Starters

[benk72]

Tony G recommends making a new starter the day before making your pizza dough. Is this what most of you that are using starters are doing or do you have a starter that you're consistently feeding. I'm not very familiar with preferments but am just starting to read about them. What is a consistent way to use a starter for someone making a large batch (about 60 dough balls at 240 grams each) once a week?

[Fat_Tony]

I believe you will need at least 3-7 days from when you begin your starter to cultivate the wild yeast needed in baking. There is a lot of conflicting info but that is mostly true. It all depends on the temperature that you let it sit at, etc, etc.. science. Either way I would begin your starter and let it sit out for a week at least at room temp, feed/discard daily. Then seal and keep refrigerated, feed weekly or 24hrs from the time you want to make your dough. So say you want to make your dough on Friday night, take your starter out of the fridge on Thursday night, discard and feed. Let sit at room temp lightly covered (cheesecloth or tissue paper with an elastic work well.. basically you want the air to get in), 12hrs later discard and feed and let sit at room temp lightly covered again until Friday evening. By this time it will be bubbly and alive and ready for your dough recipe. Just make sure you save about 50g of the starter, seal tightly and refrigerate for next time.

I could be wrong here as I don't have a super amount of experience with this but that is the next method I am going to try for using preferments in making pizza dough.

[vtsteve]

Tony G recommends making a new starter the day before making your pizza dough. Is this what most of you that are using starters are doing or do you have a starter that you're consistently feeding. I'm not very familiar with preferments but am just starting to read about them. What is a consistent way to use a starter for someone making a large batch (about 60 dough balls at 240 grams each) once a week?

The Tony G "starter" is a preferment more commonly known as "poolish", which is made with commercial yeast. It's allowed to ferment for 12-16 hours before being mixed into the final dough. You need to make a fresh poolish (with more yeast) for each batch of dough.

Commercial yeast is a bit of a hothouse flower; it's a monoculture designed to reproduce *very* well under industrial conditions (sterile molasses slurry with oxygen bubbled through it). It doesn't do so well "in the wild" over the long term, and tends to die off/be outcompeted by truly wild organisms... but it's a very reliable gas-producer in the short term.


Most of the references to "starter" on this board are talking about "sourdough" or "wild yeast" cultures--they can be maintained on the countertop/in the fridge with simple feedings, because they are complete, stable communities of wild yeasts and symbiotic bacteria which will (mostly) resist contamination by outside organisms.