----- Original Message -----
From: "Dick Adams" >
Newsgroups: rec.food.sourdough
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 3:41 PM
Subject: temperature therapy to modify starter charteristics



"no" > wrote in message
t...

> Every few years I take a pinch of one of the several Carl's baggies I've
> collected and make a working starter. For a few batches is's great: rise
> time, including sponge, first rise, and final rise total about 24 hours.
> The flavor and texture is everything I could want. Without fail, though,
> within a few weeks it evolves into a fast-rising, bland tasting starter
> that's not much better than commercial yeast. I want to coax out my
> starter's inner Carl, if it's still there.

>> A dry start is good for a while, like weeks, maybe months. Conceivably,
i>> t may be revived with difficulty after the passage of years. Carl's
starts
>> are intended to be used at once, not stored for years. Refreshed
>> starter,
>> ready for breadmaking, is not very sour at all.

Thanks for the reply. I know that Carl's starter is not meant to last for
years, but I have successfully revived is several times from
several-year-old SASEs. It wasn't any easier or harder working with the
dried starter well past its due date. Maybe I just got lucky.

:

>> One can get a new Carl's start by sending a SASE to the right place.
>> But,
>> from your words, it would appear that Carl's is not what you want. Carl
>> did not intend for people to eat his starter, or that it be sour. The
>> intent is
>> that the bread made from it can, if desired, be made to be sour.


I don't want to eat the starter, and I don't want the starter to be more
sour. Instead of "bland tasting starter" in my original post I should have
said "starter that makes bland-tasting bread." What I'm trying to do is
keep baking bread with it that's as good as the first few batches after a
fresh Carl's revival. As I said, the first few batches come out just right
and then my attempts to continue the line appear to fail, resulting in a
fast rising, less flavorfull loaf. I suppose I could just throw up my hands
and keep starting over with fresh dried starter, but hoped to find a way to
maintain or even improve upon (to my own taste) the starter characteristics
by changing the way I propogate the starter. Temperature seemed like a
reasonable variable to work with first.

>> Culturing at temperature over 90°F. causes the lactobacteria to drop out.
That's why I picked 85 degrees, which some site seemed to indicate was
optimal for the author's idea of good.

>> Please see http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/64/7/2616.

This looks really interesting, thanks!

>> Sour loaves can be made from starter cultured at room temperature.

My first few fresh Carl's starts do, untill the inevitable mutation.

>> Sour bricks are made from sour starter.
made a few of those for sure.

>> It takes a while for the nOObies to find out how to sustain a long enough
>> rise for >> sourness to develop, and to learn that ready starter is not
>> sour starter..

That's what I'm trying to figure out. Thanks for the pointers!

Davey


--
Dicky