The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Me? Obsessed? Surely not! (???)

chockswahay's picture
chockswahay

Me? Obsessed? Surely not! (???)

Haha, I decided to refresh my starters this morning.  The four to the left are my 'working' starters and the 3 to the right are leftovers that I just could not bring myself to throw away!

I just need to pluck up the courage to abandon some of them, but it's difficult!  I have given life to these little jars of loveliness, I can't let them die :(

They are:

'October Rye' (first one I made last October)

'April White' (pure white flour made this year)

'Finn 24' (made to celebrate the birth of my Grandson 24/4/16)

'Hobbs 62' (a starter that is 62 years old that I won in a competition this year)

Obsessed?  You betcha!  :)

 

clazar123's picture
clazar123

You will have to tough it out as I have never found a program to help with this particular obsession. Get a grip-take control. Empty those discards-it's a start!  Make pancakes! It is therapeutic and demonstrates you are still in control! At least do that much for yourself! If you keep posting here, maybe you are not too advanced to be helped!

:)

Such fun!

(My collection has creeped up from 2 jars to 4. I'm not sure I remember that night. Must have been a doozy of hootch)

Ru007's picture
Ru007

I only have one lone starter in the fridge that i use for every single loaf, and i consider myself to be pretty hooked on this whole bread baking thing,,, but you've just given me a whole new perspective! LOL! 

Enjoy all the starters :)

cp3o's picture
cp3o

I see that you reuse those cute jars too. Another obsession?  I cannot seem to throw away (recycle)  a good looking jar

either. 

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

To build many different starters for different recipes. But it's always fun to create new starters. I used to keep a few but find it took too much time tending to more than one. What I have done however is added new starters to the old introducing new strains of yeasts and Lab which should help to keep the mother starter healthy.

chockswahay's picture
chockswahay

Honest!  Nor did I mean to collect so many jars (we have dozens of them)......

It just happened :)

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Amalgamate them :) Make a funky new mother starter. Dry out a bit of each, grind them up and store them. Back ups!

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

No Muss No Fuss Starter  - no more maintenance, no mire discard and no more wastes of time and effort plus no more obsessions - and even better SD bread too.

Happy baking the NMNF way

 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Your post got me thinking, and when I went down to check the bread fridge I found that I had all kinds of containers with UFOs (unidentified food objects) in them, most of which were bits and pieces of starter. I actually had the strength to dispose of a few of them, particularly the ones that looked a little suspicious, and then I reduced one of the remaining ones (i.e. dumped most of it out) and gave it a good feed. I sprang back to life (as they do), so now I have two good active starters. It's a good thing too - yesterday I miscalculated how much of my 'good' starter I had left and had to use almost all of it to make a levain for the day's baking. I was left with a few grams stuck to the sides of the jar. Luckily I managed to build it back up with a couple of feedings but it's always good to have a back up!

I've got a book by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou ("How to Make Sourdough") where he advocates for a different starter for each kind of flour. There is a picture in the book of 16 (!!!) little jars of starter with every kind of flour (some gluten free) you can think of, all bubbling away. Yikes!