Using starter at its peak - why?

[exipnos]

Hi all,

For the last month or so I have been baking pizza and bread with a natural starter.  I must say its been a humbling experience.  Sometimes great results and sometimes not, even though the technique and amounts have been identical.  While trying to master the art of using natural starters I was wondering about this question.

The recommendation is to feed the starter and then use it when it peaks.  Why do we need to use the starter at its peak?  If it wasn't used at its peak wouldn't the only difference be that you will add some time to the raise period since the starter would need some extra time as compared to a fully active starter?

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Regards,

Kosta

[Matthew]

Hi all,

For the last month or so I have been baking pizza and bread with a natural starter.  I must say its been a humbling experience.  Sometimes great results and sometimes not, even though the technique and amounts have been identical.  While trying to master the art of using natural starters I was wondering about this question.

The recommendation is to feed the starter and then use it when it peaks.  Why do we need to use the starter at its peak?  If it wasn't used at its peak wouldn't the only difference be that you will add some time to the raise period since the starter would need some extra time as compared to a fully active starter?

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Regards,

Kosta

The notion behind using an active culture is to revive the yeast & lactobacilli that have become dormant during refrigeration.  The idea is to reach a high concentration of organisms that could have been damaged or killed.  By not using a properly activated culture you could potentially be using a culture containing alot of dead organisms which will definitely affect your end results.  Why risk it?  The dough preparation is such a lengthy process. 

[Pete-zza]

Kosta,

Some time ago, I wondered the same thing. So, I decided to conduct a simple experiment in which I used a small amount of a natural starter/preferment directly out of the refrigerator. The starter was an active starter, that is, it was regularly maintained, but just not at the time I decided to use it to make a pizza dough. In my case, I combined the starter with a small amount of flour and water (cold) to make a "prefermented dough" and allowed the prefermented dough to preferment overnight at room temperature before incorporating it into the final mix. I described the experiment I conducted at Reply 175 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg12748.html#msg12748. If you read that post, you will see that the dough fermentation was very labored and it took several hours for the dough to develop, with little noticeable expansion. Surprisingly, however, the results were very good. I did not conduct an experiment using an unrefreshed starter in a dough formulation from the outset, that is, without the overnight prefermentation, but I believe the principle you mentioned would still apply. However, it may take forever for the dough to properly develop to the usable state. Maybe sometime you can conduct such an experiment to test out your "theory".

Peter

[Infoodel]

Using a starter past it's peak has different implications depending on the amount of starter you're using in the dough.
If the dough calls for a lot of starter then a 'past-peak' starter can weaken the dough considerably (all that prefermented flour subject to excess protease). Also the flavour will be compromised ('off' flavours and high acidity)
If you're using a very small amount of starter then, as Pete showed in his experiment, you're going to deal with different (than expected) fermentation times. Any long ferment of this kind is highly sensitive to the amount/activity of initial leaven.
Ultimately it comes down to familiarity with your starter. Get to know it intimately and don't rely on your starter acting 'by the book'. Given a regular feeding schedule and regardless of provenance, it should eventually stabilize with a predictable cycle and unique balance of bacteria/yeast...which, I guess, is kind of what it's all about in the end.

Cheers,
Toby