Problem

The Bread Matters Sourdough Starter is 100% rye and the recipe in the packet is for a pure rye bread. But you would prefer to make a wheat bread.

What to do

No problem. There is a recipe here. You refresh your rye starter with wheat flour to make a Production Sourdough that is mostly wheat. If you then use only wheat flour in the final dough, you’ll have a wheat sourdough bread with just a hint of rye flavour, but little of the stickier texture of rye.

What happens to the starter? After all, you’ve mixed a rye starter with wheat flour, so any residue of the PS that you keep with be a hybrid wheat-rye starter. You have two options:

  1. If you don’t want to keep a hybrid starter going, then simply adjust the amount of PS that you produce and use it all up in the final dough.
  2. If you do want to keep this hybrid wheat-rye starter, put it in a separate tub in the fridge (and label it). If you subsequently refresh it again with wheat flour, it will quickly become a virtually 100% wheat sourdough. Similarly, if you were to refresh it a couple of times with spelt flour, it would take on the character of a spelt sourdough, i.e. the species and strains of yeasts and bacteria would reflect the particular conditions created by your choice of flour.If you want to keep a pure rye starter going (say because you want to be able to make a guaranteed wheat-free loaf from time to time), bear these points in mind:
  3. Don’t use up all your rye starter in initiating a hybrid wheat-rye one. Keep a little back in your dedicated rye starter tub.
  4. You may therefore need to do an ‘interim’ refreshment to bulk up the remains of your rye starter so that you have enough next time you plan to use it to make bread. Follow the basic instructions that came with the original starter or as given in ‘Why won’t my starter eventually run out?’ below. Adjust the amounts to ensure that you don’t end up with too much starter.