My Day 8 Sourdough Starter - Toss it or continue feeding it?
Hello there! I'm a lurker at this site and today I take the step to join this forum as I'm stumped.. Need some opinions!
Today is Day 8 of my Sourdough starter. This is the most successful batch I've attempted by far. I started out with 2 tablespoons of water kefir, 1/4 cup of AP flour and 1/4 cup of water, then subsequently fed it every 12 hours minus the water kefir.
My previous batches of starter grew mold (even with the pineapple method) but with the adding of the water kefir this time, it prevented the mold from growing, I think? It was from a recipe I saw online, but I tweaked it with lesser water when by Day 4 I found it too watery.
I'm lost now. It has never doubled, but by Day 6 it has started to bubble and foam nicely. It now smells like vinegar but when I do the float test it sinks.
Should I start over? Or throw half and continue feeding twice daily? Or wait until it doubles then I start feeding again? I'm half worried I made something poisonous.
Is the type of flour extremely important? I'm suspecting it is the cheap flour I'm using for noobie training purposes as good quality flour is expensive here. Can't bear to buy and dump heh.
Any kind experts to help? I live in a very humid and warm climate!
I'm still pretty new to all of this sourdough stuff. I just started with water and flour attempting to gain a consistency just thicker than pancake batter and that garnered yeast pretty quickly. Why are you attempting to use all of these other ingredients?
You can make a starter with kefir by simply mixing kefir and flour, allowing it to bubble up and it will be ready in about 12-14 hours to make bread. When using kefir you've got your starter ingredients ready to use! You aren't making a sourdough starter.
Just take any sourdough recipe and build a levain using flour and kefir. Say the recipe asks for 100g starter at 100% hydration then simply mix together 50g kefir + 50g flour and wait for that to mature then proceed with the recipe taking into account slight variations in timing.
That looks good! Keep feeding it! As long as you're getting those bubbles on top you've got it going.
Sounds like you're feeding by volume (i.e. equal volume of water and flour). Typically I run a 100% hydration starter, which means for every 100g of flour in the starter there are 100g of water. Unfortunately 1/4 cup of water weighs about 60g (in my kitchen) and 1/4 cup of flour weighs 35g (again, in my kitchen). So if you're feeding 1/4 cup of each, your hydration is about 170%. That would explain why it looks thin in the photograph, and also why it doesn't double (it's just too watery to rise enough). Try using a ratio of 1/2 cup of flour with 1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp of water (or 1/4 cup flour to 2 Tbsp + 1 tsp (or 7 tsp) water). That should thicken it up enough to double after a few feedings.
Flour quality ... meh. I've used good quality and poor quality flours to feed and both keep it going fine. I typically use store brand all-purpose flour to feed my starter, and it's been going a long time (>10 years?) now. What can I say? I'm cheap. ;-)
I agree with GAPOMA. I find that when my starter is too thin, it's gets plenty bubbly, but the problem is that bubbles rise to the top and release their gas, so you don't get as much rise. If you don't want to get out a kitchen scale and weigh your ingredients, try using 2/3 cup water to 1 cup of flour (1/3 cup to 1/2 cup flour). Personally, I like my starter to be even thicker than pancake batter, so sometimes I do 1/2 cup water to 1 cup flour by volume. Use clean hands to mix it up. When I do this, my started more than doubles in size with each feed and you can see the the bubbles more IN the starter than on top of the starter. Good luck!
snappydresser , add flour to the starter until it is more like a dough than a batter , see if it rises then .
Judging by the foam building up on the top , if I were you , I'd mix it a large container , and have a loose lid covering it .
Thanks Lechem for the kefir sourdough recipe! I might try it if my starter fails again lol.
And thank you for all the constructive feedback, GAPOMA, bbstucki and PatMax! I dumped half of it earlier and fed it equal weights of flour and water; hoping for the best.
So glad I found this site with so much useful and interesting info :) can't wait to bake my first loaf of sourdough....