SD Starter - Day 3 - WOW!
3/10/08 - 8:30 am -- The starter was all bubbly and had puffed up to twice its original size! I'm so glad I marked the container last night. It hasn't even been 48 hours yet, right? Let's see... I started it at 9:30 pm Saturday night (the 8th), and fed it once last night (the 9th) at 9:30 pm. That's 24 hours. Gave it the extra shot of water about 3 hours later, and 8 hours after adding the water, it was doubled in size and all bubbly. That's about 35 hours. Now (2:30 pm, 41 hours into it), it's back down to its original size and covered with a layer of foamy bubbles on top.
Who knew it would work that quickly? I expected to be watching it sit there for days and days before seeing any real activity. Especially considering that we had temps in the 70s and 80s for a good week, if not more, and the day I decide to start, the temps drop into the 30s at night and 50s during the day, and my hacienda is rather on the cool side. I expected some bubbling from the bacteria, but my understanding is, the rising and the foam is yeasties, not bacteria. Or does the bacteria make it rise and foam, too? I gave it the ol' sniff test, but thanks to all the allergens in the air, I can't really smell much right now, which is a real bummer -- I baked two loaves of bread last night (yeasted, not SD), and couldn't smell it baking. I hate it when that happens!
So now... What to do, what to do? Shall I feed it now, or wait until tonight? Guess I'll go read through the discussions again.
Comments
Glad to hear your starter is going so well.
It IS possible that the bubbling you have at this early stage is due to a rather whiffytype of bacteria...it will smell distinctly blech. If this is the case and I'm not saying it is) then you may notice a significant reduction in activity in the next few days. Don't panic! It would simply be the acid byproducts (from lactobacillus etc.) doing their job and killing off the funky bacteria allowing your wild yeasties to populate.
I think you're right, FP. My sense of smell is impaired but not completely gone. I stuck my nose in the SD starter that's been going for about a month and yep, it smells yeasty. Then I took a whiff of the little buckaroo I'm trying to grow from scratch and it smells icky. Not bad like rotting or molding, but bad like 'not pleasant', kind of ripe smelling in a very mild way, if that makes sense, but definitely not yeasty. So there it is. I have whiffy bacteria.
I will not panic.
I will do as sourdolady says in her lesson on making a starter and continue feeding.
I will be patient.
Darn! I was so excited to think that I had a precocious batch of yeastie prodigies! ;) But I can take comfort in the fact that this is, indeed, a stage of wild yeast development and be very happy that it's not moldy or otherwise bound for the trash can.