Well, it's day 6 and I have no idea what's going on with my little buckaroo. I stir it up, dump all but 1/4 cup, add 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup water, stir it up again, and all it does is make a layer of hooch after a few hours. I could swear that it grew to about 3 times its size on day 4, but I'm basing that on the residue on the sides of the container. I never actually saw it grow. I've kept a closer eye on it since then, and all it does is bubble some -- not a lot -- and form a layer of hooch. If it grows, it does it in the 10 minutes I'm not looking. I believe it's not growing at all.

I have no idea why it won't show more activity. I started out following S. John Ross' instructions, feeding once a day. On day 4 I switched from rye flour to KA AP flour. That may have been a mistake. I also upped the feeding from once a day to twice a day, and now I just get hooch quicker than I did before.

I'm going to continue journaling about this in just this one blog entry, using the comments below to update it. The performance isn't worth a new blog entry every day.

3/11/08 - 9:30 pm -- My little buckaroo didn't do much after last night's feeding -- he grew a tiny little bit for a little while, then went back to his original size. When I went to feed him tonight, he had a gajillion itty bitty bubbles all through him. The growth and the bubbles were actually more than I expected since I've read that after the early bacterial activity, the starter might go flat and do nothing for a couple of days. So happy to see activity. Stirred him up, dumped all but 1/4 cup, then fed with 1/2 c each of KA AP flour and water.

3/10/08 - 9:30 pm (at the 48 hour mark) -- Had a little bit of excitement this morning, but I believe my little buckaroo was just having some bacteria activity. At tonight's feeding, he was still bubbly, but had long since fallen back to his original size. No yeasty smell yet. Nor should I expect one yet, it's just too early. So I dumped out all but a quarter of a cup and added another 1/2 cup of rye flour and 5 oz of water. Stirred it up well and will check on it in about an hour as I suspect he'll need more water.

3/10/08 - 8:30 am -- The starter was all bubbly and had puffed up to twice its original size! I'm so glad I marked the container last night. It hasn't even been 48 hours yet, right?

3/9/08 - 9:30 pm

Dumped half, added 1/2 c rye flour and 2/3 c of water, stirred the dickens out of it. Now it's back on top of the fridge with a double layer of cheesecloth over it.

Increased the amount of water because the rye flour really sucks it up and, before dumping half, was more of a gloppy paste than a batter consistency.

EDIT:  About 3 hours later, checked on my little buckaroo and he was all stiff, not batter-y, so I stirred in 3 more ounces of water.  Marked his level on the side of the container.  Probably too early to do that, but oh well.

Ok, I give in. Everywhere I turn, I encounter a discussion on how easy it is to make your own sourdough starter, especially using rye flour. I happen to have a new bag of stone ground rye flour. So, with a good rye and some tepid bottled water as the bait, I'm going to cleverly lure the elusive wild South Texas yeasties into my magic bowl and create my very own sourdough starter.

This is from yesterday's baking session using the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes recipes -- an epi and 2 small loaves of olive bread using some totally delicious kalamata olives I had to scour the city to find. What's wrong with these grocers? The dough for the olive bread was 11 days old. Great oven spring!