Tricia,
Use this link to help with any questions you may have. They explain things so well, they have better explanations than other site IMO. Go through everything, starters, recipes, troubleshooters... If it still is beyond you, I'll try my best to help. But, reading through this will give you a head start and an understanding about sour dough, cultures, starters...
Northwest Sourdough It's a really good place to learn.
This is from the above link in the starter section...
For 166 % hydration add: 1 cup (5 oz) flour (166% = 8 oz water / 5 oz flour)
For 100 % hydration add: 1 & 2/3 cup (8 oz)flour(100% = 8 oz water / 8 oz flour)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A
pre-ferment (pâte fermentée), also called a
sponge, a
starter, or the
mother dough is a
fermentation starter used in
bread baking. It usually consists of a simple mixture of
flour,
water, and a leavening agent (typically
yeast), and is added to bread dough before the
kneading and baking process as a substitute for yeast. Though they have declined in popularity as direct additions of yeast in bread recipes have streamlined the process on a commercial level, pre-ferments of various forms are widely used in artisanal bread recipes.
Using a pre-ferment and a longer fermentation in the breadmaking process gives greater complexity of flavor, through yeast- and bacterial-action, enhancing the flavour and keeping time of the finished product. The starter ingredients are mixed in a container at least three times bigger than the ingredients, to allow room for the starter to grow. The starter is left sitting at room temperature, up to 72 hours, before being added to the dough. Starters typically last three to five days,[
citation needed] but this time can be extended through
refrigeration and providing more water and flour until it is ready to be used. To add more flour and water, it is generally best advised to first reduce the amount of starter by half and replacing it with a 50-50 mix of flour and water.
There are several kinds of pre-ferment commonly used in bread baking:
- Sourdough starter is likely the oldest, being entirely reliant on wild yeasts present in the grain and local environment. Sourdough starters are maintained over long periods of time. The Boudin Bakery in San Francisco for example, has used the same starter dough for over 150 years. These starters generally have fairly complex microbiological makeups, most notably including wild yeasts, lactobacillus, and acetobacteria. A roughly synonymous term in French baking is levain.
- Old dough (pâte fermentée) sponges can be made with any sort of yeast, and essentially consist of a piece of dough reserved from a previous batch of bread, with more flour and water added in to feed the remaining yeast.
- Biga and poolish are terms used in Italian and French baking, respectively, for starters made with domestic baker's yeast. Poolish is usually a fairly wet starter (typically made with a one-part-flour-to-one-part-water ratio by weight), while biga can be wet or dry. The common, but undocumented, origin given for the poolish is that it was first used by Polish bakers around 1840, hence its name, and as a method was brought to France in the beginning of 1920s. "Poolish" however is an old English version of "Polish", whereas the term seems to be most used in France (where "polonais" is the word for "Polish"). There is not currently any credible explanation for the origin of the term.
Hope this helps. But I have a feeling it's too much info. (sorry
)
Sometimes, (and Janis and I have come across this) people talk about cultures or they may say seed culture, then others will say completely different things, seems there is a little confusion about the many words meaning one thing. I think it depends where you are from. But, you have us too, so you are not alone. We'll all learn together.
Janie
