I know this seems a little late but I think we could all benefit if we define these terms in order to remove any confusion surrounding them.

What is a:

• new starter
• young starter
• active starter
• fresh starter
• old starter
• mature starter
• ripe starter

Thanks for participating. 

Oct 31, 2009  Changed title of thread so it is more easily located using the site search machine.  I may turn this into a FAQ or anyone wanting to make a FAQ should feel free to use the information.

I am beginning to bake from Jeffrey Hamelman's book Bread, have had two wonderful successes, but am terribly confused on how to come up with 2 tablespoons of mature culture required for the Whole-Wheat Levain as described on p 168.

1. I don't have to buy the mature culture, right?
2. I need to make the mature culture, right?
3. Am I supposed to use the instructions in the appendix of the book and then incorporate 2 tablespoons of it?
4. Is a mature culture different from a sourdough culture?

As I scoured the book going from section to section I simply could not figure out what it is that I am supposed to do in order to make this bread. My frustration partly means I'm learning, which is exciting, but I'm also frustrated.

 Could someone please help me (and reference the book if possible)?

 Kind regards,

AW

I work weekends. Sat. 0000-1200, Sun. 0000-1200, Mon. 0000-0700. This is an insanely great schedule for most purposes. But, like all schedules, it complicates and contorts things at times. So begins our story for today. Two weeks ago on a Friday at approximately 1300 CST there we sat with 3 hours to kill before needing to go to bed. I decided to break out the flour and make a quick loaf for test purposes. I began with the following.

I used to have two problems. The first was that I didn't bake frequently enough, so my culture would become essentially dead. The second was that I was getting rid of excess sourdough culture.

Currently I maintain 2 cultures. 1 spelt and 1 whole wheat. They taste really different.

Here's what I do to keep them vigorously active. 

About twice a week I make sourdough pancakes, one time with each culture. When I take the culture out, I replenish it with fresh flour and water.

Sourdough pancake (more like crepes) Recipe:

I’m finally getting around to posting Maggie Glezer’s firm sourdough starter recipe.  For those of you having problems with your starters you might wish to give this a try.  Most people here are using batter-style starters so it might be interesting to see if there is any discussion on firm starters.  Plus I need help in learning to convert properly for use in recipes which don’t use a firm starter and there are always questions that come up.