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need advice on maggie glezer sourdough starter

rubato456's picture
rubato456

need advice on maggie glezer sourdough starter

i need somee advice on the maggie glezer sourdough starter. i am at the part where i have firmeed up the starter and it is a round ball. she says after one day of fermentation like this it will not have risen at all but will be very gooey. she says to refresh and continue.....well the dough doesn't seem any different than a firm round ball like it was yesterday, not gooey at all. should i refresh or wait another day? the previous days seemed to look accoding to her comments, but once i got to the step where you throw away all but 30 grm and refresh such that it goes from a soft starter to a firm starter...that is where things don't look as they should. any advice would be appreciated! thanks! this is my first 'real starter....' i have the reinhart starter and la brea bakery starter going at the same time....in case one fails. oh i'll mention that the temp of my kitchen is about 75 deg in the morning and gets up to 79 in the afternoon (texas)

JIP's picture
JIP

                               Are you just converting some of your stndard starter or starting fresh?.  I did the conversionadn it has worked very well for me.  It takes a few days to get the levain up to strength for baking but is well worth it.  From what I remember as soon as I made the conversion the levain was dough from the start.

                      Now when I want to make bread I use the 3 day refresh and start the recipe from there.  I am actually in the middle of making the Columbia again and I was away for about 2 weeks so I came home and did 2 refreshments per day for 3 days 1 in the morning and one in the evening. 

                                 The refreshment I am using is the one from the book 10g levain/25g water/45g bread flour.  The last time I made this bread this method worked out very well for me.  So today being the third day I will make the starter for the bread which actually uses 30g starter and of course I will save the 10g to carry on the levain.  I hope this helps even a little anyway.

rubato456's picture
rubato456

this a new starter, from scratch.....and this is about the third or fourth day where she tells you to take 30 gms of the original mixture and toss the rest, add more flour and water, knead into a ball (the starter is now firm)....she said this should be gooey after one days time......but mine is not. i wasn't sure if i should wait until it got gooey or not. ......before i continued with the next refresh.  thanks so much for your advice....!! so how was it for you when you first started the starter......that is what i am needing to know.......

deborah

JIP's picture
JIP

Well my "normal" batter type starter was purchased from KAF and I really havenot dialed in exactly how it is supposed to feel or smell or anything yet.  I am still pretty new to being succesful with a starter I guess I really cheated but it is still alive after about a month or more so I guess that is an accompilshment.  My batter type starteris pretty gloppy and sticky the levain or firm starter that I mage from Gleezer's book was pretty much dough from the time I firt made it. This will be different from yours though as you are making it from scratch.  I would say have patience with what you have especially this time of year.  Temperatures are getting colder and rising times are going to be extended so do not be afraid to let things work for more time.  If I have learned one thing from working with sourdough it is patience.  When I first got things going with sourdough I tried the Silverton starter that wasted pounds and pounds of flour and the first time I baked with it things did not turn out exactly perfect at first and I threw it out.  Loking back I think if I had had a little mor paitience it would have been fine.  

rubato456's picture
rubato456

i don't know if it was because it had warmed up outside......it was over 80 degrees in the kitchen......the starter was puffy and gooey just like it was supposed to be......??

i ended up doing the refreshment 'on schedule' this morning but i did change one thing and maybe this plus the warmer temp made the difference......i noticed glezer said to do the refreshments w/ bread flour.....which i'm assuming is white bread flour. i had done my first refreshment with whole grain rye flour.....but when i looked carefully i noticed that all the refreshments are supposed to be done w/ bread flour, only in the initiation of the starter does she say to use rye flour......

so tomorrow when i refresh i'll do the white bread flour again and see what the result will be.....

thanks again for your comments. yes, i do think patience is a virtue w sour doughs....and i 'm going to need to cultivate this in myself! 

deborah

JIP's picture
JIP

Yes all refreshments are done with bread flour..

rubato456's picture
rubato456

 that the refreshments are done w/ white flour. i don't feel so alone in on my new and strange journey into the sourdough world!

deborah