Sourdough starter - what's going on?
Hi,
I've embarked on a second attempt to create a sourdough starter from scratch. This time I've gone as far as building a proofing box with a temperature control which will come in handy for proofing the bread later on.
I need a bit of advice as I can't figure out what happened or what to do next:
1) I've used 1 cup of stoneground wholemeal flour + 1 cup of bottled water, mixed it and put it in a kilner jar and in my proofing box at 30 celcius.
2) After only two hours I had first signs of fermentation and the next morning a lot of bubbles/froth. I fed it with 1 cup of the same flour and another cup of water, mixed it and left it.
3) The next day I had a lot of brown water (hooch I believe). I poured some away and mixed it the rest. It dawned on my at this point that measuring the water&flour in cups obviously did not result in a 100% hydration starter but more like 150%. Because of the hooch and me thinking the whole starter is to wet I discarded half the starter and this time fed it with 50:50 flour/water but using the scales this time.
4) I'm on to day 4 now and after all the above I don't have any signs of fermentation anymore. I've not fed the starter today - just mixed it.
I'm not quite sure if it initially fermented too fast and I should have fed it faster hence it slowed down now or what to do. I am still leaving it to sit in the kilner jar in my proofing box at 30 celcius.
Do I just wait and see and feed it again after I get some bubbles again? Sorry I haven't got any pictures to show - I think I take some next time to make it clearer :)
Thanks,
Manuel
This week, I made my first batch of starter that actually worked! The instructions I used this time specified odd amounts of flour:pineapple juice. I say odd because they were by-weight amounts translated into tablespoons. Getting that yeasty smell and all-over bubbling on the 4th-5th day was very exciting. Start over and use the recipe posted on this site. I think that pineapple or orange juice for your liquid is key to getting off to a good start. You need the acidity and sugar, I think.
First of all, welcome to the great adventure of your very own sourdough culture, an adventure sure to be equal parts revelatory and confounding. Godspeed to you !
So a couple of pointers :
1. DO NOT USE VOLUME TO CALCULATE HYDRATION !!! Sorry if that comes off a little too strong, but 1 cup of flour will be only a little more than half the weight of 1 cup of water, and you will therefore find yourself closer to the 200% hydration range if you mix equal volumes. Whole wheat will stand up better than white flour, but still. So it's not surprising that you got some hooch on the top of your cocktail, and neither is it too worrying. Just about every one of us who has started and maintained a culture has seen hooch at one point or another, and I'll just pour it off and go on with my life. No sense in getting bent out of shape. Going forward, you will want to invest in a small kitchen scale. A good one won't run you more than 30 bucks, and even that would be the higher end of the spectrum. I bough a kitchen scale for $20 about 5 years ago, and I was using it to make batches of up to 10 kilos of dough, and it never failed me. With the scale, you can weigh out equal amounts of flour and water with which to feed your starter. However, if you're super anti-scale (perhaps a traumatic childhood experience?), you can get away with a ratio of 1 cup of WW flour and 1/2 - 2/3 cup of water. It should be the consistency of a thick, thick batter.
2. Before you feed your starter with more flour and water, it is necessary that you discard about half of what you already have. Otherwise, you will eventually find yourself with several gallons of stinky, famished, brackish liquid. Why ? Because the yeasts and bacteria are going to multiply like crazy, and while 1 cup of flour can feed a yeast/bacteria family of, say, 4, there won't be enough food to go around when they are 4 million. So bite the bullet and discard at least half your starter before each feeding !
3. It is also not unordinary that activity dies down in the day 3 - day 6 period. The bacteria and yeasts are battling hard for supremacy, and as the mixture acidifies so that the yeast can settle in, there isn't too much fermentation happening. The initial bubbly activity can be a sign of good bacteria at work who have not yet totally won the day, but it can also be "bad" (undesirable, say, in a sourdough culture) bacteria that nevertheless produce CO2. But, back to the day 3 - day 6 period (and that day 3 - 6 is very approximate), although it might smell unpleasant and seem like it's ready for the compost pile, you keep on discarding and feeding. Usually after a week or 10 days you will start to see thing regularize and become more predictable as the good bacteria and yeast really settle into a rhythm.
The first go at making a sourdough starter can be a little off-putting, but stick with it and you'll be alright ! I was on the road recently and had forgotten to nab a little pinch from my mother-starter to bake with while traveling (yes, I know, I have a problem . . . ). I bought a bag of organic rye flour (works really well) and just eyeballed everything. I mixed some flour and water into a batter and let it sit for a day, discarded half, added some flour and water, waited another day, rinse and repeat and in a week's time that bad boy was raising dough like a straight-up veteran. So no need to get too complicated ! Most importantly, enjoy it !
Keep us posted, too.
The first vigorous activity is made by gassy bacteria (NOT yeast) that thrives in flour and WATER cultures then they "die" after one or two days because the environment is not suitable for them anymore due to their waste products. After these the culture will look like it has died and many will either throw it or feed and feed it to awaken it while actually the environment is just getting more and more suitable for the yeast and lactobacilli.
Pineapple juice (there is a great article here that I can't find) hastens the awakening of the right microbes for "REAL" signs of life because it makes the environment already unsuitable for the gassy bacteria. Wait for just a few days more (do not feed or just feed in small amounts more of the old culture than new flour and water) until it shows some activity (I know it will smell pleasantly sour.) then feed it.
I struggled in raising my own starter for years and on my latest and successful attempt, I was fooled too but continued and now I have my own starter that made a great bread last week. There are many more experts here and this is just my experience that I documented well here. Hope this helps.
Do not give up! Cheers!
had a great experiment making sourdough starters from water and from pineapple juice. Here is the link:
http://yumarama.com/1124/starter-day-one/
Funny how many of us decided to make our own starter. I am on day 5 with mine and I did have lots of small bubbles yesterday. I used orange juice instead of pineapple juice because that is what I had in the house. The flour I am using is part light rye and part locally stone ground whole grain wheat flour. I didn't have a lot of rise though but it could be because the house is in the low 70s. It is starting to have that typical sourdough smell. At no time did it smell bad, so keeping the environment acidic sure helps. I haven't checked on it today yet. We will see what happens today.
I also used orange juice because --don't rat me out-- I get it free at work and I'm thrifty that way... I figured that it would do the same job as pineapple juice and I was right.
Today I'm making my first real actual sour dough loaf! It's almost ready to go in the over. I'm so excited to have used yeast grabbed right out of the air! Granted, I've been making a lot of yeast dough, lately, so there must be plenty in my air... I have it going all the time in my fridge for my nightly pizzas, made with home-ground hard red wheat. But the fridge-dough was started with packaged yeast and helped along with yeast sprinklings as needed. Starting today, I'm going to use my daily starter "discard" in my fridge-dough. More thriftiness!
All directions for sour dough starter say to "cover" the jar the starter is in, but what kind of cover? My other current passion besides making things with home-ground flour is sewing things out of linen. So I have lots of scraps and linen kitchen towels, etc. In my opinion, covering the jar with a coarse linen towel was a great choice, providing convenient holes for the little yeasties to get in through.
Can anyone tell me what you are supposed to use? Is there a best cover material? Can you cover with an actual lid and still get sour dough to start?
because the yeasts don't come from the air, they actually come from the flour itself. Whole grain flours are better because they have more of the natural yeasts left on them. At least, that is what I read recently.
However, it's important that you not hermetically seal the jar in which you develop your starter, so be careful if you use a plastic screw lid. You will need to invite some oxygen to the party, and I would say a plastic screw lid unequipped with proper ventilation mechanisms will prove too finicky a bouncer.
Typically, I will feed the beast in a plastic yogurt container or whatever I have available, something relatively clean, and then stick that in a plastic shopping bag, covered very loosely to protect from too much dust. But I've also carried a growing sourdough starter in a cotton bag and taken it across international borders.
Just make sure it gets enough air. Good luck !
because tonight when I went to feed it, it looked just like my regular starter in terms of bubbles. The texture was a bit more liquid because I have been feeding it 1:1:1 unlike my regular starter which is fed 1:2:2 when I keep it on the counter. It doesn't look like using a plastic lid impeded its growth at all.
I fed it tonight 1:2:2 and moved it to a jar that still has a plastic lid but I know still lets lots of air in (Water flies out of it if I shake it) so I will see if that makes a difference.
is a cut sandwich bag or plastic wrap laid across the top of the jar or glass and loosely held in place with a rubber band. Tight enough to keep insects out and should it fall over, tight enough to keep the starter inside for the few seconds it takes to aright the jar; loose enough to remove without snapping a finger or send the band flying across the room. Yes, loose enough to keep gasses from building up in the jar.
Gasses can definitely build up. I got that with my fridge-dough once. It was out on the counter with a tight plastic lid on it and the lid popped up. I drilled a tiny hole in the lid to prevent further surprises.
As long as air is getting in, all should go well. I have noticed in my experience that when I have sealed too strong the vessel in which my sourdough is living, it lags and struggles, especially when it is stiffer. A more liquid starter could probably tolerate a less oxygenated environment, as the greater quantity of water is already depriving the little beasties of oxygen as it is. Whatever works !