After a few attempts I was finally able to grow a couple of wild yeast starters. I have baked a couple of loafs already and the taste is great.

Now I am wondering on whether I should store the cultures at room temperature (I am in Los Angeles and temperatures are getting into the 80s or 90s now) or in the refrigerator? Right now I feed the cultures once every 3-4 days and store them in the fridge.

I finally managed to find some unglazed quarry stones and make my faux brick oven this weekend. I was amazed at the difference in the amount of rise I got, and also the beautiful color. I was so thrilled to pull those first loaves out of the oven..

The problem is, the taste. While I used to get the most wonderful sour taste out of my sour dough bread, lately, I have noticed less and less. At this point, my sourdough tastes about the same as if I was using regular baking yeast. I have never made sourdough and regular yeast bread at the same time, so I don't know if contamination is possible, or if the yeast that produced the delightful flavor at first have now died off.

Hi everybody,
I am also new to this site, and sort of new to baking bread, in other words I haven't done it in a while.
I have an amazing receipe for some authentic Finnish sourdough rye bread (the black stuff, the REAL deal :) and I am itching to try it. However, I haven't been able to find any coarse rye flower, just that tastless, powdery stuff. Does anyone know of a place in NYC where I could find some? I would really appreciate any help. For a reward I can share the receipe :)

Hey all! Some folks were asking me about my shaping and baking techniques, so here they are.

We're making 2 recipes. Sourdough Rye from Bread Alone, and Basic Sourdough Bread from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. The rye is made from my 100% rye starter named Clyde, the other from a white starter named Gertie, which was seeded with a bit of Clyde's leftover.

I've already made the rye dough, and it's gone through its first ferment. My hand is in the picture for scale.

I know, I said commecrial yeast and sourdough in the same sentence. Don't hit me! :)

My first successful starter came from the recipes and techniques in Bread Alone. The first step involved using a pinch of IDY (less than 1/16 tsp) along with the water and stone ground rye.

I've since used a bit of this starter to seed a white flour starter. Both starters are very healthy, and produce wonderful loaves (see my recent pictures in the photos forum). I never added any commercial yeast after the pinch at the start.

My only complaint is they add almost no sour flavor to the bread. I was thinking that the strain of yeast in IDY hasn't allowed the local yeasties to take over, but the sour flavor is from the bacteria, not the yeast, right?

This question was sent to me via email:

I have been making bread since the mid 1970's. During the past few
years, I have been experimenting with starters instead of using
variations on the straight yeast dough method.

More recently, I have been experimenting with starters, sour dough, and
related approaches based on recipes and instructions from several of
Peter Reinhart’s books. The bread usually comes out fine although
the process is labor-intensive and time-consuming.

With all of the reciepes in several of his books, I seem to wind up
throwing away a lot of starter or seed. Starting with a small
beginning batch, I let it rise. After the indicated period of time, I
work on it for a few minutes. Instructions say to let a portion of the
starter rise again and suggest that I can discard the rest that is not
needed. Too much starter retards growth of the yeast and the ripening
of the dough.

Am I reading the instructions correctly--does the starter/sour dough
method always give the cook excess dough at the end of each step or
rise that must be thrown out?

Thanks to whoever can provide an answer or guidance?

FYI Reinhart was on one of the cooking shows on NPR. Either he or the
host offered an email for listeners with questions. I asked this same
question but did not get an answer.

I believe the answer is yes, you always end up needing to discard some extra starter.

The last story I can find on NPR.org that Peter was in was this story about pizza from November. If anyone can find a more recent one, please post it.

So, I'm pretty new to the sourdough world, and very excited to set foot in the realm. I tried my own starter, per BBA, and didn't get results. I decided to take advice from several people and buy one. I received my starter 'flakes' in the mail on Monday and have been feeding my babies ever since. I decided at the same time that I would try to start my own starter again, per Sourdolady this time, and I'm seeing some activity, so that is hopeful. Anyway, I tend to give too much background.
I bought several pounds of organic rye and wheat berries recently. That resulted in me getting a grain mill soon after, of course. Well that arrived last night, and needless to say, I have some milled rye flour and wheat flour. What I'm wondering, after all my rambling, is do I need to add more water when feeding my sourdough starters? I currently have an all rye starter, that I fed last night and this morning with the freshly milled rye flour. It just seems to be kinda soupy, and then after sitting is more like a thick, thick paste. The same seems to hold true when feeding with the wheat berry flour. It's soupy then pretty dry by the time I'm ready to feed again. I'm just more used to the elastic look when I go to feed. I'd like to try making some sourdough this weekend, for the first time, and would love to use my own milled flour. Should I adjust hydration on the bread recipe as well to allow for the freshly ground flour?

Is there a limit to the number of times you can refresh a sourdough starter? I left mine for a while and took out a bit to restart a few days ago hoping to bake a loaf today. The consistency was really weird, almost as if the liquid and solid wouldn't combine no matter how much I mixed it and it hardly smelled like sourdough at all.

I've had it for about two years now and feed it regularly. Have I just lost it?

Hey, all! I've been making bread from my first successful starter. It's a 100% rye starter, and I've gotten great loaves from it.

Some of the loaves I want to try call for a plain white flour starter. So what do you think:

• Will a 100% rye starter be too strong a flavor for a traditional white flour sourdough?
• Can I activate my rye starter with plain bread flour to mellow it out?
• Can I use a bit of my rye starter as a seed and start feeing it with bread flour to make a regular starter?

I'll likely experiment with all of the above options, anyway, but I'd like to hear from anyone who's done such things.

Has anyone tried making sourdough bread using a lower protein flour - I've accidentally bought the wrong sort of flour in France for breadmaking! A combination of not having specs with me and not having good french...

The flour I've bought is 10% protein and the flour I normally use is about 12 / 13 %. Any idea what will happen if I use it?

Andrew