Answers

Can I use a rye starter to ferment whole wheat dough?

Yes, you can use your stiff rye starter to ferment a whole wheat dough, with no need to keep a separate wheat starter. Your starter adapts to whatever flour is in the dough it lands in, since the dough is really just a giant starter, so mixing flour types is completely fine. Over several bakes it will get even better at fermenting your wheat doughs.

Answered by Hendrik, The Bread Code

From the book

Simply take whatever starter you have left and feed it again. If you depleted all your starter you can cut a piece of your dough. The dough itself is nothing different than a gigantic starter. I recommend a 1:5:5 ratio like mentioned before. So take 1 piece of starter, feed with 5 parts of flour and 5 parts of water. If it is very hot where you live, or if you want to make the bread around 24 hours later after your last feeding, change the ratio. In that case I would go for a 1:10:10 ratio. Sometimes I don’t have enough starter. Then I even use a ratio of 1:50:50 or 1:100:100. Depending on how much new flour you feed it takes longer for your starter to be ready again.

Read the chapter: Making a sourdough starter

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