I’m new to this but after a month of discarding expensive flour, I maintained 60g of starter in the fridge.
A booster to the sourdough baking process is diastatic malt powder. It gives the starter yeasts some good old maltose to feed upon and it improves shelf life, flavor and browning. I add one tablespoon for 500g of flour or 1:2 tsp per cup flour. I make my own from wheat berries like those used to make my flour. Add too much and it will become gummy. I inoculate the wheat starter required with 20g of rye starter. It’s an aggressive critter so it gets things really bubbling fast.
I add the malt to the flours used in the one hour autolyze. After that, I form the dough into a 12x12 square, sprinkle on the salt then spread the starter over that then fold, poke and knead until everything is evenly distributed. Don’t worry about over working the dough. It’s almost impossible to do that anyway. An old kitchen tale.
Every 20 minutes for the next two hours, stretch and fold then drag the dough into a taught ball each time, covering and resting. It will flatten in between. After two hours, ferment until doubled. Shape as desired, proof covered until doubled and bake or refrigerate up to 3 days then bake. Works for me. The malt powder made a noticeable improvement of about 20% increase in both rise and spring.
April 12, 2022 at 10:29am
I’m new to this but after a month of discarding expensive flour, I maintained 60g of starter in the fridge.
A booster to the sourdough baking process is diastatic malt powder. It gives the starter yeasts some good old maltose to feed upon and it improves shelf life, flavor and browning. I add one tablespoon for 500g of flour or 1:2 tsp per cup flour. I make my own from wheat berries like those used to make my flour. Add too much and it will become gummy. I inoculate the wheat starter required with 20g of rye starter. It’s an aggressive critter so it gets things really bubbling fast.
I add the malt to the flours used in the one hour autolyze. After that, I form the dough into a 12x12 square, sprinkle on the salt then spread the starter over that then fold, poke and knead until everything is evenly distributed. Don’t worry about over working the dough. It’s almost impossible to do that anyway. An old kitchen tale.
Every 20 minutes for the next two hours, stretch and fold then drag the dough into a taught ball each time, covering and resting. It will flatten in between. After two hours, ferment until doubled. Shape as desired, proof covered until doubled and bake or refrigerate up to 3 days then bake. Works for me. The malt powder made a noticeable improvement of about 20% increase in both rise and spring.