Howdy y'all from Houston
... actually I don't talk like that, being from the Bronx, but I've been in Texas for the past 28 years. I started baking bread about 35 years ago, at which time my bible was the Tassajara bread book. I'll go long periods where I don't bake: it gets pretty hot down here! But the past few months I've had a lot of time on my hands, and been fairly active. I found this site by accident, and think it's absolutely fabulous. I was looking for bagel recipes, and found a thread that allowed me to produce a product much like what I grew up with. I've been trying a few breads from Reinhart's Whole Grain book with pretty good success. However, I tried to build a starter from scratch following his recipe, and have given up after a few failures. I look forward to learning a lot more from the good folks on this forum.
Andy
Welcome. It does get hot here. I actually live in Spring. But I did get a starter going here. I had to use the pineapple juice deal though. I still actually have it alive. Shocking. Enjoy the site. There are lots of great people hanging around here with LOTS of excellent info.
janij:
Thanks for the welcome! Up until a couple of months ago, I was working in Spring. I tried the recipe in Peter Reinhart's new whole grain book for a starter, using pineapple juice as well. The second try, it was going great until Phase 4, when it just went dormant. It's hard to believe it didn't have enough nutrition, so I suspected the pH. In any case, there's loads of great info on starters on this site, so I'll be giving it another go real soon.
whole wheat or rye? I have had the best luck with rye. I keep my starter feed on rye now.
I've used wheat. I was going to do a rye starter for rye breads, but was interested in trying wheat breads first. I'll give rye a try.