Question about starter smell
I used to usually follow a recipe for wheat sourdough starter which I got success from the first time I tried. But nowadays, I just don't get it right with the same schedule.
Day 1: mix some wwflour + water
Day 2: 24hrs, there's frothing, mix some more wwflour + water
Day 3: 24hrs, there's less frothing mix some more wwflour + water
Day 4: no frothing. No bad smell, I do nothing. (because last time I added flour and nothing happened).
What happens is the starter usually goes dead at this stage with no frothing, no bad smell and the liquid starts seating on top. I've tried adding after that but the starter just doesn't pick up.
Today is day 5 and I've tried below one more time and waiting to see if it froths this time, just wondering if there's something I'm not doing right. Or is it the flour because I'm out of bread flour and can't get it nearby anymore so gotto use apf.
Day 5: I measure out 10g of starter, mix with 10g apf and 10g water. Mix it a lot and leave for 24 hours.
If it doesn't froth again, can I just cheat and add a bit of commercial dry yeast. And continue the feeding schedule till I get the smell right? Is there a way of doing it without commercial dry yeast?
I've done starters with commercial yeast but they just don't have that sour taste I get with wwf. What am I doing wrong?
but you cannot see that things are happening. It's not dead. Do not start over unless the smells are terrible.
First off, what is your room/ starter temperature? 75°F or over? 75° to 77° is a good temp for yeast growth. What is happening is that bacteria are going thru a change of events to reduce the pH in the starter. By adding flour and water too soon the pH rises and delays this natural chain of events. When the mixture starts getting sour from bacteria, the yeasts find their situation ideal and get to work. They really don't need much flour and water until they get their numbers up and going ...so stir occasionally and when it starts to rise or there is a burst of bubbling, time to give it more flour and see if it reacts. Save any discards in one jar and set them to one side, you may have to go back to them. (They may even preform better than the one you are feeding if your temps are low.)
Stay at Day 5 but just add 10g each flour and water each day (no discarding) and wait for the aromas to change, first softly then more obvious before discarding and reverting to 1:1:1 feeding. When more than double in volume, double the flour feed and wait for the goo to peak. Then repeat. All purpose flour is just fine although a bit more liquid than bread flour. you can play a little bit with adding less or more water. A thin starter may have difficulty rising so I aim for a toothpaste like consistency.
Oh, please don't add commercial yeast, save that for another day. It is a different variety of yeast and will only die in the acid environment. It will muck things up. It will not help the starter although you could put it in the bread dough later on making a hybrid bread dough.
Absolutely second it! Only commercial yeast will do one bad thing before it dies - it will consume and waste some precious sugars.
Thankyou! Glad I didn't add commercial yeast. The temperature is between 78 to 79F and the ph is around 3.5 before feed. So I fed it in ratio (1.0):(.5):(.5) for Day 6. Also saved the discard.
Yes, APF does make the starter watery. Next feed, I'll see if that is the issue.
I wouldn’t say really bad smells are a reason to give up!
Oh man... the smells that came off my starter while it was going through its adolescent phase - truly rancid: my wife made me keep it in the garage.
Fortunately I‘d read enough at that stage to know I just had to stick with it - but in fact it wasn’t the terrible whiffy stage that almost made me give up, but the long seemingly ‘dead’ stage that came after it... that was a real test of faith :)
Well done for kicking off a starter - it's brilliant to feel that you really are starting from scratch, and it's well worth persevering.
OK your starter is NOT dead... you just have to add more of the most important ingredient: TIME.
Just because you can't see anything happening does not mean that there is no activity; what's going on are a lot of 'silent' processes that are starting to make the mixture more acidic, which is when the natural yeasts and lactic acid bacteria can start to do their stuff. The fact you got frothing initially proves that 'stuff is going on' ... but there are a few different phases.
For goodness sake DO NOT "add a bit of commercial dry yeast" as its a completely different creature and it will dominate the whole process from then on and ensure you never get a sour taste. Basically commercial yeast is a really. really different variety the doesn't need symbiotic lactic acid bacteria (which is where the deep and sour flavours come from).
And to answer your question, yes you can use any kind of flour to get a starter going, but a bit of wholewheat (preferably stoneground organic, but any will work).
The problem with staters is that there is a LOT of mythology and nonsense surrounding them. Fortunately there are a couple of articles by a proper microbiologist available on this site... PLEASE DO read them as it will give you a very clear picture of what's going on in your starter, and what to do next (you can just use plain water instead of pineapple juice by the way but it does tend to take a bit longer and go through a rather nasty stinky phase)
And if you have more questions, don't be afraid to ask - there are a lot of very knowledgeable and helpful people on here :-)
Thanks for sharing this. I remember reading it before but needed a refresher on the details to understand what is happening. If I mix it a lot, there are some faint bubbles so it probably just needs time.
I also checked the starter ph was allready 3.5, so I just fed (1.0):(0.5):(0.5) on Day 6.
Maybe if it's still not picked tommorow, I can skip a feed? I'll just try.
Thanks once again.
Just keep feeding and discarding -including a bit of whole wheat flour every time; and I really don’t think you can go too far wrong... it just sometimes takes a while (mine took almost 3 weeks). One thing though, if your tap water is very highly chlorinated you might want to use cooled boiled water for your feeds otherwise the bacteria might be inhibited by it...
I didn't think of it but maybe the tap water here could be the problem as we changed house late last year.
There's still no activity at all so maybe I'll try the boiled cooled water thing to see if it makes a difference.
Thanks once again!
go ahead with a large feeding. Like 1:5:5. Not point 5 but five times the amount of weighed starter. Do it now! How does the 3.5 pH starter taste? Sour? The freshly fed starter culture should taste like wet flour and within hours change as it ferments. As always, save some of the starter (that you think is not doing anything) into the fridge as a backup just in case the low pH reading was an indication of high protease and low total acids. If feeding 1:5:5 doesn't result in any noticeable change, you can go back to the 3.5pH reading starter (which will be more acidic after chilling.)
You need to kick the pH higher, above 5, to get the beasties motivated, reduce protease and have enough flour so that the yeast can multiply without the bacterial effect slowing them down. With the second 1:5:5 feeding at peak (and maybe with less water) you should see improvement. What you are aiming for is an 8 to 12 hr rise to peak, a feeding, then another 8 hour rise to peak. Each consecutive feeding speeds up the fermentation and shortens the time it takes to peak (all things being equal.). When the rises take less than 8 hours, let the starter "coast to 12 hours ( or about that, whatever is convenient for you) before feeding unless you are running a bakery. (Then you would only let it coast to 8 hours and feed again which would be three times a day. Way too much starter and starter-baby-sitting for home baking.). The coasting before feeding lets the bacteria numbers return to high enough levels to protect the starter culture for the next feeding when more rogue bacteria are introduced with the fresh flour.)
How do you test this? Are there special culinary test strips? Will pool test strips work? Very curious, as I see it mentioned here, a lot.
any kind of pH meter or test strips should work, I believe; however personally I just taste it... I think it's something that becomes less relevant once one gets used to the ways and wiles of one's starter :)