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!

Due to increased submissions during the Covid-19 pandemic, many of you will receive an emailed reply prior to your question hitting the blog if I think you need an immediate answer. I will also, as needed answer way more questions than the non-pandemic 3-4 question columns.

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! Note that some submissions may be edited for clarity.

For troubleshooting active issues with a culture you’re working with, please write us at support@positivelyprobiotic.com - you’ll get your answer faster that way!

This is the single most important question I’m answering today.

Is Einkorn Starter ok for gluten sensitive people. I have been told some GF people eat einkorn without issue. Curious if you have received any feedback. Otherwise I might order your GF starter today too. Thanks!

— Gina

Einkorn is a type of wheat. Although it has less gluten than common wheat, it does still have it. If GF eaters are eating einkorn and it’s fine for them, they’re able to do this because they have no medical reason to avoid gluten. People with wheat allergies, Celiac disease, and lower-grade gluten intolerance than Celiac absolutely cannot consume einkorn. Here’re a blog post on our site where I’ve written about this. The link explains the differences between all the wheats humans commonly eat, and it also explains why some people legitimately need to eat gf, versus voluntarily eschewing it.

The long and short, though, is if you’re ordering for someone in your life who medically needs to be gf, please make sure you get them one of the gf starters we offer in addition to whatever else you had already selected. If they’re voluntarily gf, I’d just check with them and find out their feelings on the matter.

I really want to make pizza dough and cinnamon rolls. I had no idea there are different yeasts and what kind I need. Somehow I decided to order sourdough starter and do not know how to use it. It looks to me I can only make Sourdough bread, and I still do not understand how to do that. I am really not interested in making anything else I wanted to back with my own all purpose flour. Please give me direction of what I can bake with this and direction on how. Thank you you in advance I am a new bee :)

— Barbara

First, I want you to relax with your new knowledge that baking is way more flexible than most people will give it credit for! Sourdough start can be used in place of any commercial recipe that requires yeast. The standard formula for volumetric measuring is 1 cup sourdough starter = 3/4 cup flour + 1/2 cup water + 1 packet of commercial yeast in every recipe you want to convert. Note that your rise times will be longer than the recipe says they should be.

If you’re measuring by weight, you’ll first weigh out your starter. Once you’ve done that, you divide that amount in half and use it to “replace” that much of each water and flour. Leave out the commercial yeast the recipe calls for, as well.

If you want recipes that call for sourdough starter from the onset, here’s one for pizza and one for cinnamon buns! In most situations where you see a recipe using a different kind of wheat flour than what you have, you can still use all-purpose. The cinnamon buns recipe linked lists using 2 kinds of flour, including white whole wheat, but you can sub all-purpose equally for white whole wheat (red whole wheat requires a slightly different calculation, but not enough to be worried about). Hope this helps!

I'm brand new to baking with sourdough starters. My first goal is to choose a starter yeast for german rye bread. I think the Bavarian starter might be a good choice (Would you agree?) but I'm also wondering if there's a good multi-purpose choice... say for rye bread and/or whole wheat. Hubby likes not too sour, but I'm game for anything. Do you have any recommendations for a multipurpose starter?

— Caroline

Most people really do only need one kind of sourdough starter, unless their baking philosophy leans toward purism. In a situation where I wanted just one new pet to care for, I personally would go with an all-purpose based starter, because it IS the multitasker here. In your particular situation, that will be important because all of our rye starters are pretty sour and we want hubs to be able to eat the bread too. If what you’re looking for is a starter that does actually hail from Germany, yes to Bavarian. If you just want what I think is our best starter, you’ll go with the Egyptian. Because I’m still in the process of working through all of our starters for product description revisions and because I simply need to understand every culture we sell, I haven’t tried all of them yet and had to dry the Egyptian so I wouldn’t ignore them all in favor of just the one starter. But of the ones I have processed, the Egyptian is the most remarkable. I’ve been baking for around 40 years, and I’ve never encountered another starter that works like this one. It has pronounced sourness, but not too much, and it has this weird, creamy texture it imparts on breads and (oddly) on the flavor. It’s balanced and well-rounded, and it is the only starter I’ve ever met that really wants to pretend it’s commercial yeast. In a 4-hour rise, it gets 1.5-2x the rise I’ve seen from any other starter. So if you’re doing just one, this is my vote. 

No matter what you choose, though, you can feed any starter with any kind of flour. If it’s for a flour you don’t have (or don’t want to use right now), only use half of the packet and save the other half in the freezer so you’ve got a pure culture for when you’ve got the intended flour again. If you want a rye starter and a multi-purpose one, I would go with Egyptian (of course) for the multi-purpose and then either do the Swedish rye now, or give us a little bit so we can get our German rye starter ready for sale. We do have one, but it’s not at proper production levels to be listed on the site yet because of the current volume of orders on some of the others.

Hi Allie! I ordered Apple Cider Vinegar, Jun, or Kombucha "Mother/SCOBY." I am completely new to this! I do not understand the difference between "Mother/SCOBY" and "starter." How much kombucha/vinegar/jun can the scoby/mother brew? Can I use sweeteners that aren’t sugar to brew? Should I have ordered something else to get started? It says to Activate upon delivery. How should I be storing this and how long do I have to use this before it is too late? What if I don’t have the kind of tea my kombucha requires? Thanks!

— Several of you

The “mother,” “mov,” or “SCOBY” is the pellicle of the vinegar, jun, or kombucha, which is a byproduct of the fermentation process. The starter itself is unpasteurized vinegar/jun/kombucha! Here’s a wiki link to give you more detail on the mother/SCOBY itself.

You do not need to order two things from us. If you order the vinegar, jun, or kombucha with mother/SCOBY, you’re getting both the starter vinegar/tea and a pellicle. If you order just the starter, then there will be no pellicle. It’s important to note that you do not need a pellicle. We actually prefer that people order the (less expensive) pellicle-free starter, but still offer starter with pellicle for people who just need to have a tangible marker that things are happening! Little known fact: we brew our pellicles separately from our starter teas or vinegars, because pellicles take a long time to develop relative to the rate at which the vinegar, kombucha, or jun starter takes to ferment into your finished product!

Yes, that’s correct - you do not need the pellicle. While you can brew without starter tea/vinegar and with a pellicle only, it takes a looooooooooooong time. It took me around 4-5 months to brew a single litre of kombucha using the pellicle only, whereas that takes about a week if you’re using just the starter tea. How much starter tea you need to brew a given amount varies, though you should expect to need a full cup of it to brew a gallon.

For brewing, with vinegar you need the juice, cider, or wine, no sugar added. For kombucha, yes it has to be sugar. If you want to use honey, you need a jun culture instead of kombucha (and jun cannot be brewed with anything but honey). I know that’s inconvenient to need different sweeteners for different products, but each type of culture has vastly different needs based on its microbial makeup and they will starve if not fed the right food.

Although it’s ideal to activate immediately, you can let it sit a good while before you do so. I store my finished vinegars and kombuchas in sealed jugs or jars, because sealing them stops fermentation. I once received a SCOBY (same one referenced above) from a dear friend overseas, but the starter tea had leaked out during transit. I was a bit overwhelmed with life in general when it arrived, so I put it in a jar with a tight lid, where it sat for several months as I avoided looking at it so as to pretend I didn’t feel guilty that I’d left it alone and unfermented for so long. Months. I don’t want to say how many, for obvious reasons. But yeah, you’re good if you need a while to get to it. Please do not refrigerate the SCOBYs/MOVs themselves. They don’t handle cold well. If you just got starter, though, that you can refrigerate (though you don’t have to). I keep various starter teas I want out of my house both in the fridge and in the pantry, depending on where their space consumption will affect me the least at a given time.

You can use any tea for any kombucha starter. That said, it will not produce the type of kombucha you bought that specific SCOBY and starter for. What I personally would do, if the type of kombucha matters to you, is store half of the starter tea in a jar somewhere (refrigerated or not) until you have the tea you want, and use the rest with the tea you have. When the desired tea is available to you again, you can start that last half of starter tea, and you’ll now just have two different kinds of kombucha you’re brewing!

What is the difference between the Dahi heirloom and Malai style starters? Is the Malai style from India as well?

— Kiran

In traditional Indian preparations, these two yogurts are made differently, but both of these are from India, yes. The malai is substantially less sour, which is the primary difference for our purposes since we prepare them the same way.

Got got my sourdough starter armed for baking finally and was wondering if you had a GF bread recipe you could share. After reading though the starter instructions and a lot of your blog (which is great) I couldn’t find one specifically for GF. Thanks for the help!

— Mike

We have three! This recipe is for a standard loaf, and this one is for muffins! Both of these are, in my opinion, challenging to make. We also have a GF “rye” loaf recipe for you! Keep an eye on the blog, because we are working hard at developing more GF recipes for y’all!

Do you store the leftover yogurt for the next batch in the fridge or room temperature? Only asking because the instructions say the culture lives between 70-78°F.

— Allan

The first 2 times you make it, I would take a culture to keep in the freezer, and one that stays in the fridge to make the next batch with. I find that sometimes, I am not as on the ball as I would like to be, and wind up needing those frozen backups! This is fine for all yogurts, but do not store them at room temp. They will keep fermenting/overfermenting at room temp, which over time can weaken the culture pretty dramatically.

For mesophils, since that’s what you’re asking about, it should be noted that you don’t need to bring your milk/cream/whatever up to room temp before culturing. It’s ideal, but I personally pour straight from the fridge.