Two Different Flavors?

Dear Nosey,

You say your two starters have different flavors: one is tangy and one buttery. Somewhere I read that if you want a tangier sourdough, one should add a bit of vinegar. What do you think?
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Dear Karen,

I have serious doubts about the vinegar thing. It is not food for the yeasts, or the lactobacilli, and all it adds is an artificially sour taste. The guy who is running 'Carl's friends' the 1847 Oregon Trail group agrees. I can see the point in putting in skim milk, instead of water, occasionally, because the skim milk (or dry milk powder is almost all lactose -- milk sugar -- and the little lactobacilli will think they've died and gone to heave, with pure food available to them.

It is the lactobacilli that cause the sour flavor, lactic acid, and in the case of the Columbia River culture, they are making butyric acid, I think, along with the sour lactic acid, which is the smell of fresh butter, and is very close to lactic acid in structure. That doesn't seem at all far-fetched to my chemist's mind.

Another tip that I've read over and over is to use potato water from boiling potatoes for mashed. That would also have gobs of free fruit sugars in it, without the contamination of potato yeasts and lactobacilli, because you've boiled the water and killed all the live flora and fauna that were on the potoatoes.

The advice to use rye flour, instead of white would work, because I think the rye flour has a different, much sourer culture of lactobacilli on it. But then, you will not have the same mainline culture that you started with. You will have inoculated your starter culture with the yeasts and bacteria from the rye flour. If you dplan to try that, feeding your starter with rye flours, first save some of your mainline starter in the freezer, so that you can get it back should your rye flour experiment not work out satisfactorily. Using dry milk powder, or skim milk just provides your CURRENT population of bacteria what they want and need to grow and prosper. That should make it sour enough.

Also, it is the amount of time that it rises that allows the full flavors to build and develop. Good bread doesn't lend itself to becoming fast food. It's mostly hurry up wait, anyhow -- mix, knead, wait, punch down, wait, shape, wait -- so just let your culturetake all the time it wants to do its thing, and I think you will be much happier with the developed flavors.