed it on the 3rd day. The result was amazing, I will be doing it again soon.
I’m still a little confused with inoculation percentages. Most online sources consider inoculation % as the proportion of pre-fermented flour (normally from starter) to the total flour (starter + bulk of flour for dough). However, some consider it as the proportion of starter to total flour. My problem with the latter is that not all starters are 100% (or a standardised) hydration. So a wetter starter will give the dough mixture less flour and more water in the final product, whereas a stiffer starter (less than 100% hydration starter) will form a potentially drier dough if only ever using the latter method for calculating. Anyone able to explain slowly and clearly which, if either, is correct?!
How are you working with 20% rye and it is not insanely sticky? Is it quality or rye? Type? Watched a little further. I guess it is sticky; you are just better than me at handling. :-D
I heard that proofing cold in the fridge 12 hours then shaping and retardding for 24-48 helps. But I didn’t get a sour taste. I only did 24 hours though. I actually heard the opposite, higher inoculation will make it more sour, say 30-40% 🤷🏻♀️
Use a riper preferment. It will have more population of lactobacilli vs yeast. It will last longer to double, that in fact is what determines when you go to the shaping stage. When you make panettone, you use a preferment that is not ripe at all, with lots of yeasts vs bacilli. It is not sour at all, and it doubles at lot quicker, like if you where using dry yeast. On the other hand, your 5% dough maybe is a little overproofed, but it is also a little degraded by the enzimes because of the high proofing temperature. Or at least I think so, as far as I know.
It would be interesting to see what you would get with 20%, 5% (don't let it over-proof) and 1% or 0.5%. The 20%, 10%, 5% might have been too close to produce a huge variation.
BTW I'm using a 24h feed starter kept at 20°C At first I've put the dough in the fridge after stretching and folding + one or two hours out, for at least 12 more likle 18 to 24 hours in the fridge. For the last few times I just kept the dough out in the kitchen for 12-13 hours, so in the evening I mixed it together and after stretch and folding no fridge. The results are good to me. No different between both ways. I stil have not that much of an oven spring though. More like the 5% one in the vid, without tangyness ;)
Love your work. I've read letting you're starter "age" before feeding increases acidity, increase the ratio of starter to feeding percentage on the day before mixing will increase acidity more than using a lower percent starter inoculation ratio. i.e. let your starter go past peak on Thursday, feed at 2 5 5 ratio on Fri. (should make a sour starter) mix Sat., ferment as needed, bake Sun. . The increased acid may interfere with gluten development. This is untested by myself( I'm no where near consistent enough to test it)wish I could afford to support you for this test, we like sour bread, but it seems to be hit or miss. Perhaps the beauty of sour dough is you get what you get , it's all good.
Was that a wheat starter? In my experience rye starters gives more tart breads. I often bakes finnish ryebread cos i am half finnish. I use maybe 20%? I dont ferment over night as i do with levain type sour doughs, and those rye breads gets very tangy. I prefer rye starters for all breads including wheat sour dough breads
Sourest bread I made was with very underfed and acidic starter, about 20 percent ratio to dry flour weight, and later after autolyse, I added yeast plus salt. The added yeast is necessary because the underfed starter is just bacterial culture at that point with not enough yeast colony. At least that’s what I assume.
Hi Sune, I like to follow your experiments. I just made 2 loaves of sourdough bread from a single mix which I divided. The first I put in my banneton and the second in a glass bowl with parchment paper lining. I also left the lid of my Dutch oven out of the oven after removing it while baking the first loaf. The first loaf was fine, the second looked bad when I removed the lid after 20 minutes and there was very little oven spring. Any idea as to the most likely cause of this failure?
Great video. The three loaves fermented at the same temperature, and to nearly the same degree (the 5% appears to have fermented to a slightly higher degree than the other two). I would expect the acid products of the microbial cultures to be very similar in all three samples. I guess the logic for expecting more products from a smaller inoculum is that it takes more time to reach the same degree of fermentation. But the amount of acid produced as the 5% ferments to 20% is much smaller than the amount of acid produced afterwards, because the microbes are growing as they ferment. In other words, the effects of exponential growth are much stronger at the end. I think that if you want to shift the balance between lactic and acetic acid, the best variable to control is the temperature, as you mention at the beginning. To increase the total amount of acid, I think you have to ferment to a greater degree, which would mean overproofing. This might explain why the 5% sample was slightly more sour than the other two samples, since that dough fermented a bit beyond the other two. I would love to be proven wrong on this, so I hope you will have more experiment time!
The more sour breads I got were those with a long cold fermentation (around 72 hs minimum) and high wholemeal content. I would make a cold bulk fermentation of 24 hs and then 36 or 48 final proof. However, it has a been a while since I last did something like this because of the amount of time it takes.
How about unfed ice cold starter straight from the fridge? The yeast is dormant, the lactobacillus may get a head start! I think using an active fed starter leads to similar results since the various species are in balance.
I just made my first loaf of sourdough after making a homemade starter. The bread turned out beautiful and delicious but it didn’t taste like sourdough!!
i have tasted more sourness when i leave in that brown liquid of the starter, i imagine thats the acids, and I keep it 100% hydration and it gets "soury" with over fermentation and no oven spring danger
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This channel is honestly the best sourdough baking resource on the internet.
You cover SO many more real ingredients and techniques people want to experiment with and compare end results, something even the best books out there don’t do (at least that I’ve found).
I really love this channel and The Bread Code. Both have helped me achieve aaaaalmost what I'm looking for. My bread still lacks the sour/tangy quality though and I cannot for the life of me figure out why
My understanding from the old Usenet days on rec.food.sourdough is that the ash content of the flours used has the largest effect on total titratable acid because the ash acts as a buffer and allows the lactobacilli to produce more acids before the pH reaches a level at which their activity would be inhibited. A low ash dough and a high ash dough might have the same pH, but the high ash dough will have higher titratable acid. This is why, for example, whole grain sourdough breads have more sour flavor. I have found this to be the case when comparing breads made from regular supermarket bread flour and more “artisanal” bread flours such as Type 85 flour, a high ash flour that isn’t exactly white flour but is a far cry from whole grain.
Oh... and a primary reason why very sour sourdough breads often are not very lofty is that acid degrades the fractions of gluten proteins most responsible for loaf volume (see, e.g., Preston et al. “Effects of Acid-Soluble and Acid-Insoluble Gluten Proteins on the Rheological and Baking Properties of Wheat Flours.” Journal of Cereal Chemistry 57:314 (1980)).
Thank you for this explanation. I have long searched for an explanation on this. I have noticed that when I used a flour with high ash content the bread becomes much more sour compared to when I use normal high gluten white flour.
One time, I did a 1% inoculation and let it bulk ferment at room temperature overnight and then put it in the fridge for 24 hours after shaping.
As it was baking, you could smell the tanginess. It tasted great, too!
I've found if I abuse my starter and not babysit I get more sour in it. This means not feeding it twice a day, not caring it the temp is perfect or warm enough etc and let it sit in the refer a while with out caring for it. I hope this makes sense. I'm actually microbiologist and have played with all types of fermentations. I think once the oxygen has been spent and goes anaerobic ( as long as you don't stir it) it has made food for and then lets the lactobacilllis do it's thing;)
I abuse my starter all the time. Leave it unfed for a week on the counter. It gets super sour, but when I bake with it, even unfed, the resulting bread is a mild sourness :) I've also tried over fermenting the dough (less oven spring, but not gluten breakdown) and it doesn't change the taste a lot :)
Thank you! I was waiting for this!
As an experiment please use the starter on different stages, when it is doubled, tripled , at peak and when it is fallen. That would be interesting on taste (and also the effect on the oven spring)
You could do your own experiments.... it works.
I just let my started go past peak by 24 hours and fall back to original volume. Very sharp on smell and very sour. Now if you used this for leaven for the dough it would certainly ferment in the fresh dough and I would expect it to bring in that sour flavor. But it is such a small percentage of the total dough, a predominant sour flavor might have to happen by changing other fermentation variables. Anyway, I’d like to see this experiment using rising, peak, and fully fallen starter.
Another trick for very sour bread is using a large amount of discarded starter. Sourest bread I ever made was about 50% discard. The discard gets extremely sour sitting in the refrigerator.
I've also gotten very sour bread when I put it, underproofed, in the refrigerator and let it slow proof in there for a few days.
what do you mean by the discarded starter, the one you keep in the fridge to make another?
@@andrenio depends on the method you use for feeding your starter. If you feed it every day, but don't bake every day, you need to remove most of the mature starter before feeding it fresh flour and water. That mature starter you remove before feeding is called discard, and you can save it in the refrigerator and there are many ways to use it in place of flour (it just has weak gluten because it's fully fermented already, and you need to account for the water in it).
@@lifeteen2 This actually a great idea. I'm going to experiment with it on my next loaf.
Oooh that's makes sense! Going to try this.
I always make 2 sourdough loaves at a time. I sometimes bake one loaf the same day (day 1) but usually the dough goes into fridge and I bake one the next day (day 2). The second loaf gets baked on day 3 or day 4 depending on whether I need a fresh loaf.
The sourness of the bread increases the more the bread is left in the fridge. There’s a huge difference for me between loaves made in exactly the same way but rested in the fridge for different lengths of time before baking.
I recall a bakery that did that decades ago will try that myself, how was the oven spring in the later loaves?
The spring does drop off slightly, still good but not quite as good.
Same results here.
So is that essentially letting one loaf ‘over proof’ in the fridge? Might be the simplest method, I will try it
How about the crust? thicker, thinner? harder softer on the days old loaf?
I like my sourdough bread not so tangy as i like to taste the favors of my freshly milled grains, but my son loves his sourdough very sour. So to achieve this i cheat a bit. I make my dough with less of a fresh, young, inoculation, perhaps 10% rather than 15-20% but then I add some 3-4 day old refrigerated sourdough discard. Best of both worlds so to say - new starter for strength, old for flavor. I then procede as normal.
I’m the same way. Can’t beat the flavor of fresh milled berries
Try going up to 30%. You'll get a really sour bread. But there is another fact I learn a few months ago. The stiffer (less hydrated) starter creates more acetic acid. Which makes bread more sour. While liquid (100% hydrated) starter creates lactic acid. Which adds that yogurty taste.
The health of your starter definitely plays into it. When I'm feeding my starter perfectly to a schedule, it's difficult to get even a remotely sour bread, but if I get lazy and start skipping days the starter itself starts to smell significantly more sour. If I use the starter when it's like that (for even more effect, use it slightly past its peak) I get a more sour bread.
Yesterday I went through my sourdough making process as usual, planned to have it in the fridge at about ten for its rest overnight but then I forgot! Work up at around 2:30 am and remembered. Shoved it in the fridge in its proofing container (unshaped etc) and took it out this morning, shaped briefly then in to bake. The result, a slightly smaller but incredibly well fermented loaf with a significantly more sour taste than usual. Turns out that 15% starter fermenting for 10 hours isn't too bad 🤷🏼♀️
Agreed, the more Ive stopped rigidly following popular recipes and letting my bread ferment at room temp for way longer, the better taste and texture I’m getting in the bread. In usually end up mixing the dough at around 14:00, and between stretch&folds + bulk it spends about 9-10 hours at room temp (or in 30 degree oven if the weather is cold), then I put it in the fridge usually just before midnight, and bake at lunchtime the next day.
Wow, this information is so very helpful. Just started baking 18 months ago, (at the ripe age of 70!) . I like my sourdough, but it's flavor is mild. Since my kitchen is about 64 degrees F these days, I will try much longer fermentation. Many thanks from an old Army Sgt!
Stiffness of the starter is said to influence tanginess of the bread, you might want to try this parameter.
Also particular flours produce more acetic acid opposes to lactic acid. Flours like rye.
@@AlwaysPeacefulMaDeuce
Yep, my reading supports your statement.
I read a scientific paper on lactic acid production in sourdough, which documents that the lactobacillus (which produces “tang”) has two different biochemical paths that it can follow during fermentation. The path that provides the most acetic acid (or “tang”) requires flour with a higher “ash” (i.e. mineral) content than typical white flour. In the absence of the “ash”, the lacto bacilli still ferment, but they produce by-products other than acetic acid. This holds true even when other conditions for lactobacillus growth are optimized.
In other words, you can boost lactobacillus activity WITHOUT boosting acetic acid production if the required “ash” is not present. Again, according to my reading, whole grain flours (like rye) have a much higher “ash” content than highly-processed white flours because the “ash” (read minerals) resides in the bran layer of the grain kernel.
Stiffness and kept in the coolroom.
I used to use left over from my sd mix(salted) and i used to keep it in the fridge. The flavour was quite acetic, compared to a liquid levain .
It's generally the stiffer the the sweeter if kept in optimal condition. Look up Desem bread or pasta madre. I keep a stiff starter for sweeter bread. But!!! If you have to go over time loads due to less water then you'll end up with more sour. So stiff start kept at decent temp will give sweetest/malty bread. For my micro bakery bread I'm always try to hit min sourness. I use around 30g of starter per 1kg of dough and it's bulked in 4 hours
Mike Zimmermann very intersting, could you provide me a link to the paper you mentioned?
5% at a lower temperature (room) rather than the proofer might have made it tangier.
After watching Sune's experiment on using a well fed vs starved starter, I've always just stopped caring about having it well fed. It takes a bit longer, but if you don't count the waiting on getting your starter going, it's not much difference. Also, the flavor is awesome I think.
Sune, you might find an article in Scientific American interesting, with regards to how one might control the kind of flavor one gets from their sourdough starter.
According to the science they cited (preliminary results... the paper was still under peer review when this article came out), the key to controlling the flavor involves the microbiology of the starter combined with the proportion of water, and the temperature. You can control the microbiology of the start to some extent by the frequency at which you feed the starter. Daily feedings cause Kazachstania humilis and lactobacillus sanfanciscensis cultures to win over the other that might otherwise dominate the culture (but this isn't necessarily great, as lactobacillis doesn't generate as much flavor, as it has fewer metabolic pathways for it use to generate much flavor). Kazachstania humilis can't use the sugar maltose, which makes it more available to lactic acid generating bacteria (so more of a yogurty flavor).
If you prefer species that work with acetic acid for a more vinegary note, you can aim for a different species profile.
All-in-all, I thought it was an interesting read. Perhaps you can make something more of it, having more experience in these matters than I:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-of-sourdough-how-microbes-enabled-a-pandemic-pastime/
Great link, food for thought...
I find that when I extend the fermentation time the longest, that is when I get the most pronounced sour taste. I leave my bulk fermentation on the counter just long enough to get it going, about 30 minutes, and then I put it in the fridge over night. Then I shape, put it back in the fridge for 12 hours, then I bake.
Hello. I experimented with more sour bread in the summer, when high temperature and humidity made my normal sourdough go moldy in 4-5 days to get some more shelflife out of it. I got good results with spiking my dough with old starter. I would feed my base-culture on Wednesday morning or tuesday evening, let it develop in room temp till friday and they make the actual starter for the bread from this. When I make the main.dough later friday, I would instead of 200g starter i normaly use go 100g starter and another 100g from the base-culture which is super overfermented and sour at that time and just infuses the bread like a flavour bomb. You can change the ratio between starters to adjust to taste, maybe even use variations of the temperature you keep the base culture to mod it, but it was hot and I didn't go too deep into the idea. Maybe you see some ideas to go from here on. Best wishes
The sourest loaf I have ever made was when I used starter that had completely fallen, instead of at its peak.
This is how I get more sour bread too. Letting my 100% hydration wholegrain rye starter go unfed for 18-24 hours before starting the bread.
@@rachelsfoodventures54 At room temperature?
Did you get a decent rise? Did it take longer?
@@6d347277696e yep
@@---Dana---- sorry, I don’t remember. I do not like a really sour loaf, so I filed it under “don’t do this again” and moved on.
My tangiest sourdough breads are the result of prolonged second risings in the refrigerator. The loaves that stay in the refrigerator for two, three, or four days are more acidic than the loaves that stay in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours.
There may be a limit to how long one can wait before baking. After about three days in the refrigerator, oven spring is less. So the loaves are a little flatter. I'm not really sure what's going on chemically, but I'm guessing that the acids that are generated during extended cool risings destroy or weaken the strands of gluten.
(My typical sourdough bread is similar to Sune's: 83% - 86% hydration, 20% inoculation, 2% salt, and ever-changing blends of unbleached white and whole wheat bread flours -- usually 50%/50%, but sometimes 10% whole wheat, and sometimes 100%. The greater proportion of whole wheat I use, the higher the hydration I chose. My 100% hydration starter is made only with whole wheat bread flour. I feed the starter 1:5:5 (starter:flour:water) eight or ten hours before I incorporate it into the dough. The starter triples, or nearly triples in volume after the feeding.)
Hi Sune. Could you do an experiment with freezing as a conservation method if you bake loafs in bulk? Maybe in this arrangement: 1. A fully baked loaf which is frozen. 2. A half baked loaf which is frozen and then finished in the oven. 3. A dough that is frozen when the dough is ready to be baked, and then baked in the normal way.
Add Diastatic Malt Powder 0.37% to 0.4% of total flour weight 11% very active starter with 25% of flour as rye. Slow fermentation at room temp 75F with 3 stretch and folds starting with 2 hour fermentations between STF ending with stretch and fold before pre shape rest 30-60 min before final shape; rest 45 min before overnight cold fermentation at 42F 18-24 hours bake 450F 20min covered or with steam, then 25-28 min uncovered
I would definitely use a sourdough which has past the peak for getting a more sour bread + use a high % of inoculation.
One thing you could try to get a more tangy bread is increasing the water temperature. With a dough that has a temperature of 26/28 degrees C, you will get something that will be more sour than if your dough is at 23/24C.
Also, there is a process of making bread called Respectus Panis which uses very low inoculation, low salt as well as no kneading. Here's an example of this process (english subtitles can be enabled) ruclips.net/video/9N-mSdh9QVw/видео.html
Inoculation percentage isn’t a valuable independent variable for sourness unless the starter itself is sour or not sour. The amount of starter is mainly going to have an impact on time. Now.. Given that time impacts sourness, inoculation percentage has an indirect impact on sourness, but again, far less impact than the most important factors to control, which are time and temperature than inoculation percentage.
I suspect this is the way to go, its the time of the total fermentation of the bread. If you put less starter it takes longer to ferment, if you use a more sour starter it again will take longer to ferment the bread since it has less activity, so it will make the bread sourer not because it is sour, since it is a small amount in the total recipe, but because it takes longer for the bread to prove.
I made two months ago a very tasty sour bread: 12 hours bulk fermentation at 20º plus another 12 at the same temperature after shaping, it was delicious although it did not raise as much as normal, little oven spring, l since it was over fermented but is was spongy enough
I agree with others here. I would like to see the sourdough starter 20% but unfed and at peak. This is an interesting series I would like my bread more sour.
Can you bake with unfed starter straight out of the fridge? | Foodgeek
ruclips.net/video/yJGMdXLn3fc/видео.html
@@Foodgeek Thank you I will check it out.
Try let dough fermantation process get 36 hour, in my case I obteined success , my bread was more sour and deliciuous.
Let's see 50% and 75% inoculation with adjusted fermentation durations ♥️🍞
Thanks for another fun experiment! I was especially happy to see you rinse the (5%) starter from the bowl. I’m just a bit OCD.
Same!!!! I do that all the time!
Same for me too! I feel measuring to the nearest gram on ingredients gets negated if you don’t actually use all the ingredients measured. Water in the recipe is a great way to be sure you don’t leave any carefully measured ‘soldiers’ behind.
I think a different proofing temperature will make a bigger difference. Try looking up the idle temperature for Lactobacillus Fermentum. Love your videos 👍
@foodgeek 5% inoculation is capable of producing very tangy bread. The reason you didn't get much tang is your temperature. At proofer temperatures (in the 80s F) you're favoring yeast activity over lactobacillus. Therefore your bread finishes its fermentation (as measured by volume) long before acids can build up. I think your focus on lactic acid over acetic acid is a little misguided. While lactic acid certainly provides tang (as it does in yogurt), acetic acid is vinegar, and anyone who tastes vinegar would describe it as sour or tangy. Both acids will be present in the finished loaf, and both will contribute to a sour or tangy flavor, so there's no reason to favor a higher temperature in pursuit of more lactic acid (this actually backfires for the aforementioned reason). By the way, I've heard using a stiffer starter or a starter after it's fallen helps.
Great video again ! And nothing to do with brad, but I love your T-Shirt !!!
First off, I LOVE your channel and it has helped me take my SD to the next level, thank you so much!! I have been trying to get my bread to be more sour as well and have not been successful...until today! I was in the fridge digging around for some sour cream and I came upon a starter that I had put in there quite awhile ago...it had a 1/4" layer of "hooch" on top of it, but no mold. Just as I was about ready to stir it back into the starter and feed it, I had an epiphany... what if I poured this stuff into my current starter and see what happens? Well, I immediately setup to make a boule and when it was time to add starter, I took about 150g of starter and added about a tablespoon of hooch to it. I stirred it real good and then took out 106g of starter for my boule and proceeded to bake the bread. After cooling, I cut a nice thick piece and the flavor was amazing and very sour!! This is how I like sourdough and for the f irst time, I achieved it. Have you tried this? Now, I am trying to figure out how to make hooch faster and then do some more testing. I'm guessing all hooches are pretty much the same, so the main variable to change would be amount of hooch for each test boule. My presumption would be that if you use have the hooch, the sourness will adjust down accordingly. Anyway, let me know what you think. One thing to note, it seemed like my dough raised much faster and my loaf came out slightly less round, but it still had a pretty open crumb. It is very possible over proofed my dough slightly. Thanks again for the hard work you put into making this channel so great!
My sourdough bread is TOO sour. I work hard to make it less sour. Would also recommend series with less sour in mind. Thanks
I don't like sour bread, either. My guess is you could try just doing the opposite!
how do you get it?
@@andrenio Not sure but I think it ferments too long. My starter must not be strong enough, and I do use some whole grain wheat.
I just use a sourdough that has been fed and then refrigerated - a few days after feeding. I let it come up to room temp prior to use. It will rises the bread but is much more sour.
Try this: 20% inoculent on all, and wide range of time on the inoculent fermentation.
I believe that will lead to over- or under-proofed bread. The time spent during bulk fermentation is based on the natural expansion of the dough, not on a predetermined schedule (that's why Sune felt he overproofed the 5% inoculant). A very long fermentation time will be flat, overproofed bread--but it will certainly have a lot of tang! The question is: how do we get a very tangy bread with a high rise and open crumb?
@@Theseventhknight I think Sune is controlling for that during bulk ferment in his proofing boxes; he just forgot to check on the 5%. The idea with long ferment on the *inoculent* is to build up lactic acid that the bread inherits. This is a good page that discusses the controlling factors, the most important of which seems to be whole grain: www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10375/lactic-acid-fermentation-sourdough
Referring to Sune's observation at the end of his video about the fermentation time of the 5% inoculum, it wouldn't take twice as long as 10%. Instead, the difference would be the culture's doubling time. This is because, at the start, the 5% dough contains half as many microorganisms as the 10% dough. Let's say the population of microorganisms doubles every 1 hour, then just 1 hour of extra growth will allow the 5% to catch up with the 10%. In other words, if the 10% completes bulk fermentation in 4 hours, the 5% will do so in 5 hours.
Thanks for your comment. It seems that you are right, at least logically. I may want to do an experiment specifically on this :)
if the mother is too old, yes i might have a more acetic taste, but i found the gluten breaks down.
please, make using "grano durum" wheat. "Alltamura bread" = a historical bread.
I use Durum Atta and love it
Great video as always, Sune. Although you made this video a year ago, I am just now seeing it for the first time. Of particular interest to me is the bread knife you were using in this video. Could you please provide the brand and the model name/number of that bread knife? Thank you.
Thanks :)
It's this knife: fdgk.net/buy-kasumi-bread-knife :)
Rhinehart, Baker's Apprentice, advises low refresh rates will be more sour. That is a refresh rate for 1-1-1 (starter, water, flour) rather than 1-2-2.
Would a pizza stone have the same effect as the baking steel you mention? I'm guessing it's a way to hold the heat at a more constant temp, correct?
Baking steels retain more heat and give it off more easily than baking stones. Also, they will never break. In a professional baker's oven the tiles are better, but for a home baker steel is the way to go :)
I’ve found that my over fermented loaves are tangier. I’m thinking of keeping my discard for a feeding or two and adding it in with my mature starter for my next bake. That way I keep the spring and enhance the flavor.
Makes sense I suppose, but using very mature discard to make crackers produced the tangiest thing ever, tasted like cheese crackers but had no cheese added. Adding discard to a load would likely give similar results, but I guess you can’t use too much since there’s basically no gluten left in old discard
@@dlf_uk Right, there must a point of diminishing returns where the loaf becomes... what... some form of over-hydrated/over-fermented...?
That might make an interesting experiment.
I follow King Arthur Baking Extra Tangy Sourdough recipe, except at stage #6, I keep it in the fridge for 24-48 hours, then bake right out of the refrigerator. 48 hrs will give a super tang! It’s a bit over proofed but it can be baked in a loaf pan for more rose. I may try doing a shorter bulk ferment and see how that impacts the long proof in the fridge.
Love the channel. I worked for the Danish ingredient company DANISCO for 25 years in the bakery group but I have been able to learn quite a bit from you. As for more tang I sometimes use more starter than you do, and sometimes chest with citric acid and or DATEM.
I get my tang from sticking to roughly 20%, but then I do a slow ferment at about 4°C for up to 72h in my fridge.
I use active malt powder (light for wheat breads, dark for rye) at ~20g per kg to ensure the yeast doesn't die.
Long ferments mean incredible flavor development.
Hello Sune. Enjoy your experiments - I have learned a lot from watching them. Two observations I have for sour flavor. Sometimes I need to make the bread a little faster than letting it sit in the refrigerator for a couple days - basically bulk rise overnight, shape in the morning, cool for a couple hours, then bake - good tasting bread fresh out of the oven, gets the tang a day or two later. If I can put the dough in the refrigerator for a couple days after shaping, the sour flavor sets in well and is present fresh out of the oven.
Foodgrade lactic acid is available in brewshops. It is used to create the optimum pH for enzymatic activity, esp. amylase. Maybe interesting to use as part of your experiments in this series. There is also foodgrade phosphoric acid, but it adds only acidity, no taste.
Use a starter that has been standing for longer. Expect it not to have as good oven spring, though
Same results for me, less spring but better taste
Agreed. Long ferments and acidity can, depending on the starter, break down the gluten and thus flatter breads.
Also the feeding ratio seems to have an influence. The less sourdough you use at the beginning (say 1:5:5 ratio), the less there will be bacteria growth, compared to a 1:1:1 ratio regeneration.
Thank you SO MUCH for pursuing this line of inquiry! I’m a San Francisco native and have been in love with tangy sourdough bread for more than 50 years.
My efforts to produce it “at home” have made great loaves (especially since I found your RUclips channel); but, they unfortunately lack most of the sour tang I crave. I like really “in-your-face-sour” sourdough. The pandemic has given me a chance to improve, and I’ve had some success tinkering with the same variables you’re looking at. I am VERY EXCITED to have the Foodgeek on the job! I sense success (and much tangy bread) on the horizon. Good luck, and I’ll be watching!
Have you discovered the secret yet? I miss my California sour tang but haven’t been able to come close.
I’m pretty sure the “secret” is in a longer, cooler fermentation which favors the bacteria producing lactic acid. The trick is figuring out time, temp, and when. I’ve purchased a proofer to have more control over temp, but have gone back to work so my “experiment time” is limited.
Check in again. I’ll keep trying.
With the usual 1:5:5 starter and your standard Artisan recipe I have never been able to significantly change the sour taste. On the other hand the sourdough discard, left in the fridge for a week, can make plenty sour pancakes. The discard is, of course, flat, and spent, useless for rising bread, but sour.
I am using my discard and then feeding it to create the lavain (1:1:1 ratio). Let it double/triple in size to it's peak (prior to falling) and use that to inoculate. The float test seems perfect. Seems to work fine and the flavor is just fine. I've also tried 2x feeding of the starter discard and the same results with a slightly tighter crumb. All this is with only strong white flour. No rye or whole meal.
Sune, thank you for such great work. I find your videos valuable because of the scientific approach that you take. There are so many variables when it comes to making sourdough bread that if you change more than one at a time it is nearly impossible to determine what happened. I suggest an experiment with varying the hydration levels in your levain. Something drastic like 33%, 100% as the control, and 300% might be interesting. Then perhaps a second experiment of varying the fermentation temperatures like 20˚, 30˚ and 40˚ or something like that.
You are one of my favorite sourdough scientists. Thank you so much for sharing your experiment results! Regarding conditions that favor production of acetic acid (sourness) over lactic acid (tangyness), you covered parbaking in a separate video. In addition to time, inoculation, flour choice, and temperature, I’ve also read that sourness is increased when fermenting using a “hungry” starter rather than a well-fed one (presumably because the hungry starter both contains acidic hooch and increases fermentation time). I’m curious whether you agree with that advice?
This has certainly been my experience. I've tried adding acedic acid, but it really retarded the rise. I think I added to much. And it didn't improve the flavor. Mind you, I'm doing this for others who have requested "sour" bread. Myself, I like it just like I make it... not sour!
Im not sure what is going on with my loaves. I am having a heck of a time getting consistent bulk fermentation. My starter is fed and grows more than double in 3-5 hours. I make the dough and follow all the steps, keep the temp in the needed range, but bulk fermentation is NEVER done in 1 hour... hell, one loaf may take 8 hours and the other loaf takes 12 hours... with same recipe and same starter.
When I'm letting the bread proof, how do I know when it's done and not over-proofed? Do I just wait until it stops rising and starts to deflate? Or do I let it rise and then completely deflate?
If you let it grow until it deflates, there's no rise left in it for the bake and you get a flat bread.
I try to aim for a growth (after the starter is added) of 25-50%, that seems to be the sweet spot :)
@@Foodgeek thank you for your reply! Should I aim for baking the dough once it doubles in size? That is what we've been doing but I want to proof it for longer to make it more sour. Our bread used to be really sour but it's been very mildly sour for the past several months. I don't know if it's the temps in the house or what. I've been following you lately and I want to try proofing it for a longer period of time but the coldest place in our house is the basement and during summer it's only down to maybe 70 or 75 in there.
Aim for 50% Shape and then put the shaped bread in fridge from 8 to 48 hours (maybe longer). Bake from cold.
Maybe double and triple the time in the fridge?
Trust me on this.. If you want a sour sourdough, feed your starter and keep it in a proofer at 30
I find that longer cold fermentation helps both flavor and rise! Try 3 days in the fridge.
I really think you need a sour levain to get where you're trying to go. Maybe you can amp it up with innoculation or some other mean/s but building a good strong and sour culture is going to be key. How you do that is up to you though, Maestro. Great experiment!
I think he was specifically trying to amp up the lactic acids in this case, so it wasn't going to be truly "sour", but rather "tangy" as he calls it. However, I've gotten really sour bread just by changing my starter flour. I usually feed it with plain white flour, but switching to feeding it with whole grain flour makes my bread sour, after just the one feeding of whole grain. The type(s) of flour in the final dough makes no difference, only the starter flour does. My wife doesn't like any tangy or sour flavor in the bread at all, so I use my normal starter, add a few percents of sugar in the dough, and get no sour at all.
Interesting. It seems that none of the variables in this experiment or your other experiments makes any difference in taste or spring. Bread is just going to do what bread wants to do. 🥴🤔😋
I read once that using a low hydration starter helps.
@@hnelson5609 Do you find it necessary to change the hydration/use more water? Most recipes call for a 100% starter (liquid starter).
I have been cold proofing mine and that been giving it more flavor
open crumb is good? eat more air?
Air is pretty low in calories 😊
It's about texture though. A bread with an open crumb is much lighter and texture is important in food 😊
Hi Sune, like your music too. Could you give some hints ? ;)
This is one off best chanel to baking, yuo show misstake :)
Hello,
Thanks for the great video ! The breads look all amazing.
Do you bake it straight from the fridge ? Or you let it sit for a while to get to room temperature?
Always straight from the fridge 😊
Hi... back in April you tested the effect water temperature has starter rise time. I believe the temperature of the water for the starter and water for the bread could also affect the sour flavor I have seen a German sourdough video in which they explain warm water supports the "milk acids" and makes a softer dough, while cold water promotes more "vinegar acids" and give a more sour and firm dough.
This is why it's in the proofer at 30C. To promote tangy/dairy sourness 😊
No flour in the baskets?
Maybe 1% innoculation? I think you should try.
@@N9524Q it does work, you just have to bulk ferment for a long time.
@@N9524Q I know the idea is to let it ferment 24 hours. The most I have gone is 16 and it was over fermented. I do it around 12 hours - the temperature in my kitchen is between 20 and 22 degrees. I am no expert, I have only been making sourdough bread for few weeks, but 12 hours fermentation 1% inoculation has given me the best results. It is not as good looking bread the foodgeek's, but it makes delicious toast.
Once (a few weeks ago LOL ) I had a dough in the fridge for 5 days, the gluten was dead eaten by the bacteria but somehow I did got it in the dutch oven. It was flat like a pizza. No open cumb, very tough/hard compared to usual but it tasted sour. It was eatable or was fine actually and... had a sour taste ;) Wouldn't do that again though.
Can't imagine I only have the dutch oven for just about 5-6 weeks... couldn't live without now. ;)
EXPERIMENT TIME: Same starter, same dosage, but take samples of the starter each day for X days after its last feeding. The hypothesis would be the more starved the starter, the more sour the bread will be.
I love your empirical approach to baking!
sune, you read my mind!! i've been playing around with this same thing, but so far no real luck. looking forward to what you do. i've noticed that the flavor gets a little tangier a day or more after baking, have you saved your test loaves to taste test them again the next day?
so far i've been experimenting to boost acetic acid, but yogurt (or kefir) mixed with water as the hydration would probably work to boost lactic acid production. i've done a batch with biga/levain fermenting for 12 hours at room temperature, but this process really changes the proofing time (mine overproved in the fridge overnight), and the flavor change really wasn't as significant as i thought it would be. i've also changed the feeding cycle on my starter, letting it go longer between feeds to promote more LAB production and yeasts that like that environment, but that really didn't make a noticeable difference either (maybe my starter is just too young still). since then i've been adding cider vinegar and playing with that.
Do you make yeast breads or are you strictly a sourdough fan?
I've made so many yeast breads in my life, but the last couple of years there's not much time (or belly room) for yeasted loaves :)
In Germany a quite traditional method to give really nice taste to bread is a three-step cultivation of a rye sourdough starter for the bread... If you use this additionally to your 10% inoculation bread, you could hit it on point. Example: for the first step use 64 g rye flour, 96 g water and 32 g starter and ferment at 26°C for 5-6 hours. Second step use complete first step, 800 g rye flour and 480 g water and let ferment at 24 °C for 20 hours. Last step use all your second step, 2160 g rye flour and 2160 g water. Let ferment at 30 °C for 3 hours... This is scaled for bakery production but I think you're quite good with maths 😉 this method gives you really good balanced lactic acid, acidic acid and yeast. I just described one simple way here, there is a whole science behind this. Try it,I would be happy to watch.
Microbiologist here. Lower pH = tangy taste. Also, lower pH reduces the gas from yeast fermentation (mostly CO2). Higher fermentation from yeast give more etoh, lowers the growth of lactobacillus microbes (l. plantarum , etc.), also slightly higher fermentation temp favors lactobacillus,because there is less oxygen present in the dough. So I would say slightly higher temperature, lower enoculum, and check pH with papers strip to make sure you keep it on a range 3.5-4.1.
Since testing inoculation % didn't seem to have a dramatic impact - might the temp during bulk fermentation? I live in SF, and bulk ferment on my kitchen countertop where it's 62-65f most of the time. I then shape, reshape and final in the refrigerator overnight to bake in the AM. My bread is sour. I've also read that it might matter where the starter is in it's maturity when added to the bread mixture - we're supposed to add when it's mature - e.g. float test. But what if it's more tired and hungry? Also - might how it's raised matter? e.g. Did it grow up in a cold environment (stored in the fridge - might this develop more sour flavor) or in a more neutral environment (always on the countertop - might this develop more lactic acid tang)?
Are you trying to develop more tang, or more sour, or both? I'm thinking the tang is a more cheesy taste, and the sour a more sharp acetic acid. I wonder if trying a thinner starter would lend itself to a more tangy note, in contrast, a thicker starter might lend itself to a more sour note? Also, I wonder what changes a 100% whole meal starter, or a 100% rye starter, might achieve? You are playing with both a warm environment, within your proofer, and then a cold environment within the fridge, so, maybe you are increasing both the tang and the sour in this way. I think, 1%, or 2%, inoculation is a good idea! Perhaps, with a very ripe starter. Thanks for trying this Sune! Very interesting experiment!
Heard you let the starter starve, form hooch, and feed it a day or two before use. How much of the sour flavor is a function of which type of lactobacilli (e.g. Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis) versus how much is due to the equilibrium or disequilibrium of the bacteria and yeast? Or, activity (or dormancy) of one or the other? It would seem the system seeks to maintain equilibrium at a particular pH and you are trying to achieve and bake at the moment or range of maximum disequilibrium/maximum acidity. What buffers the lactic and acetic acids of the bacteria/Lactobacillus? Continued thanks!
I accidentally ended up with a real nice sour but not over powering bread.
How, I forgot to feed my starter for 2 days, it smelt sour. I fed it on the 3rd day. The result was amazing, I will be doing it again soon.
I’m still a little confused with inoculation percentages. Most online sources consider inoculation % as the proportion of pre-fermented flour (normally from starter) to the total flour (starter + bulk of flour for dough). However, some consider it as the proportion of starter to total flour.
My problem with the latter is that not all starters are 100% (or a standardised) hydration. So a wetter starter will give the dough mixture less flour and more water in the final product, whereas a stiffer starter (less than 100% hydration starter) will form a potentially drier dough if only ever using the latter method for calculating.
Anyone able to explain slowly and clearly which, if either, is correct?!
How are you working with 20% rye and it is not insanely sticky? Is it quality or rye? Type?
Watched a little further. I guess it is sticky; you are just better than me at handling. :-D
I heard that proofing cold in the fridge 12 hours then shaping and retardding for 24-48 helps. But I didn’t get a sour taste. I only did 24 hours though.
I actually heard the opposite, higher inoculation will make it more sour, say 30-40% 🤷🏻♀️
Use a riper preferment. It will have more population of lactobacilli vs yeast. It will last longer to double, that in fact is what determines when you go to the shaping stage. When you make panettone, you use a preferment that is not ripe at all, with lots of yeasts vs bacilli. It is not sour at all, and it doubles at lot quicker, like if you where using dry yeast.
On the other hand, your 5% dough maybe is a little overproofed, but it is also a little degraded by the enzimes because of the high proofing temperature. Or at least I think so, as far as I know.
It would be interesting to see what you would get with 20%, 5% (don't let it over-proof) and 1% or 0.5%.
The 20%, 10%, 5% might have been too close to produce a huge variation.
BTW I'm using a 24h feed starter kept at 20°C
At first I've put the dough in the fridge after stretching and folding + one or two hours out, for at least 12 more likle 18 to 24 hours in the fridge.
For the last few times I just kept the dough out in the kitchen for 12-13 hours, so in the evening I mixed it together and after stretch and folding no fridge.
The results are good to me. No different between both ways.
I stil have not that much of an oven spring though. More like the 5% one in the vid, without tangyness ;)
Love your work.
I've read letting you're starter "age" before feeding increases acidity, increase the ratio of starter to feeding percentage on the day before mixing
will increase acidity more than using a lower percent starter inoculation ratio. i.e. let your starter go past peak on Thursday, feed at 2 5 5 ratio on
Fri. (should make a sour starter) mix Sat., ferment as needed, bake Sun. . The increased acid may interfere with gluten development.
This is untested by myself( I'm no where near consistent enough to test it)wish I could afford to support you for this test, we like sour bread, but
it seems to be hit or miss. Perhaps the beauty of sour dough is you get what you get , it's all good.
Was that a wheat starter? In my experience rye starters gives more tart breads. I often bakes finnish ryebread cos i am half finnish. I use maybe 20%? I dont ferment over night as i do with levain type sour doughs, and those rye breads gets very tangy. I prefer rye starters for all breads including wheat sour dough breads
Sourest bread I made was with very underfed and acidic starter, about 20 percent ratio to dry flour weight, and later after autolyse, I added yeast plus salt. The added yeast is necessary because the underfed starter is just bacterial culture at that point with not enough yeast colony. At least that’s what I assume.
Hi Sune, I like to follow your experiments. I just made 2 loaves of sourdough bread from a single mix which I divided. The first I put in my banneton and the second in a glass bowl with parchment paper lining. I also left the lid of my Dutch oven out of the oven after removing it while baking the first loaf. The first loaf was fine, the second looked bad when I removed the lid after 20 minutes and there was very little oven spring. Any idea as to the most likely cause of this failure?
Great video.
The three loaves fermented at the same temperature, and to nearly the same degree (the 5% appears to have fermented to a slightly higher degree than the other two). I would expect the acid products of the microbial cultures to be very similar in all three samples. I guess the logic for expecting more products from a smaller inoculum is that it takes more time to reach the same degree of fermentation. But the amount of acid produced as the 5% ferments to 20% is much smaller than the amount of acid produced afterwards, because the microbes are growing as they ferment. In other words, the effects of exponential growth are much stronger at the end.
I think that if you want to shift the balance between lactic and acetic acid, the best variable to control is the temperature, as you mention at the beginning. To increase the total amount of acid, I think you have to ferment to a greater degree, which would mean overproofing. This might explain why the 5% sample was slightly more sour than the other two samples, since that dough fermented a bit beyond the other two. I would love to be proven wrong on this, so I hope you will have more experiment time!
There's a small bug in your rye flour at around 3:08. Went in the bowl with the mixing. Basically cheating for adding extra nutrients.
😂🤷🏾♀️
The more sour breads I got were those with a long cold fermentation (around 72 hs minimum) and high wholemeal content. I would make a cold bulk fermentation of 24 hs and then 36 or 48 final proof. However, it has a been a while since I last did something like this because of the amount of time it takes.
@Foodgeek - What is the name of the music playing during the dough folding? I'd like to buy a copy for myself.
How about unfed ice cold starter straight from the fridge? The yeast is dormant, the lactobacillus may get a head start! I think using an active fed starter leads to similar results since the various species are in balance.
Hi from Australia, loving your videos, it has made such a difference to my baking thank you, Sune
I just made my first loaf of sourdough after making a homemade starter. The bread turned out beautiful and delicious but it didn’t taste like sourdough!!
Try leaving the dough in the fridge for 48 hours to increase the tang and why not 1%. With enough time and the right temperature, 1% should work.
i have tasted more sourness when i leave in that brown liquid of the starter, i imagine thats the acids, and I keep it 100% hydration and it gets "soury" with over fermentation and no oven spring danger
I know a guy, who bakes his bread with inoculation way under 1%. Try that (or even lower)!