September 4, 2018 - 4:17pm
Newly started starter won't start
I know this topic is redundant, and I've read a lot on this forum already, and a lot of that info I've utilized.
I've tried 6 or 7 times now. I've tried Ken Forkish recipe, Reinhart's method, King Arthur method and they all have failed on my watch.
I've tried rye, whole wheat, pineapple juice.
Essentially, it gets started, shows the usual day 2-3 growth, then goes dormant. There's always some bubbles showing, but it doesn't grow in size. I really don't know what else to try. I use bottled water, hand-wash all the dishes it sits in, try feeding every 12 hours, or every 24. Are there any other suggestions any one can offer?
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Fellow starter failure, here. I'm curious what your results with pineapple juice were. And perhaps what brand juice you used. My pineapple starter has only created the absolute smallest bubbles I can see by eye. It's been 10 days since any pineapple juice has been in the starter. So this is day 13 and it's an utter failure.
So I used the Reinhart recipe for starter. Day 1 is whole wheat and pineapple, day 2 is bread flour and pineapple, then after that its bread flour and WATER
Actually, this was the closest I came to getting it. The weird thing was that for 24 hours after his 4th step, the starter hadn't budged. I stirred it in the jar, and then overnight it doubled++. Next, I added more flower and water and it REALLY TOOK OFF. He then instructs you to refrigerate it overnight (to make the flavor more complex) then within 3-5 days, either bake with it or feed it. On day 2, I fed it and nothing. It will bubble, and maybe press up a little, but as I'm looking at it, I fed one this morning 10pm, 200g starter, 200gBF+200gH20=only has risen 1/4", and a few bubbles on top.
I'm not even a sourdough noobie..I used to bake 2-3 a week and make incredible breads VERY EASILY when I was using a starter that was given to me. And a few years ago, I used the Ken Forkish starter recipe and baked a few breads and pizzas. It came so easy, I never even kept a living Forkish starter--I'd just whip one up when I felt a craving...
I live in Madison WI, out in the countrier side of town. The air is clean, I use bottled water and high quality flours--some organic. I'm just so confused why the dots won't connect...
Oh and for Juice, I used Del Monte--but I bought the diced pineapple, which is NOT juice from concentrate. The only ingredients were pineapple and pineapple juice.
The best results so far have been pineapple, yet here I sit without a thriving, or even barely functioning starter.
Sounds like a lot more activity than I ever got with my pineapple. I used Dole, it also says not from concentrate. I have three starters going right now, sort of in a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks situation. I've gotten moderate activity from two, but not the pineapple.
When you say you hand wash the dishes it sits in, are you switching out for a clean container every time you feed? I thought I would try that and I almost killed mine. I switched from jars to rubbermaid containers and mine stopped doing anything. They stopped bubbling, then started smelling rancid. I went back to jars and the bad smell almost disappeared overnight. A few days later and they smell like fruit. Still underperforming, however.
I too have several going at one time...it's pitiful really. I feel happy and anxious when I start a new one--which seems like its daily now..then 5 days later I'm grinding my teeth and walking thru every step I did to find where I blow it (and after day 5, I keep going to those who will say "day 5 isn't long enough ...and such").
I guess I switch to a new container every time. On one semi-successful attempt, I let it go days 1-3 in the same jar. It took off, and looked good by day 5 (did the day 2-3 hump, then down, but then recovered) but then it grew a kahm yeast or yeast pellicle or whatever it was----but you'd only see this after 24 hours; a 12 hour feeding seemed to hide this fault, but I tested it and yes if I let it go 24 hours it'd grow the kahm yeast on top, so I attribute that to the dirty jar days 1-3.
I only use glass; I believe enough to think that plastic leeches chemicals into food, and tart living organisms likely cause more leeching...
I do believe in the pineapple trick over all though, it does make sense to me; but more than that, Reinhart's method says that on day 4, if it doesn't double after 24 hours, to stir it and re-visit every 12 hours. I think there's something to that, because when I was doing it, during his final feed before it's a 'mother,' mine was lifeless. I gave it a stir, grinded my teeth, tried to sleep and the next morning it had doubled. If I was reasonable I'd give up on this sourdough thing, but I'm in too deep now.
Oh yeah I now totally understand why people just do instant yeast and give up this silliness. But I figure it's like a game at this point. I've only wasted a couple 5lb bags of flour and a few hours. lol But right now I just want to know if someone other than myself is to blame. Bad instructions, bad water, bad flour, unreasonable expectations...? I just want to know what's going on here!
I'm definitely more than 3 days into using the same nasty jars(I just hate not cleaning them), but I haven't had any of the weirdness you've experienced. Kahm yeast pellicles? That sounds like it would make an interesting photo.
I just fed mine and here's what they look like:
I seem to get most activity from my non-pineapple 100% whole wheat with 80% hydration. Smells really fruity.
In that last picture, how long does it take you to get that rise? If it does that in less than 6 hours, you might wanna try baking with that.
I'm gonna try something, and I'll tell you if it works. I'm going to feed 2:1:1 (starter:flour:water or 100gstart:50gBF:50gH20) every 24 hours, and if after each 12 hour interval, there isn't doubling or close to it, I'm going to stir it up with a spoon (I use the spoon handle actually) and let it go another 12 before feeding.
My thinking on why this may work is because assuming there is some living yeast in there, after 24 hours the entire contents of the jar should contain more yeast. Feeding 2:1:1 should give those yeasts food, but hopefully won't dilute the mass in the jar with non-yeast flour.
The mixing comes in because as I said earlier, when doing the Reinhart recipe, he said to stir it up every 12 hours during his 4th step. He says in the book this prevents mold or bacteria from growing on the surface, BUT I also read that this aeration gives the yeast some oxygen which helps them along.
I really hope this works, at this point I'm down to 2 jars--I've had as many as 4 going at once but too many jars just makes me more annoyed.
At this point I'm gonna give it up to 10 days of this method. If after 10 days it's more of the same, I'm gonna either order a starter online, or start over again and have lost more hair over this trivial challenge.
When I was looking into getting my first starter going, I saw people online saying that it took them as much as 2+ weeks before their starter got active enough to bake with. Apparently it just takes some longer than others, so you might want to stick it out a bit longer, just in case? I think mine was ready around day 8 or so.
The post-refresh pH needs to be above ~5 to support LAB numerical density growth from cycle to cycle. If the pH is too low the LAB will grow but not enough to replace the population density that you inoculated with. If you are getting any yeast growth, then just keep feeding until you get some LAB from the flour to kick in. Here is a place where some fresh whole wheat or rye flour will actually add something at round one. Flour is not sterile (and don't pretend it is) though modern milling practices are reducing the bacterial contamination levels quite significantly. There is still wild stuff on the surface of the grain and in the tiny recesses of the other stuff that is always in the mix at the mill. And even at 10 cfu/g they will grow if the environment is attractive. You want an environment that encourages the good guys and disadvantages the bad guys. I have a long treatise on starter stability but it is full of math speak and inappropriate for this forum. If you are interested, PM me.
A lot of people believe that you can't start a sourdough starter from commercial bread yeast.
This turns out to be an old wives tale and it totally wrong. If you delve into the results of what Rob Dunn has done at NC State (http://bit.ly/2wIWksX) you will see that the vast majority of sourdough yeasts are just a form of beer/bread yeast with some available LAB.
If you can't find a local source of starter, try this: a pinch of dry yeast in 10g of water and 15g of flour (and it doesn't matter what kind - white, whole wheat, ...). Stir and let sit in a warm place. Every 24 hrs, take 5g to a clean container and add 10g water and 15g flour, stir, repeat. After a week or two you will discover that it has a sour smell (and if you taste it you will confirm that it is sour). You can change to a shorter feeding schedule and to a 5:15:15 (100% hydration) refresh if you want to, but after another 20 refresh cycles it should be ready to make bread with.
You don't know what is in your starter exactly but it will work, and it will respond over time to your refresh cycle (food, feeding interval, hydration, temperature). When you refresh, always use a fresh clean container (I like 5.5oz polypropylene food service cups with caps but you can use anything clean).
Including pineapple juice as the liquid for the first cycle and water after that works too as it provides a lower pH to discourage competing bacteria at round one (but it is not needed since even a pinch of dry yeast is a huge dose), but the very high yeast population density will tend to suppress the bacteria with an environment that has the pH of saturated carbonic acid (CO2) after a couple of hours. Remember that the yeast itself produces no acid at all, just the CO2 that is absorbed by the water to form a saturated carbonic acid solution. Only after some opportunistic LAB takes up residence in your starter will it get more sour than that. That is why the yeast can be the initial starting point. It must either evolve or be suppressed by competing species but because the environment is set by the bakers yeast, not much else can compete well except for small changes to bakers yeast and once you get some LAB into the mix it will be quite stable. At the beginning of each refresh cycle the LAB grow fast, produce lactic acid and drop the pH to the point where the LAB slow down - at which point the yeast (which don't really care about the pH but don't grow as fast) will just continue to consume the available sugars until they are depleted or you feed it again.
Over to you.
"A lot of people believe that you can't start a sourdough starter from commercial bread yeast."
I haven't heard that, I've heard the exact opposite of that. I've heard it's maybe a little too easy to create a commercial yeast starter. Commercial yeast is more vigorous than the community of "wild yeast" in flour that we're hoping to make a starter from. What supposedly happens when you use commercial yeast is you end up with a monoculture that doesn't produce as complex flavors. And supposedly wild yeast starters can make the bread taste a little different from day to day.
Go look at Rob Dunn's work and explain why such a large fraction of the hundreds of starters that he genetically profiled proved to be versions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. You can adapt your starter (or commercial yeast) to grow under new environmental conditions very quickly. For instance, if you need an osmotolerant starter for making panetone, you don't need to buy it, just jack up the sugar in your refresh cycle to 5%, then 10%, then 20% and in a couple of days you have what you need. Just leverage what Mother Nature has proven to be so good at.
The day to day changes in bread flavor is much more likely to be a result of local cultural changes rather than genetic migration of the yeast in your starter. The specifics of flour, amount of salt, and probably more important the temperature profile over the refresh/storage cycle will adjust the ratio of yeast to LAB, then your inoculation and bread-making process will not be exactly the same from batch to batch (as they are in a commercial bakery). If the cultural practices are consistent, then the starter is extremely stable for biological reasons. But when the refresh/storage cycle changes, the starter will adapt quickly and you will be at a new operating point with a new starter which will also be stable until you change something.
use it for all feeds replacing water until the yeast shows up, at least for the first 3 - 4 days.
Edit: That is if you continue with the pineapple method. Stopping the pineapple too soon raises pH and may reverse progress.
When the yeast shows up, the CO2/carbonic acid will do the job of the pineapple juice.
If I'm on say, day 8, and only days 1-2 I used pineapple, and I'm not seeing positive results, can I go back to pineapple juice for feedings?
When we say pineapple juice, are we talking pure pineapple juice-OR pineapple juice from concentrate?
It seems like when I go pineapple juice shopping, the only juices that are sold are from concentrate reconstituted with water...
If you go back and read the history of the development of the pineapple juice solution, you will see that there were other acid sources that also worked from which pineapple juice was (sort of arbitrarily) selected. It doesn't make any difference whether it is fresh or from concentrate. It is just a source of acid that will lower the pH of the solution to suppress the growth of opportunistic bacteria such as leuconostoc. You don't want the pH below ~3.8 so things like lemon juice are not good choices though as you refresh it, even lemon juice would get diluted and at some point would begin to meet the criteria.
As long as the juice is free of preservatives, which will kill the bacteria and yeast you want to cultivate, any pineapple juice will do.
That said, one of the fastest starters I ever launched was made with juice from a fresh pineapple. And I got to eat the remainder of the pineapple that wasn't juiced. Win-win!
Paul
So I'm starting a new starter tonight. I got some Dole pineapple juice FROM CONCENTRATE.
Aside from water, pineapple juice, vitamins, it has ascorbic acid. Would you consider this to be a preservative?
It is there to protect flavor and color, not to kill bacteria.
Paul