White Rice Starter Sourdough Loaf

After seeing WanyeKest's beautiful loaf made with a black rice flour starter (at https://weightloss-slim.fit/node/73240/23-black-rice-pain-au-levain%3C/a%3E%29 I wanted to try some non-wheat starters myself. I don't have any black rice flour, so I started with some white rice flour I've got. I didn't expect it to add much if any flavor (unlike the black rice) but it would be a beginning.

To get the starter going, I took a little dab of my standard white AP starter and combined it with some white rice flour and water at 100% hydration. It was hard to see if this became active so the next day I added more rice flour and water. After a long wait it started generating gas and even rose quite a bit. I refreshed it again, let it mature, and after too many hours later mixed into a standard 70% hydration 100% bread flour dough using only 300g flour, which would make a smallish loaf. I used 30% of the bread flour worth of starter. I did two S&F sessions over the next hour and three quarters. No more were needed.

Well, nothing happened for hours and hours. After 8 hours on the bench at 72 deg F I could see a few tiny bubbles through the side of the BF tub. I went to bed.

In the morning after 15 hours of BF, I was amazed to see that the dough had tripled in size. I formed it into a batarde, and the dough was so elastic that it insisted on being a very short stubby cylinder. I persuaded it that it would be happier if it slimmed down a little. I proofed this loaf free-standing covered with plastic wrap.

After nearly 2 hours I uncovered the loaf for 10 minutes then scored and baked it with steam at 425 def F/220C for 22 minutes. It looked done, and the internal temperature said done, but in fact I should have left it in longer because it still had a lot of moisture.

The crumb looks good but came out fairly soft, no doubt because of all the non-gluten-forming flour. Otherwise it's a very satisfactory loaf of bread. It's got as much volume as I have ever gotten from a loaf with this amount of flour. The dough was easy to handle, and the bread tastes good - the white rice doesn't seem to have brought much flavor that I can tell.

So score one for the non-wheat starter!

TomP

My starter can be fed any flour and it'll happily munch its way through it all. The only time i've ever experienced a lag when changing flour was with rice flour. My starter sulks for the first 12 hours and doesn't do much but by the 24 hour mark it perks up and begins behaving like a normal starter. Continue to feed it rice flour and it's back to its usual self.

Lovely crumb and nice thin crust indicating perfectly fermented. Very nice bake, Tom.

Thanks, Abe!

I thought I was done with the lags because the starter had already experienced them before finally springing to life. So I didn't expect to encounter a long one again.

Today, a day later, the flavor of this loaf has changed and improved. I cannot describe the difference but it seems richer, with new tones I haven't tasted before.