Hi everyone, I`m a complete newbie on this site, and am just growing my first starter. This website has been a brilliant help in getting started. I`d just like to ask for a little advice, hopefully someone can lend me a hand...

My starter is 100% light rye, and is coming along nicely. Hopefully it should be ready to use in a couple of days or so. The recipe I`d like to use to make my first sourdough loaf uses white flour only though. My question is- will my rye starter work ok with a white flour recipe, or should I start feeding it to change it into a white flour starter before trying this recipe? 

Thanks in advance!

Al

Hi everyone. I'm new here and I want to start out by saying thanks for all the terrific information on this site. Thanks to you I am now sourdough-obsessed. lol. I wonder if all you sourdough experts could help me with a question I have.

I'm trying to figure out a feeding schedule and ratio for my 6-week-old starter that isn't too inconvenient for me or too unhealthy for the starter. I'd like to maintain a once-a-day feeding schedule at 75% hydration - once a day because that fits my schedule best, and 75% hydration because that's the level at which I feel I can best tell what shape my starter is in (I get a nice rise and fall at 75% - too thin and it doesn't rise, too thick and I'm afraid I won't be able to tell when it's overripe).

My question is, what is the smallest amount of starter I can get away with to inoculate my maintenance starter? In bwraith's blog post "Maintaining a 100% Hydration White Flour Starter," he says that he uses 5 grams of old starter to inoculate 20 grams of water and 25 grams of flour. Judging from the pictures of the bread he bakes, that seems to work just fine. But how much lower is it possible to go? 2 grams? 1 gram? 1/2 gram? At some point, if I remember correctly from biology 101 more years ago than I care to admit, the number of critters in the old starter will be so small that they might not contain whatever particular variant of yeast/bacteria that's responsible for making the starter taste like it does. As I rather like the taste of the bread I'm getting from my starter right now, I'd hate to inoculate with so small an amount that I risk having it change on me just because I used 1 gram of old starter instead of 4 or 5.

I'm no microbiologist, and I know some here are, so please correct me if I'm wrong about that. Or maybe there are so many zillions of organisms in a gram of starter that there's nothing to worry about. At any rate, has anyone tried using tiny amounts like 1 gram or even less for any length of time? If so, what were the results, both for the health and the distinctive flavor characteristics of the starter? I'm tempted to split my starter into several batches and compare the results doing 1/2, 1, and 2-gram inoculations for a week or so, but I don't know if I could sustain having to coddle 3 starters for that long.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I am considering trying to make Desem bread, and the recipe I've found for it requires 10# of freshly milled whole wheat flour to get it going (maybe 5# according to Mike)  I do have a friend with a (small) mill so I might be able to make this happen but I have two questions:

1.  Does anyone have a Desem starter they would be willing to share? (I wonder if it is dryable/freezable like a normal starter)

2.  Does anyone know what kind of wheat I am supposed to use and where to get it?  Do I use this: http://morebeer.com/view_product/17121/102155/Wheat ?

I wonder whether any one can give me some guidance on this. Rather stupidly, I embarked on raising a sourdough starter a week ago. It's active now, although not as active as I'd hoped it was going to be. Because of that, I've decided not to attempt this dough until I get back from a prolonged absence from home. I _could_ ask someone to feed it for me but think I'd be happier just putting it into slumber mode until I get back, in about 4 weeks time. Soooo, my question is whether it will be better to freeze it or to put it into the coldest corner of the fridge. It was one I started from scratch a week ago, it's been mildly active for the past 48 hours but only manages to raise a couple of very small and slow bubbles per minute. I suppose that suggests I should ask a second question - whether to continue feeding it before making it dormant/frozen or whether to leave it weak.

Any helpful advice appreciated.

Sojourner

PS. This is only my 2nd go at a starter. The last one, a few months ago, never becmae active and simply turned into pink/red gunk.

I have a starter and it does not seem to leaven properly. It bubbles just fine when I feed it however whenever I try to bake anything out of it, it just doent leaven properly. Now whenever I try making sourdough bread I have to add small amounts of comercial yeast just to be sure that my bread will rise. Is there anyway to make my starter stronger? If so, how? If anyone has any suggestions I would be very grateful to hear them.

I started my own sourdough starter a couple of months ago - simple organic white bread flour and water - and moved it into the fridge a couple of weeks later. It is lovely, lively and just the right level of sourness.
But I have recently started to notice something odd.
My method is to perpare a semi-stiff preferment, before mixing the final dough, i usually don't knead it much, but rather let it rise for 8-12 hours with random folding in between. The folds usualy quite clearly make the dough stronger and smoother, but recently it feels like the opposite is happening. The folds or short kneads seem to make the dough "break up" - instead of the surface becoming smooth it starts to break up, and the dough becomes more sticky each time. It feels like perhaps somehow the gluten isn't strong enough - and i'm not handling it too roughly.
I am perplexed as the first month or so, even after moving the starter to the fridge, it was working so perfectly, but now it's getting more and more frustrating.
The final bread still turns out fine - if only after a bit more effort: i've had to reduce hidration, retard it, increase proofing time, because it somehow doens't have the upmf anymore. But the final bread still tastes lovely i.e. I haven't noticed any increase in sourness or anything like that.
Any ideas? Will be greatly appreciated!
Maja.

Greetings, everyone.  I am new to the site and relatively new to baking.  I've been learning breadmaking by perusing a bunch of sourdough blogs and also reading Jeffrey Hamelman's "Bread" book.

Last weekened, I started a 66% Rye Sourdough that is listed in his Sourdough Rye chapter.  It's proofing in the fridge right now, and I was amazed at its transformation this morning from essentially a giant lump of paste to something that looks like bread.  I'm really hoping it turns out nicely when I bake it later today. (I had to stick it in the fridge because of that whole having to go to work thing, otherwise, it would have been done baking by now)

I am surprised that the recipe didn't call for any kneading at all.  I was figuring I'd at least have to do one stretch and fold or something.

Anyway, one thing that I wanted to ask is... What do I do with the 2 tablespoons of paste I was told to save from this recipe?  Do I feed it like a sourdough starter, with Rye flour?  Does it stay pasty like this?  Can I go from here and make some of his other breads that require a Rye sour as an ingredient?  Do I need to feed it first?

Also, since I have started baking sourdough bread, I find myself getting up at 3am to do something.  This morning it was to add the rest of the flour to the Rye starter I had going (the paste) so that 2 hours later, when I woke up, I could drop it into my Banneton for proofing.  Is this behavior normal?  :)

Happy Baking,

Steve

So far, I've been relying on reading and recipies (more or less) to slog my way through the sourdough learning curve. But, here's a question I don't remember seeing addressed.

When building a bread recipe, is there a rule of thumb for how much of the flour is from the starter vs. added later? For example, if my hydration calculations show I want 18 oz. of flour, should I make a starter with 6 oz. of flour and add 12 oz. (1/3 - 2/3) in the final dough? Is this affected by the hydration of the starter? (For example, if you use a wetter starter, use a higher percentage of starter to dough?) What effects should I expect by varying that ratio towards more starter or less starter?

ClimbHi
Pittsburgh, PA

There has been some discussion lately about how to tell when a levain is ripe, but why is it important that a levain be used when it if ripe? Why not use it when it is half-way ripe or 3/4rds ripe?

--Pamela

I had to restart my sourdough starter due to neglecting it recently and, this time, I've made some interesting observations.

It's much more active this time around. I mean, really, really active. I fed it at around 10 AM and 3.5 hours later it's already doubled.  This is the 8th day and last time it took me 14 days to get to this point.  Also, the starter was taking 6 or so hours to double completely.  The only change from last time was that the house was warmer in the first days of the starter's life.  The 3rd day it was 80 degrees outside, and the 4th it was almost 90. The house got up to 75 the first day and 78 the next.  That would've been the time that the yeast would've started taking over. It seems that having the temperature warmer those two days helped the good stuff kill off the bad stuff without a problem.

The other observation I've made is that a 10 degree temperature fluctuation hasn't really mattered much to my starter. Once it got going, it has been nothing but smooth sailing since.

I can only conclude that if I keep my house between 70 and 80 degrees this summer and feed my starter twice per day that I will have a great one this time around. But the bread will be the real test. Tomorrow's bake will be Susan's Ultimate Sourdough. :)