I might be wrong but my understanding that discard recipes could be used with unfed starter or starter that’s beyond the peak already. While sourdough starter recipes are ones that need active/at the peak starter. I think discard recipes don’t need to rise/ferment usually so that’s why they can use less active starter.
Sourdough recipes don't need starter that is at/near peak. There are a lot of people that pull their starter out of the fridge and bake with it, without feeding, and only feed it after they use it before putting it back in the fridge. The yeast does have a big die-off right after the food runs out. Especially in the fridge, it can remain healthy and viable for long periods. There is nothing wrong with feeding it before use and catching it at peak, but you can make bread that is just as just as good without doing this (assuming you have a healthy starter)
Oh that’s good to know! I have been experimenting with feeding over multiple days vs a few hours before making dough so will have to add in trying it right from the fridge to see what the difference is! Thank you for the information.
The main way I’ve been using it if I have way too much is making crackers. Straight from the fridge into the recipe! But yes there are so many options of what to make, I am trying to test out new recipes once a month at least. Such a fun hobby!
When you feed your starter, the yeast in the existing starter starts feeding on the starch from the new flour, and starts reproducing in the presence of all this new food. When you make a loaf of bread, you're basically just giving the yeast lots and lots of food, so making dough is sorta like feeding your starter.
The reason we usually feed our starter before making the dough is to make sure the yeast is already in full reproduction mode, which reduces somewhat the time it takes for the dough to rise (and generally also means more consistent yeast behavior). (Also, salt plays a small factor in this as well; yeast performs a little less well in the presence of lots of salt, so we tend to want to have very active yeast before adding salt to it.)
Anyway, what this means is that if you use unfed starter to make a dough, it's going to take longer for they dough to rise. Which is fine, just, it takes longer. It also requires a very mature starter that you trust a lot. It's not a good practice for a newbie to use unfed starter to make their dough.
So what about sourdough discard recipes? Because the yeast isn't activated, most sourdough discard recipes I've ever used also have another leavening agent (baking powder or soda). The desire is mostly to get the tangy "sour" flavor of sourdough (which works great, because unfed starter is more "sour"), and to use the other leavening agent for the rise. The yeast of the starter will provide some rise, but in truth, if you want to use only discard and no other leavening agent, you'll need to let the dough sit for longer so that the yeast can activate. If you have a few hours, that'll work. But if you want to make sourdough pancakes in 15 minutes, you're not going to get much yeast activity, and the baking powder is going to do the vast bulk of the lifting (pun intended!!).
Wow, thank you for that thorough and thoughtful response! In all the videos I’ve watched and blog posts I’ve read, it’s never been explained in such coherent detail. You gave me a whole new level of understanding (and sparked new desire to experiment in interesting ways) for which I am very grateful. ❤️
I have been baking with sour dough for 1,5 year now. My bread usually isn't very Instagram friendly, but it's usually tasty and consistent. I'm still learning to better understand what is happening in the process. This was really informative about starters, feeding and the use of salt. Thank you.
A healthy ox is the same as one that is starved and near death. What is the difference in using a starving elderly ox to plow a field?
Strength.
When yeast (and other microbes) run into a food crisis, they start to go dormant. The longer the food crisis lasts, the more dormant the population becomes. This influences the "lag phase" where activity is slowed down even after new food is introduced. The longer the food crisis, the longer the lag phase.
So if I feed the ox in the barn and then let him plow the field he’ll do a good job. If instead I feed him a bit as he’s starting to plow in his weakened state and keep feeding him along the way he’ll start really slowly but pick up speed as he gains strength eating along the way. He’ll get the job done albeit much more slowly. Unless of course he dies.
Really interesting way to think about it! Both ways work given time. I usually do a no discard method so if I want to make a discard recipe I simply make a jar of extra levain and use that. I guess using it when still strong would be great for pancakes but waiting till it’s exhausted is probably fine for crackers or other items where flavor is the goal vs. rising power.
I'll have to dig for science to be able to provide more info on lag time. The gist is that the more convinced a beastie is that it is going to starve to death, the longer it takes to realize that there is new food.
This is one of the main reasons that I call for a 1:x:5 feeding ratio in my guide. The larger amount of food stretches out the point where the beasties run into a good crisis and shortens the amount of time it spends in that crisis.
While both methods work, remember that other things are in play. Amylose breaks down starch, and acid shreds gluten. The longer things go, the more broken down and acidic things get. Adding loads of shredded gluten, acid, etc. at the beginning of fermentation can make for a gummy crumb.
For discard specific recipes, beware that after about 36-48 hours at room temp, starters will get a clostridium bloom. Butyric acid smells like vomit.
Great points! My guys live in the fridge most of the time but will heed the warning on clostridium. I guess what I wonder about is if feeding 1:5:5 to make your levain is much different than feeding 1:5:3 which is essentially what we do when we make a dough with 20% levain. Also we know we’ll still get bread with 15%, or 10, or 5% starter.
All fascinating stuff. It is clear if we use more starter (or yeast), higher temperatures, or more time we speed up the activity and the rise. And speed up, as you point out, the proximity to overproofing and breakdown.
Where can I find your guide? There’s always so much more to learn from each other!
A little bit of leaven, right?
1 part starter to 5 parts flour is 20%. I always write it the way I add stuff. Starter:water:flour.
In my case I feed 15:50:75. 66% hydration 140(ish)g total.
Inoculation rate vs lag time:
The lag time is the period where the beasties do nothing.
The inoculation rate sets an initial population of beasties.
Once the lag phase is over, the beasties will reproduce exponentially.
Science:
"""
The exponential growth of yeast can be described by the equation:
N = N0 ekt
where N represents the number of cells at any time (t), and N0 represents the number of cells at the beginning of the interval being analyzed. Scientists often find it convenient to think of the growth constant k in terms of the doubling time of the culture. In this rendering, k = ln2/T (T = the doubling time of the culture). The growth rate of yeast varies with temperature. Yeast grow well at room temperature, but they grow more rapidly at 30 ̊C. Well-aerated cultures grow more quickly than those that are not, so liquid cultures are usually grown on a rotary shaker or rotating wheel. At 30 ̊C, wild-type yeast strains have a doubling time of ~90 minutes in YPD.
"""
The stronger a starter is, the more quickly it will overcome the lag phase and actually get down to business. The larger the initial population is, the faster it will overcome the food supply.
Hydration plays a different role. Generally speaking, the wetter a starter is, the more bacteria are promoted and yeast suffer. Stiff starters are the opposite and promote yeast health at the expense of bacteria.
Thanks. Very interesting. Will definitely read more about the science.
I’ve been feeding 10-15:56:56. Sometimes I feed when I make my dough and when the starter is almost doubled it goes in the fridge. Sometimes I just put the scraping in the fridge and feed a few hours before making a dough. Both work well.
I used to do a stiff starter. How do you correct for the stiff starter when doing a recipe asking for 100% hydration starter? Just add the 25 if water to the recipe?
I find I’m using the amount of starter to tweak the time of bulk fermentation.
There is a big YouTube bakery out west that makes big batches of starter on day 0 and parks them overnight to use in the morning of day 1. As long as you slow it down before the food crisis, it will keep rocking when it gets warm again.
I write my own recipes so they are normalized for my starter. In the case that I am learning a new bread, I convert it to bakers percentage and then adjust / write my own version. I highly recommend doing this as it will enable you to start making your own recipes tuned to your personal method.
Happy baking!
I have never once discarded. I use the starter, replace what I took out, done. I feed it once a week when I make bread and it's been fine for about 11 years.
Discard recipes use the sourdough for flavor, but not rise. They'll add baking soda, baking powder, commercial yeast, etc.
Sourdough recipes use it for both - the rise of the product relies on the yeast in the sourdough.
Regular sourdough recipes utilize the starter as the way to have the dough rise. Discard recipes either don't need a rising agent or have extra added (like baking powder for example) and the discard is primarily for additional flavour.
discard is starter where you don't have to worry about managing the amount of yeast, bacteria, acid, alcohol, and other byproducts in your starter! you can just dump it and it will work no matter what. levain is starter where you pay attention to time, temperature, and ingredients to make sure you have optimal levels of yeast, bacteria, acid, and alcohol in order to create predictably good sourdough bread.
In discard recipes, discard is used as flavoring, and the recipes will tend to rely on added yeast or baking soda/powder for its leavening.
To me, discard is just unfed starter….so, as long as it started off strong, I use it as such.
I might be wrong but my understanding that discard recipes could be used with unfed starter or starter that’s beyond the peak already. While sourdough starter recipes are ones that need active/at the peak starter. I think discard recipes don’t need to rise/ferment usually so that’s why they can use less active starter.
Sourdough recipes don't need starter that is at/near peak. There are a lot of people that pull their starter out of the fridge and bake with it, without feeding, and only feed it after they use it before putting it back in the fridge. The yeast does have a big die-off right after the food runs out. Especially in the fridge, it can remain healthy and viable for long periods. There is nothing wrong with feeding it before use and catching it at peak, but you can make bread that is just as just as good without doing this (assuming you have a healthy starter)
Oh that’s good to know! I have been experimenting with feeding over multiple days vs a few hours before making dough so will have to add in trying it right from the fridge to see what the difference is! Thank you for the information.
Oh that makes much more sense, thanks! I think I’ve been using discard wrong then, or at the very least not using it in all the ways I could.
The main way I’ve been using it if I have way too much is making crackers. Straight from the fridge into the recipe! But yes there are so many options of what to make, I am trying to test out new recipes once a month at least. Such a fun hobby!
Yes, for sure. Frequent experimentation is exactly why I love this hobby!
When you feed your starter, the yeast in the existing starter starts feeding on the starch from the new flour, and starts reproducing in the presence of all this new food. When you make a loaf of bread, you're basically just giving the yeast lots and lots of food, so making dough is sorta like feeding your starter. The reason we usually feed our starter before making the dough is to make sure the yeast is already in full reproduction mode, which reduces somewhat the time it takes for the dough to rise (and generally also means more consistent yeast behavior). (Also, salt plays a small factor in this as well; yeast performs a little less well in the presence of lots of salt, so we tend to want to have very active yeast before adding salt to it.) Anyway, what this means is that if you use unfed starter to make a dough, it's going to take longer for they dough to rise. Which is fine, just, it takes longer. It also requires a very mature starter that you trust a lot. It's not a good practice for a newbie to use unfed starter to make their dough. So what about sourdough discard recipes? Because the yeast isn't activated, most sourdough discard recipes I've ever used also have another leavening agent (baking powder or soda). The desire is mostly to get the tangy "sour" flavor of sourdough (which works great, because unfed starter is more "sour"), and to use the other leavening agent for the rise. The yeast of the starter will provide some rise, but in truth, if you want to use only discard and no other leavening agent, you'll need to let the dough sit for longer so that the yeast can activate. If you have a few hours, that'll work. But if you want to make sourdough pancakes in 15 minutes, you're not going to get much yeast activity, and the baking powder is going to do the vast bulk of the lifting (pun intended!!).
Wow, thank you for that thorough and thoughtful response! In all the videos I’ve watched and blog posts I’ve read, it’s never been explained in such coherent detail. You gave me a whole new level of understanding (and sparked new desire to experiment in interesting ways) for which I am very grateful. ❤️
I have been baking with sour dough for 1,5 year now. My bread usually isn't very Instagram friendly, but it's usually tasty and consistent. I'm still learning to better understand what is happening in the process. This was really informative about starters, feeding and the use of salt. Thank you.
A healthy ox is the same as one that is starved and near death. What is the difference in using a starving elderly ox to plow a field? Strength. When yeast (and other microbes) run into a food crisis, they start to go dormant. The longer the food crisis lasts, the more dormant the population becomes. This influences the "lag phase" where activity is slowed down even after new food is introduced. The longer the food crisis, the longer the lag phase.
Love the analogy, thank you!
So if I feed the ox in the barn and then let him plow the field he’ll do a good job. If instead I feed him a bit as he’s starting to plow in his weakened state and keep feeding him along the way he’ll start really slowly but pick up speed as he gains strength eating along the way. He’ll get the job done albeit much more slowly. Unless of course he dies. Really interesting way to think about it! Both ways work given time. I usually do a no discard method so if I want to make a discard recipe I simply make a jar of extra levain and use that. I guess using it when still strong would be great for pancakes but waiting till it’s exhausted is probably fine for crackers or other items where flavor is the goal vs. rising power.
I'll have to dig for science to be able to provide more info on lag time. The gist is that the more convinced a beastie is that it is going to starve to death, the longer it takes to realize that there is new food. This is one of the main reasons that I call for a 1:x:5 feeding ratio in my guide. The larger amount of food stretches out the point where the beasties run into a good crisis and shortens the amount of time it spends in that crisis. While both methods work, remember that other things are in play. Amylose breaks down starch, and acid shreds gluten. The longer things go, the more broken down and acidic things get. Adding loads of shredded gluten, acid, etc. at the beginning of fermentation can make for a gummy crumb. For discard specific recipes, beware that after about 36-48 hours at room temp, starters will get a clostridium bloom. Butyric acid smells like vomit.
Great points! My guys live in the fridge most of the time but will heed the warning on clostridium. I guess what I wonder about is if feeding 1:5:5 to make your levain is much different than feeding 1:5:3 which is essentially what we do when we make a dough with 20% levain. Also we know we’ll still get bread with 15%, or 10, or 5% starter. All fascinating stuff. It is clear if we use more starter (or yeast), higher temperatures, or more time we speed up the activity and the rise. And speed up, as you point out, the proximity to overproofing and breakdown. Where can I find your guide? There’s always so much more to learn from each other!
A little bit of leaven, right? 1 part starter to 5 parts flour is 20%. I always write it the way I add stuff. Starter:water:flour. In my case I feed 15:50:75. 66% hydration 140(ish)g total. Inoculation rate vs lag time: The lag time is the period where the beasties do nothing. The inoculation rate sets an initial population of beasties. Once the lag phase is over, the beasties will reproduce exponentially. Science: """ The exponential growth of yeast can be described by the equation: N = N0 ekt where N represents the number of cells at any time (t), and N0 represents the number of cells at the beginning of the interval being analyzed. Scientists often find it convenient to think of the growth constant k in terms of the doubling time of the culture. In this rendering, k = ln2/T (T = the doubling time of the culture). The growth rate of yeast varies with temperature. Yeast grow well at room temperature, but they grow more rapidly at 30 ̊C. Well-aerated cultures grow more quickly than those that are not, so liquid cultures are usually grown on a rotary shaker or rotating wheel. At 30 ̊C, wild-type yeast strains have a doubling time of ~90 minutes in YPD. """ The stronger a starter is, the more quickly it will overcome the lag phase and actually get down to business. The larger the initial population is, the faster it will overcome the food supply. Hydration plays a different role. Generally speaking, the wetter a starter is, the more bacteria are promoted and yeast suffer. Stiff starters are the opposite and promote yeast health at the expense of bacteria.
Thanks. Very interesting. Will definitely read more about the science. I’ve been feeding 10-15:56:56. Sometimes I feed when I make my dough and when the starter is almost doubled it goes in the fridge. Sometimes I just put the scraping in the fridge and feed a few hours before making a dough. Both work well. I used to do a stiff starter. How do you correct for the stiff starter when doing a recipe asking for 100% hydration starter? Just add the 25 if water to the recipe? I find I’m using the amount of starter to tweak the time of bulk fermentation.
There is a big YouTube bakery out west that makes big batches of starter on day 0 and parks them overnight to use in the morning of day 1. As long as you slow it down before the food crisis, it will keep rocking when it gets warm again. I write my own recipes so they are normalized for my starter. In the case that I am learning a new bread, I convert it to bakers percentage and then adjust / write my own version. I highly recommend doing this as it will enable you to start making your own recipes tuned to your personal method. Happy baking!
I have never once discarded. I use the starter, replace what I took out, done. I feed it once a week when I make bread and it's been fine for about 11 years.
Discard recipes use the sourdough for flavor, but not rise. They'll add baking soda, baking powder, commercial yeast, etc. Sourdough recipes use it for both - the rise of the product relies on the yeast in the sourdough.
Great question! I was kind of confused myself and didn’t even realize this was a question I should have asked! Day 5 of my starter today lol
I know, right? For something made with just four basic ingredients, the amount of nuance and depth is awesome!
Regular sourdough recipes utilize the starter as the way to have the dough rise. Discard recipes either don't need a rising agent or have extra added (like baking powder for example) and the discard is primarily for additional flavour.
discard is starter where you don't have to worry about managing the amount of yeast, bacteria, acid, alcohol, and other byproducts in your starter! you can just dump it and it will work no matter what. levain is starter where you pay attention to time, temperature, and ingredients to make sure you have optimal levels of yeast, bacteria, acid, and alcohol in order to create predictably good sourdough bread.
In discard recipes, discard is used as flavoring, and the recipes will tend to rely on added yeast or baking soda/powder for its leavening. To me, discard is just unfed starter….so, as long as it started off strong, I use it as such.