August 28, 2017 - 7:33am
Starter not rising
I am new sourdough and baking and struggling with my starter. It isnt doubling in size but bubbling. I'm on day 8. I've followed the attached recipe and have been discarding and feeding every 12 hours for the last 3 days. http://www.sbs.com.au/food/explainer/make-your-own-sourdough-starter Any idea what I am doing wrong? I've read patience is key but I'm wondering if there is anything else I should be trying. I have it in my kitchen and the temperature isnt very consisten. Does that matter?
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Can you give a brief description of your starter feeds?
What does it smell like?
Day 1 125g flour & 125g water, day 3 removed some starter so I had equal parts starter:water:flour (125g), continued this until day 5. From day 5 I've used the same potions but every 12hrs. The smell is vinegary. Nothing awful
I should also say the attached photo is after 6 hours
Sounds good. Give it more time.
When you say you remove some starter how much about?
I keep 125g and dispose of the rest (200g+)
1. Get some wholegrain in there
2. Lower the hydration
3. Slow down your feedings
So bearing that in mind...
1. Keep 125g
2. Next feed : 125g starter + 87g water + 125g flour (100g bread or AP flour + 25g whole rye or whole wheat)
3. Subsequent Feeds : 125g starter + 100g water + 125g flour (same flour mix as above)
4. If you don't see a significant change then skip a feed. Allow your starter to dictate when it needs to be fed and not by the clock. If it's sluggish then keep warm and just give it a stir. See what happens after 24 hours.
5. If you're using tap water then you might want to boil it and let it cool! Don't forget to allow it to cool down otherwise it'll kill off the starter.
Thank you! I did as ab and it doubled! What do you think did it? Adding wholemeal or change the water:flour ratio
But I think the main thing was thickening up the starter by lowering the hydration. How much it rises is a good indicator of it's strength but now we know your starter was doing ok it still had the raising power when using all white flour and at 100% hydration. You'll find with some recipes they tell you to build a very liquid starter and it won't rise much at all but will be full of bubbles. This doesn't mean it's not going to make good bread it's just that the hydration is very high. Altering hydration, and flour, will also encourage different characteristics of a starter which you can play around with when building levains.
Wholegrain is also a treat for the starter as it has a lot of goodies in it. It also absorbs more water making it thicker.
and if it doubles again then proceed onto greater feeds to build strength. The higher the feed to starter will encourage a better yeast growth and it'll raise even more so!
So instead of feeding it it's own weight in fresh flour try doubling that. For example...
50g starter + 80g water + 100g flour (80g bread flour + 20g wholegrain flour)
Keep it warm and see if it's strong enough. Again, as before, if it bubbles up no problem then go onto the next feed (same again) if it slows down then slow down your feeds.
If your starter keeps this up over the coming days then I think by the weekend you can do your first bake.
Don't discard the discard anymore. Keep it in a container in the fridge. Use it as back up incase anything goes wrong or use it up in other recipes for flavour. Once your starter is viable then you can work out a schedule of maintenance where there will be no discard.