Does starter hydration affect yeast and bacteria balance?
Your experience lines up with the book. The hydration of a starter shifts its balance: a stiffer, drier starter at 50 to 60% hydration favors the yeast, while a very wet one pushes toward the lactic acid bacteria. So a drier starter working better for you makes sense, it is giving you stronger, more reliable leavening.
Answered by Hendrik, The Bread Code
From the book
To shift the tides even further, a real game changer for me has been to create a stiff sourdough starter. The stiff sourdough starter is at a hydration of around 50 %. By doing so your sourdough starter will favor yeast activity a lot more. Your doughs will be more fluffy and less sour for a given volume increase. I tested this by putting balloons over different glass jars. I used the same amount of flour for each of the samples. I tested a regular starter, a liquid starter and a stiff starter. The stiff starter by far created the most CO 2 compared to the other starters. As a consequence, the stiff starter balloon was inflated the most [ 37 ]. You can read more about the topic of stiff starters in Section 4.4 (Stiff starter) .
Where this was asked
Sourdough StarterRelated questions
Not quite your question? Ask Loafy