Ask Allie

What is “Ask Allie”?

Ask Allie is our fermenting-related advice column, where you can ask all your fermenting, cooking, baking, and pantry-related questions to get digestible answers! No question about food is off limits!

To have your question answered in Ask Allie posts, please use the form on our website. If you prefer to be anonymous, just say so in the form and we’ll leave your name out when we answer it in the blog!

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Can you tell me the name of the type of acidophilus probiotic yogurt culture that does not require boiling the milk nor does not have the candida that causes fuzz in it? I would like a high acidophilus count.  I noticed there would be a problem with using the raw milk for yogurt making, like I planned. Is the same true for raw milk kefir?

— Taylor

Raw milk is fine for kefir, and also typically contains acidophilus; this particular culture can contain up to 61 different probiotic strains, but milk kefirs generally will have 30-50. With the mesophilic yogurts, you do need to “prep” some of the raw milk (about a quarter of it, on average) by heating (you can do this at lower pasteurization temperatures than you would with a thermophil), cooling, and inoculating before mixing into the rest of your raw. If that works for you, the mesophil yogurts we sell that contain L. acidophilus are A-fil, long skyr, and skyr.

I’m starting my sourdough today as my cultures just arrived, thank you! I was wondering once they are ready to be used may I marry them together to have a unique bread, I have the Icelandic, wild dark rye, and my culture.

— Robert

You sure can, Robert! I personally would tuck a little container of each of the starters you intend to mix into the freezer so you can revive them if you don’t care for the new starter and/or you just want to start them again at some point. But yep, mix away! Let us know, please, if you come up with something we need to taste!

I baked my first loaf of sourdough bread, It didn't have s real sourdough flavor. Have I done something wrong?

— Paul

Not at all, Paul! Often, a new culture will take some time to develop its sourness. Sourness often also changes seasonally, though I can’t tell you why that is. You might also check the What’s Your Flavor section of the website to make sure you hadn’t inadvertently chosen a mild starter.

 I've just got my first stater and I was wondering how to incorporate it into my pizza dough recipe. Thing is, I typically do a preferment and make that 20% of my dough recipe. Does a starter eliminate the need for a preferment, as it is basically the same thing, with a smaller volume? If that is the case, what is the best way to determine the volume of starter in comparison to the recipe? If it isn't the same, what would be the best way to determine the amount of starter to use, proportional to the preferment volume, or proportional to the recipe volume? Thank you for all your great articles and advice!

— Giorgio

First, Giorgio, you’re welcome!

On to the question:

I would do it exactly the same, where the starter eliminates the need for the preferment but fills that 20% gap. This would be the case with any bread you normally use a preferment for.

Regarding volumetric measurements, the general formula for conversions is:

1 packet of yeast + the recipe = 1 cup of starter + (the recipe - 3/4c flour - 1/2c water)

That said, I don’t know your recipe, so I would do this by weight and convert the weight of your preferment (assuming 100% hydration, which may not be the case) over to the respective weights of your flour and water components of the starter. For example, if your preferment (at 100%) is 200g, you’d instead use 200g of starter.

From there it gets a little more complicated, so you’ll want to break out your calculator to get your baker’s percentages in order. Example on this is that your preferment uses 150g of flour and 50 of water. You then would use 100g of starter and add in an extra 100g of flour to compensate for using 100% hydration sourdough instead of preferment. If you didn’t want to do that, you could instead build the starter to the hydration specified by your preferment’s recipe and use the starter, because it will be at the same hydration the recipe calls for in its yeast source.

I'm in the process of making my first batch of Buttermilk from your culture. What I am wondering is if this buttermilk will taste pretty much the same as the buttermilk that you can buy at the grocery store. I know the buttermilk at the grocery store is high in sodium and what I'm wondering is if this occurs naturally or is sodium added to the grocery store buttermilk and if not should I be adding sodium to my buttermilk when it's finished?

— Loretta

It should taste the same, and be mild and clean. Some buttermilk cultures have a gamey flavor to them, but this one does not. You can skip the salt; there’s really no reason to add it. If you like the saltiness of commercial buttermilk, feel free to salt away!