Bad yeast mother? Starter problems.
I began growing my starter a few weeks ago
1/2 cup of water + 1/2 cup and two tablespoons of flour added daily to half a cup of starter. I live in a warm climate so I just kept it in a lidded tupperware box on the counter.
After the first 5 days I had an amazingly bubbly frothy starter which floated so I went ahead and surprised myself by making some really nice bread. Since then I decided to move my starter to the fridge and feed weekly. But after it had been in the fridge for 3 days I decided I wanted more bread as soon as possible. So I took the starter out and fed it then returned half of it to the fridge and tried to grow the second half for making bread. However since then the second half of my starter bubbles and doesn't rise, becomes quite runny and produces hooch. I've tried making the feedings more regular - twice daily and even cutting my starter back to a few tablespoons before feeding thinking it would then have sufficient food. I've been trying this for about 5 days and seem to be getting nowhere. I've also tried adding a little honey into the mix thinking that maybe my yeast is just very hungry.. but still just produces hooch and no sign of a rise. It smells sour and because of the bubbles and the hooch, I assume there are still active yeast.. not bacterial action?
I'm starting to wonder if I've done something to my yeast.. maybe by putting it in and out of the fridge when it was still quite young it's shocked it too much and I might need to start again.. or whether it's just going through a more unstable phase and with some patience it will normalise. I've also tried taking some more from the fridge supply and seem to be getting the same results. I've never had any success making bread with instant yeast. Made a horrible brick the week before I decided to give sour dough a try..so now I really want to make some more good bread! The people I live with are beginning to think i'm slightly mad.. continually checking on and sometimes talking to boxes of pungent goo which I'm lavishing with more attention than I would my first born child. I don't know whats wrong :( please help. I'm not a robot.
Gretchen, I’m not too familiar with starters that are refrigerated. I’m sure others that are will reply that are. A cup of water weighs roughly twice as much as a cup of flour. Your starter is very wet. A wet soupy starter will bubble but not rise.
Maybe you could try this take a small amount of your remaining starter and very slowly add flour until the mixture thickens a bit. Don’t add any additional water. Try to make a thick paste. Leave that out on the warm counter. Let us know what you find. Pictures are helpful.
Good luck
Dan
Thank you for your response Dan! I will give that a go and report back with pictures but that does sound like it might be the problem!
That is a big amount of starter and it must take a lot of flour to keep it fed. I keep mine in a widemouthed pint canning jar and before feeding it occupies about the bottom 1/4th of the jar. Some people keep as little as 1 tablespoon. A liquid starter also needs feedings more often. If you keep it as thick as pancake batter-can barely pour- it may do just fine. As to how to feed-remember it is like feeding a growing child-sometimes they need to be fed more often to sustain growth. Also, a healthy culture is growing a bigger population and they need more food! The discard phase is like a cage-cleaning phase-it gets rid of a lot of the dead yeasties or the debris. If you have a large container of starter, getting rid of half is a LARGE amount! That is a LOT of pancakes, if that is what you use it for. Keeping a smaller amount reduces the discard waste.
The most efficient way to use SD is to keep a small, healthy, well-fed amount of a "mother". This can be on the counter fed 1-3 times daily or in the refrigerator fed weekly or so. Then you use a small amount of the "mother" and "build" your levain for your planned baked by feeding over the course of a 1-3 days. Your bread recipe uses the levain flour and liquid in the recipe amounts and you make your dough and proceed from there. I developed some of my recipes for using a preferment. I used 1 c flour,1 cup water and a few teaspoons or so and mixed them up at bedtime. This preferment sat on the counter all night and by next am it was bubbly,frothy and yeasty smelling. If my kitchen was too cool, I waited til noon or sat it in a warm place before it was ready to use. If you are in a warm climate, you might need to plan to use it sooner or keep it a bit cooler.
So use the "search" box for "preferment" or "build a levain"
Unfortunately, SD does not lend itself to impulse baking-it's nature is for daily baking or a planned bake where it is built up or refreshed before a planned bake or used to build a levain. But it can be used as part of the dough for flavor and instant yeast used for rise.
So a few ideas for your consideration. There are MANY ways to use it but it is very versatile. Design a way that works for your kitchen and constraints.
Half a cup water + half a cup and two tablespoons of flour is going to be very thin, it'll ferment fast and produce hooch.
How about 1/4 cup water + 1/2 cup flour?
Abe, how much starter do you recommend for the 1/4 c water and the 1/2 c flour?
Starter is too thin.
It's very warm.
Refrigerated when not mature enough.
What would probably be best is if for the first thickening up would be just to take about 1/2 cup of starter and add flour until a nice thick consistency. Wait 12-24 hours and see what happens. If at the 12 hour mark it's sluggish then wait and just stir. And then start a 24 hour feeding schedule until it gets stronger.
Then I'd say (I'm guessing here as it's in volume) 1/4 cup starter + 1/4 cup (cold) water + 1/2 cup flour.
At 32°C it's very warm and the starter will need to be controlled. That's why a smaller amount of starter to feed will be needed once it gains in strength and cold water + finding a cooler place. Thickening it up should help. I think my recommended feed is 1:1:1. Better than the original feed and will do until it picks up.
Plus the original feeding was just adding the same amount of water and flour everyday. So the feeding ratio got smaller with every feed. Each time the spent flour increased turning it into a soup.
That's why keeping a smaller amount and each day discarding some will get better results. Then switch to a better feed once it becomes viable. Feeds should increase with strength.
a small amount as Abe suggests, he is right on to it with new starters. I think one of the problems is that you refrigerated your starter when it was too young. You need to keep it going on the bench for a say 3-4 weeks so that the yeast population has had time to build up. It is the yeast that leavens your bread, rather than the LB but you need good strong populations of both. After that initial 3-4 weeks then you can start refrigerating it so you don’t need to feed it every day or become a slave to it. Read dabrownman’s No Muss No Fuss post to see how to manage a refrigerated starter.
good luck and happy baking
Leslie