Bleached APF starter
Hello bread lovers, I have fallen into quarantine blues and started baking more. I’m used to baking desserts but the most I’ve gotten to making my own bread is when I make cinnamon rolls. My best friend’s birthday is coming up soon and I wanted to bake a fresh loaf of sourdough for her (she’s a nurse and in love with bread.) Anyway, I knew from the start that using unbleached flour wouldn’t give me “proper results but bleached all purpose flour was what I had in hand. With that said, my started is on day 11, lots of activity and doubling in size. However my starter has a very strong, almost nail polish remover scent and when I do a float test, it always sinks in the bottom. I do a 1:2:2 ratio because some videos Ive watched recommend discarding so much of the starter, only to put the same amount I’m dumping out. In conclusion, I’m stressed. Does anyone have any tips on what I can do to improve this? Should I continue to feed it until it finally passes the float test? Should I just give up completely, dump my starter and buy unbleached flour? Thanks for reading my nonsense. Happy quarantining everyone ?
That smell is a sign of a hungry starter that needs food. If you feed it once a day, try 143 - 1 starter, 4 flour, 3 water. This will keep more food available and thicken it up a little. Both should allow it more time between feedings. At this point a new starter will be very hungry so you may need to go with even more food. Beware though, that smell should go away in a few days, it will take a little time to get back in balance. Enjoy!
Brilliant work to get a starter going - especially using just bleached APF. Proves that the spores and microbes in wheat are quite resilient!
So the fact that it's been growing (doubling, even) proves that you have a viable population of microbes. That means you will be fine just feeding with the same flour to nourish them - although you'll get a more diverse community if you can add even just a small quantity of wholewheat organic flour occasionally.
You can pretty much disregard the 'float test' by the way: it's about as reliable for establishing the vigour of a starter as it used to be for identifying witches. The float/sink thing just measures relative density, which depends on how fast gas is being produced (i.e. how fast the microbes are feeding and multiplying) AND the level of bubble-trapping gluten in the mixture. You really only care about the first of those two :-)
"Should I just give up completely, dump my starter" GOOD LORD NO !!!
Don't worry too much about the acetone smell, it's not a problem. And if you've go plenty of activity and a doubling in size then it sounds like you are almost there. When it reliably doubles in size 8hrs after feeding 1:1:1 then you can bake with it!
I suggest you do a little experiment: mix up some 50/50 flour and water and divide it between five drinking glasses. Then add one spoonful of starter in the first, two in the second and so on, so that you have a range of feeds from roughly 1:5:5 to 1:1:1 - cover loosely, then watch what happens over an 8hr period. A good way to do this is by using your phone to make a time-lapse video overnight. At the end of the experiment check the different smell and appearance of each glass. Afterward you can just mix everything back together if you want :)
The witch analogy is just fantastic - and very true. A note though - if you're also feeding with white bleached flour, you probably won't get a classic doubling in 8 hours. I've done many bleached flour starters and once they mature they usually won't really double and it may take longer than 8 hours. If is rising and falling regularly with same feeding and temperature, it's good to use. Enjoy and get well!
Thanks for the advice and tips! I used starter that I need to discard for the experiments. It’s a lot of starter, but it’s not like I have places to go. Thanks again! Will update when I bake bread. Hopefully the wait will be worth it!
Something I forgot to mention - the flour you're using tends to be a little thinner than a whole wheat flour, so try to keep it a little thicker than what you're used to seeing with the 111 ratio. Too thin makes it harder to see the rise as it doesn't hold the bubbles as well as a thicker starter - and you won't have to feed as much, that's airways handy. Enjoy!