The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

New to Sourdough

BelindaClem's picture
BelindaClem

New to Sourdough

Right now I have my first starter going at home.  I made it with equal parts flour and water (and yes I cheated and added a pack of commercial yeast).  I have been feeding it daily but I am not sure if I should be feeding it daily?  Some websites say to feed it daily, twice a day, every other day.  I made my first loaf last night and it was simply made with flour, starter, and salt.  I made it with all purpose flour and since it seemed dry I added more starter.  The loaf was good but very sour, so I am going to try again with bread flour tonight and instead of adding more starter just a little water at a time.

My question is right now (in addition to how often I should be feeding it) is that my starter is being fed white all purpose flour and because my husband is a diabetic I would like to switch to whole wheat.  Do I have to start a new starter if I want to do whole wheat or just start feeding it whole wheat flour?

Ford's picture
Ford

You didn't cheat by adding commercial yeast, you slowed the process of making a sourdough starter.  I suggest you start over.   Try the "pineapple solution" method.  Search for it in the search box, upper right of this page.

Ford

chrisf's picture
chrisf

I made a new starter recently using some whole grain wheat and spelt with pineapple juice following the procedure outlined in the post mentioned by Ford. Very easy to follow and I had great results.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

you can switch to whole wheat at any time.  Feed once a day if your temperatures hover around 75°F,  less if cooler, more if warmer.   Keep the culture small, by that I mean under one cup.  

The trick to dealing with the various recipes of making sourdough culture is to pick one and stick to it.  Don't change back and forth with methods.  Have patience.  The bugs do the work, you don't have to do anything if you don't want to.  Do loosely cover to keep out insects and prevent drying out.  

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Basic bread dough is flour, salt, yeast and water. If the dough is dry, add water, not more starter. That will hydrate it without making it more sour. Basically you're adding a lot more bacteria and yeast when you don't need to. Mini Oven wisely suggests sticking with one starter method / recipe. I suggest that, until you get the feel for the quirks of sourdough bread, you also try a very simple bread recipe too. There are many, but something like the following:

  • 1000 grams of flour (can be a blend of white and whole wheat, probably 800/200 to start with)
  • 600 to 650 grams of water (more if you use a higher percentage of whole wheat flour, and also if you get more comfortable with working with wetter dough)
  • 200 grams of active sourdough starter (half flour, half water by weight or maybe a bit higher percentage of flour to water, again by weight)
  • 20 grams of salt

Try this and see how it goes, then learn more about sourdough and start to vary the recipe to see what happens!

Ru007's picture
Ru007

in the fridge and feed it once in while (its been 7 weeks now), i just feed it when it runs low.

How often do you plan on baking? If youre not baking very often you can't keep your starter in the fridge and feed it way less often.

Have a look at this post from Dabrownman (this is how i maintain my starter):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/40918/no-muss-no-fuss-starter

I use this to make all my loaves. I think you could probably keep a white starter to make your whole wheat loaves. All you have to do is use a very small amount of starter for the levain build and do the builds using whole wheat flour. You'll end up with barely any white flour in the loaf.

I use 6g -10g of starter for each loaf to build up my levain, i just feed the starter the right type of flour for the loaf i'm making.

Happy baking!

 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

"loaf made with flour starter and salt... I'm thinking this is a very wet sourdough culture,  One of the very liquid ones kept in a gallon jar.  Am I right?   Then one takes several cups of starter (which is mostly water) and add flour and salt.  

Made with equal parts...  equal parts cups or weight?  if weight, then I would support adding more water to a dry dough. If cups then it's a wet starter.  (which also means that there is twice as much water as flour in the starter.)