Tweaking and Tinkering - Whole Wheat

I've tried all of the recipes from the book that interested me, except for one that calls for sour cream.  I don't have any sour cream in the house, so that one will have to wait.  Now, it is time to fiddle with my existing recipes until they are perfected.

I'm going to start with my tried-and-true whole wheat recipe that I have been making for years with commercial yeast.  This is the first recipe that I used with my sourdough starter, but I supplemented it with commercial yeast.  Today, I'm going to try it with just sourdough yeast.

My book suggests that 1-1/2 cups of starter is about equivalent to a cup of flour and a cup of water.  My starter uses white flour, so I am adapting my old recipe as follows:

	Original recipe	Sourdough recipe
Sourdough starter	None	1 ½ Cup
Water	9 oz.	Start with none, and add as needed.
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼ cups	2 ¼  cups
White flour	1 ¼ cups	¼ cup
Salt	1 ½ tsp	1 ½ tsp
Butter	1 ½ Tbl	1 ½ Tbl
Honey	¼ cup	¼ cup
Yeast	2 ½ tsp	None

I prepare the starter as usual by taking 4 oz. of starter from the fridge, adding 4 oz. (3/4 Cup) white bread flour, and 4 oz. water.  I have been mixing this in the bread machine, but I am tired of my paddle getting glued to the pan by the sourdough starter, so today, I mixed it in a bowl.  I set the mixture in a warm place for about 8 hours until it doubles in bulk.  When I add the rest of the ingredients, I start by lubricating the spindle for the paddle with the butter and adding the sourdough starter last to keep it away from the paddle.

That extra ¼ cup of white flour was kind of a nuisance, and I needed to add another ounce of water. This is the dough ball before adding the 1 oz. (2 Tbl.) of water,

and this is after the water.

In the future, I am going to adjust the recipe so that I don't have to add any additional white flour. 

First, consider the guideline for how much flour and water is in 1 ½ cups of starter.  The book suggested that this amount of starter was equivalent to 1 cup of water and 1 cup of flour.  When I feed my starter, I add equal parts of flour and water by weight.  An ounce of water weighs an ounce, but four ounces of flour is only ¾ cup. So, 8 oz. of starter contains ¾ cup of flour and 4 oz. of water.  Therefore, my 12 oz. of starter in this recipe contains 1 and 1/8 cups of white flour and 6 oz. of water.  I think if I just skip the ¼ cup of white flour in the recipe, I'll be in good shape.  I'll try that next time.  I'll probably need to add some water, still.

This is the first week that I have put my starter on a diet.  In the past, I used 4 oz. for the recipe and discarded all but 4 oz. for feeding with 4 oz. of flour and 4 oz. of water.  I tried several experiments for using the discarded starter, pancakes, waffles, coffee cake.  I wasn't pleased with any of the results, so I decided to try to get my starter down to just 8 oz. after feeding by feeding it with just 2 oz. of flour and 2 oz. of water.  It didn't grow the way it used to.  The sponge for the recipe responded well, so I'm going to stick with this procedure until I run into trouble.

The result:

This weird shape is a sign that there was not enough water.  The yeast is fighting a dough that is too stiff.  This problem is especially apparent when viewed from the bottom.

The good news is that I succeeded in keeping the sourdough starter from gluing the paddle to the pan.

The other good news is that it tastes good and is not overly dense.  (Update after a few heavy sandwiches: Yes, it is too dense.)

I think next time I'll add 3 oz. of water right off the bat to get the total of 9 oz. that worked so well with the original recipe.

Next: Perfecting the recipe (well, not yet).