Inspired

[sbinder77]

I have been inspired by this forum to try a Neapolitan style in my unmodified kitchen oven.  I spent most of last summer learning to use my WFO but unfortunately it is under some ice and snow right now.  I’m not sure I’m completely happy with the outcome, but it wasn’t bad enough to quit trying.  The color was poor and the crust was a little tougher than I would have preferred.  The taste was actually pretty good.  I may try some of the cleaning cycle hacks to see if I can improve things.

505 g  00 flour
315 g water
15 g sea salt
40 g Ischia Starter (100% hydration)
20 minute rest, 5 minute hand kneed
18 hour bulk rise (70 degrees)

Re-kneed 1 minute and ball

4 hour fridge because I wasn’t ready to bake yet

4 hour rise before baking.

[TXCraig1]

Is your Ischia starter fully active when you make your dough? If I used 8% (wrt flour) of my Ischia culture, I think my dough would be badly overrisen after 18 hours @70F. I typically use 0.5% for 24 hours at 65F (all in balls).

That might have something to do with the toughness and lack of color?

Craig

[sbinder77]

I'll have to admit that I am not very experienced using a starter.  (This is a fairly new starter as I have only had it a couple of months.)  I took it out of the fridge the night before, fed it, and let it sit out over night.  It had almost doubled in size and had lots of bubbles.  (I should probably use a better method of activating the starter in the future.)  You may be right as I didn't notice any change in the dough volume for the first 3 or 4 hours.

I started out with some pretty cold tap water.  The box that I use for the bulk rise varies between 68 - 70 so it may have been a little less than 70. 

What kind of starter hydration are you using and how often do you feed it?
How does your dough volume change in 24 hours?
What kind of salt percentages are you using?

[TXCraig1]

I never bother to weigh anything I put into my starter. At 0.5% of the formula flour, it's not going to have a meaningful effect on the final dough. I look for the viscosity of a thick batter.

I generally take my starter out of the fridge 48 hours before I need it and feed it 2-3 times depending on how fast it is going which is a function of the room temperature when used regularly. I discard about 1/2 the volume before each feeding.

I feed my mother starter once/week - discarding maybe 1/3 first, let it sit out on the counter for a couple hours, then back into the fridge.

The dough is typically ~65F coming off the hook. My dough generally increases about 2X in 24 hours. I prefer a little under 2X. Most of the volume increase happens in the last four hours when I bring it up to room temperature. I almost never do a bulk ferment with my 0.5% yeast dough.

Salt is 2.8%

Craig

[sbinder77]

I decided to post my new try as the results were much better this time.  The taste was fabulous and the crust was much nicer.
I know you shouldn't do this, but I tweaked quite a few parameters.  Now I don't know what I did that actually contributed to the better outcome.

300 g Antico Molino Caputo Blue
316 g water
33 g Ischia starter
17 g sea salt

Stir together well, rest 10 minutes.

Kneed in 200 g King Arthur Sir Lancelot Hi-Gluten Flour by hand.

24 hour bulk ferment at 65 degrees (No change in rise)
12 hour bulk ferment at 68 degrees (volume doubled)

Ball and rise for 8 hours.

I don't know if it was the flour or the long ferment time but my wife told me at least 3 times how good it was.

[BrickStoneOven]

Isn't 33g still a lot? I don't know what you are measuring your total amount from but I use 3% starter of whatever my total water weight is. I made a batch yesterday and used 20g of starter for 663.6g of water. I did a bulk rise for 8hrs and it rose about half size, then I balled and put them in my thermo cooler.

[andreguidon]

it took that long cause 17g of salt for 300g of flour is allot of salt....

[pizzablogger]

it took that long cause 17g of salt for 300g of flour is allot of salt....

The recipe actually uses 500g of flour.

The salt amount is 3.40% of the total formula flour, which is indeed on the high side.

The 33g of starter is 10.44% of the formula water and 6.60% of the total formula flour (amounts would be adjusted slightly if we knew what the hydration of the starter was).

That amount of starter is a little more than double the amount Marco recommends (1-5% starter as percent of formula water), but about half of the 20% by weight of formula flour that some people successfully use.

So, 24 hours of primary may be possible given the high salt amount and amount of starter used. What we do not know is how virile/active/mature the starter was when added to the dough, which would also play a part in fermentation times. --K

[sbinder77]

I guess I'll jump back in here.  I have never done a 40+ hour rise so I just upped the salt to compensate for the longer rise time.  From what I am hearing I really should have just reduced the amount of starter. 

About the starter, I take the starter out of the fridge the day before.  Discard half, feed and leave out overnight.  It lookes very active the next day when I use it. 

Speaking of starters.  I have read all over the web that they take on the local strain over time and what you are using is probably not really what you started with.  When I purchased my Ischia however, the pamphlet said that this is a myth and the culture strong enough to keep its characterstics and the other strains out over time.  I'm sure it should be a new thread but I wonder if we could come up with a way to test this theory.  Do you think we could somehow come up with 4 or 5 Ischia samples from around the world and send them to some willing tester that would put them in a controlled environment for a couple of weeks, feed them, and then compare them?  It would be very interesting to see how fast they all grow, how sour they are, what kind of flavor they generate, etc.  Maybe I'm just crazy...

[Bill/SFNM]

Speaking of starters.  I have read all over the web that they take on the local strain over time and what you are using is probably not really what you started with.  When I purchased my Ischia however, the pamphlet said that this is a myth and the culture strong enough to keep its characterstics and the other strains out over time.  I'm sure it should be a new thread but I wonder if we could come up with a way to test this theory.  Do you think we could somehow come up with 4 or 5 Ischia samples from around the world and send them to some willing tester that would put them in a controlled environment for a couple of weeks, feed them, and then compare them?  It would be very interesting to see how fast they all grow, how sour they are, what kind of flavor they generate, etc.  Maybe I'm just crazy...

My kitchen has been the experiment for several years. I have 5 starters (French, Austrian, Russian, Ischia, and a new Tuscan). I use them all regularly and each has different flavors and fermentation/proofing behavior. If the "local domination" theory were correct, I would have 5 identical cultures.

[pizzablogger]

My kitchen has been the experiment for several years. I have 5 starters (French, Austrian, Russian, Ischia, and a new Tuscan). I use them all regularly and each has different flavors and fermentation/proofing behavior. If the "local domination" theory were correct, I would have 5 identical cultures.

I concur with Bill. I have had the Ischia, Calmoldoli, Tazmanian and a culture I "captured"/made here in Baltimore all living and being used at my home. All imparted different flavors to the pizzas (I've since killed the Calmoldoli and the local strain).

I think it's fair to say the yeasts will adapt to the particular schedule and work environment it is used in and it may in fact change because of this, but my own limited experience is similar to Bill's.....they all still retain unique flavor qualities. --K

[TXCraig1]

My kitchen has been the experiment for several years. I have 5 starters (French, Austrian, Russian, Ischia, and a new Tuscan). I use them all regularly and each has different flavors and fermentation/proofing behavior. If the "local domination" theory were correct, I would have 5 identical cultures.

I generally agree with you about local domination, but I'm not sure it is that simple. I think there are at least three possible scenarios in which a local wild yeast contaminates a particular starter culture:

1. Local Domination: The local wild yeast is somehow stronger or more aggressive and manages to completely dominate and displace the yeast in the starter culture in which case the starter takes on the characteristics of the local wild yeast.
2. Starter domination: The yeast in the starter culture somehow prevents the local wild yeast from ever gaining a foothold in which case the starter remains more or less unchanged.
3. Coexistence/hybrid: Both the local wild yeast and the starter culture coexist or hybridize in which the starter culture may take on some of the characteristics of the local wild yeast or perhaps even some all new characteristics.

I think scenario #1 is the least likely given everyone's observations (mine included) that no two of our respective cultures have the same set of characteristics. Still it can't be ruled out completely as perhaps only one of our cultures was weak enough to be dominated by the local wild yeast (though we all three have one in common - Ischia).

Perhaps someone has done research to establish that #2 is the most likely, but short of that, I can't think of any reason to assume that it is. The fact that we each have multiple cultures with distinctly different characteristics does not, in itself, establish #2 as correct.

Short of evidence to the contrary, I would lean to #3 as being most likely. I don't know we would assume that local cultures couldn't or wouldn't take up residence in our starter cultures and that even if they did, they would not impart some of their characteristics. Scenario #3 is equally supported by the observations as #2 which only suggests only that there are differences in the cultures - not that the original cultures have not changed over time.

An experiment such as that proposed by sbinder77 - or simply looking at several of the same original culture, taken from different locations, under a microscope - could go a long way toward ruling #2 and #3 in or out.

Craig

[Bill/SFNM]

Short of evidence to the contrary, I would lean to #3 as being most likely.

I do not see #3 as a scenario that could be established in a healthy starter. Given the fact that the starter population density is a few billion times that of any interlopers, it seems mathematically impossible that they could ever establish any kind of concentration that could produce detectable flavors. Is it possible that the locals could really double at a rate so much higher that they could ever become a significant element of the population? We could make some assumptions about the initial population densities of each side, set some kind of threshold for what the local population percentage would have to be to make any kind of significant flavor contribution and come with how much faster the locals would have reproduce to reach that threshold in my lifetime. I'm not going to do the math because I really don't have a basis for what values to assign to the initial assumptions, but I'm willing to bet on the starter team.

[TXCraig1]

After playing with the math some, I think you're probably right. Notwithstanding, I can't help but think that the argument against coexistence is somewhat like saying that pathogenic bacteria shouldn't be able to take hold in your gut because of the established population of normal flora.

I think this may be a good science project for one of the boys in the fall.

Craig

[Bill/SFNM]

I can't help but think that the argument against coexistence is somewhat like saying that pathogenic bacteria shouldn't be able to take hold in your gut because of the established population of normal flora.

No comparison between the relatively stable environment consisting of water, flour, starter community, and drop-ins from the air vs. the thousands of factors in our digestive system undergoing the constant and varied barrage of intruders from our diet. And the pathogen load from, say, a bad piece of fish, is pretty extreme compared to what our starters are exposed.

Rather than worry about contamination, it is more useful for me to focus on the behavior of each starter community itself. I have no idea nor do I care about the identity of the different strains they contain. I have a theoretical idea of how different species relate to each other in the metabolic chain, but this hasn't replaced experimentation to determine what fermentation and proofing temps and durations affect the final flavor of the dough.

A science project on sourdoughs would be a great idea for your boys - automatic blue ribbon just for feeding the judges good pizza. 

[scpizza]

Bill, the missing part to your counterargument to #3 (coexistence/hybrid) is that culture conditions are not static. 

Opportunities for multi-strain cultures to persist arise because that culture goes through a range of pH, nutrient availability, and temperature changes between feedings.  Every strain that prospers best at different places along that spectrum gets a portion of time to replicate advantageously over other strains.

That sourdough cultures maintain both bacteria and yeast instead of just one or the other is a classic example.

I agree with you though that if a strain has no place in the culture's journey where it is optimal vs. the other strains present, it will be eliminated from the culture by competition.  I also agree with you that if a strain has a small concentration it's less likely to be detected in the overall flavor profile.

So I like TXCraig1's #3 as a possible explanation of why Camaldoli a week out of the envelope does not taste the same as Camaldoli a few months later.  I also like Pizzablogger's idea of the culture adapting to its particular work schedule and environment (strain relative population sizes adjusting).

It would hugely advance our understanding of both culture flavor changes over time and culture flavor differences vs. other cultures if we could have comprehensive, detailed culture typings done - but that would involve a major effort by a well-qualified research lab!