Does it ever happen to you that you feel like making bread for dinner but you haven’t fed your starter? Or you have quite a lot of starter discard sitting in the corner of your fridge and you don’t know what to do with it? Well, there’s a quick fix for those situations – use whatever you have and add a tiny bit of instant yeast.
The other day after work, a sudden craving for bread hit me. All I had was the mother starter in the fridge which I just fed the day before. I used most of the mother starter for my bread and with the addition of instant yeast, I had the bread baked in the evening. Totally nailed it!
The bread I made was grilled capsicum, mixed herbs and parmesan hybrid sourdough.
How can I fast jump to bread bread-making stage when I don’t have enough starter?
I’d add 0.5% – 1% instant yeast, depending on how much starter you have in the dough and how much faster you’d like the dough to get ready for baking, to my dough and continue the process as usual,
For most yeasted bread, 1% of instant yeast is enough to leaven the dough.
Below is my recipe for grilled capsicum, mixed herbs and parmesan hybrid sourdough. Normally I use 30% starter in my sourdoughs; however, I only have 15% starter here. Also, I would like my bread to get ready as soon as possible. Under those conditions, I chose to apply an extra 1% instant yeast in this recipe.
grilled capsicum, mixed herbs and parmesan sourdough recipe
| weight | ingredients | baker’s percentage |
| 200 g | baker’s flour (12.5% protein) | 50% |
| 200 g | heritage flour (13.2% protein) | 50% |
| 300 g | water | 75% |
| 60 g | starter | 15% |
| 4 g | instant yeast | 1% |
| 8 g | salt | 2% |
| 20 g | grated parmesan | 5% |
| 60 g | grilled capsicum (store-bought or homemade) | 15% |
| 2 g | mixed herbs | 0.5% |
| total 865g |
workflow
| 14:30 | Mix flour, water(save some for later, bassinage) and unfed starter until a dough forms. Leave aside, cover with a tea towel and fermentolyse for 30 minutes. |
| 15:00 | Add instant yeast to the remaining water, and bloom for 2 minutes. Continue mixing the dough. Slowly add in yeast water. Mix until medium gluten development. Add salt and resume mixing. Windowpane test: make sure the gluten is well-developed. Fold in inclusion before transferring to a container. |
| 15:10 | Bulk fermentation starts. Perform coil fold 3 times with 30 minutes intervals. |
| 17:40 | Final shape |
| 17:50 | Final proof |
| 18:30 | Pre heat oven and iron cast bread pan |
| 19:30 | Score bread. Bake at 250 degrees, lid on, 25 minutes. Another 20-25 minutes at 230 degrees without lid. |
Notes
* If you have some discarded starter, use the above method. Although the discard may not be able to help leaven the bread, the fermented flavour will improve your bread profile no matter what.
* Here, I mix flour, water and unfed starter together at the beginning instead of just flour and water. Once the starter is added to the dough, the fermentation is commenced. As I’d like my dough to get ready faster, I apply fermentolyse here.
* If you are not in a rush, and you would like to do a cold proving to enhance the flavour, be my guest. Perform two shapings, and then transfer the dough into the fridge for 12-18 hours and bake it the next day.
* With the addition of instant yeast, the fermentation time will shorten dramatically. Keep an eye on the dough behavior to avoid overproving.
* I usually fold in the inclusion (capsicum, mixed herbs and grated parmesan) after the gluten is well developed. After the dough is ready, I’ll spread oil on the bench and then spread the dough out to a rectangular shape on the bench. Then I sprinkle the inclusions on the dough and fold both sides into the middle. Add more inclusion to the dough and fold it again. This folding process is also called “lamination“.
At the end
Sourdough-making requires planning ahead. If you are running out of time, give this method a try. It will save your day!
