This is so aromatic and strong starter, it can be used for both rye and wheat bread. For those, who want less sourness in their bread - it won't work. This starter is supposed to be sour, because first of all it's maintained to work for rye bread.
When we deal with rye flour, we work with its carbohydrates complex🧐, rye flour has very few gluten that's shy it can't build strong gluten chains🔗, not like in wheat dough.
📝Beta amylase in rye dough during its fermentative process produces lots of dextrins. Those dextrins make rye dough very sticky. As a result rye bread after baking can also be very-very sticky and unpleasant🤨
The only way to overcome this is to create a high level of acidity in the starter and in the dough, because beta amylase doesn't work well in high acidity.
📌Rye starter can give us such high acidity, in every recipe where the percentage of rye flour is 50% and higher, we should use rye starter, in order to avoid this sticky crumb.
Can rye sourdough starter be not sour enough? Yes, it can, that's why bakers sometimes don't get great results in their rye breads even while using rye starter.
At every step, the level of acidity should be higher than we want to feel it in our baked bread: the starter, that we take to the dough, or the preferment, then our dough, all of them should have a good acidity. But not too much, too high acidity will result in defects of bread crumb and too sour taste.
✅I usually keep my rye starter in the fridge, and refresh it once in 1-2 weeks. When I take it out of the fridge, I feed it 1:1:1 for 12 hours (the temperature in my kitchen is 76° F (24-25°C), then I feed my starter 2 more times every 12 h with a ratio 1:2:2, and after those 3 feedings it's ready for working with rye dough. I use organic whole grain rye flour for the starter.
When the starter is ready to go to the fridge, I feed it 1:2:2, let it rise on a counter for 2-3 h, and then put it into the fridge on the shelf, where the temperature is around 46-50° F (8-10° C).
And what about you, do you use rye starter? Is it active enough? What ratio and schedule do you prefer for its maintenance? Will be glad to know about your experience😉
