October 1, 2011 - 10:45am
Starter Suddenly Not Rising
I have had my starter for about 6 months, and it has been fairly consistent, both doubling itself after feeding and yielding good bread.
I used it for baking loaves last weekend, and everything was fine. It was fed on Friday, and then I took a break from feeding for a few days and started re-feeding it on Tuesday. Ever since then, it hasn't been rising much. I have fed it a number of times, once every 24 hours, but it's barely rising.
I haven't made any changes to the type of flour, ratios, etc.
Is there another way to test the starter to make sure it's alive even though it is not rising?
Thanks.
Share
And will take a few days to wake up. Sounds like it starting to wake up. About what temperature was the starter for the long 4 days?
Feeding a dormant hooched ripe starter proposes its own problems because you want to raise the pH by feeding it flour but you don't want to dilute the starter too much by discarding, which would throw away lots of dormant yeast. Waiting at least 24 hours is wise after feeding flour. Keep an eye on it now marking the jar and giving it a little bit more water than normal (if you've been feeding equal weights of water and flour) and a little warmth. Keep your starter ratio high or equal to that of the flour but don't discard for the next few feedings. When you see a jump in the rise, let it peek before discarding and putting it back on your routine schedule before all this happened.
The strange thing is that I decided to try and bake with it, and oven spring was satisfactory. The loaf is still in the oven, so I don't know what it will taste like, but how is it possible for starter to not rise itself but be able to make a loaf rise?
Thanks for the suggestions. Over the last several days I have been discarding less than usual, but still discarding, before feeding. I'll keep monitoring it.
Sometimes when I need to know what is going on with the starter, I split it into several jars with small amounts and treat each one separately. It could also be that your feeding ratio wasn't high enough to raise pH to the level of sending a signal to the yeast to reproduce and produce gas but in the dough, the pH rose enough to send that signal. Trial & error. Take notes what you did.
To test: take just a spoonful of starter (10g) and give it about 40g or 50g water and the same with flour, then watch it. If it doubles or quadruples, then it can raise dough too.