Under active starter
Hi, All!
So I’ve been trying to be patient. Today is Day 22. My starter smells great (very yeasty), but I’m getting only a very little amount of rise from it, and what rise I’m getting takes a very long time before it starts to deflate (24-36 hours). I had stepped it down to 25:25:25 in order to preserve flour, and moved it into a pint-sized mason jar in order to better be able to detect the rise (the starter still would wind up very goopy, and I was afraid that I was not getting any rise due to gas bubbles rising to the top and popping). I finally scored some KA unbleached AP flour, and switched over to it in small increments over the course of 4 days (I had been using a bleached bread flour, which was all I was able to get at the time, the last of which I used on Day 16. I’ve also given up on periodically augmenting my feedings with Cream of Wheat (last time was Day 10). The water I use is from my reverse osmosis deionizing filter, and my room temperature stays at a pretty steady 72F, although when the oven is on the spot where I keep my starter goes up to about 75F.
On Day 16, I switched my ratio to 30:25:25 (thinking that using slightly more starter would decrease the time it took to start to fall (haven’t noticed any significant change). On Day 19, I decided to try decreasing the hydration level, by switching my ratio to 30:20:30, in the hopes that stiffening up the starter would allow for more gasses to become trapped, creating greater rise. I have even begun mixing my feeds in such a way that it forms a noticeable gluten matrix, thinking that may also help to trap gases. To date, I’ve never seen more than a 25-30% rise.
Any thoughts on how to get past this slump? Should I return to a 1:1:1 ratio? Should I try to bake a loaf and see where it goes? Should I consider starting over?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions and feedback. I greatly appreciate all that I’ve learned here (and all that I know I still have to learn here)!
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Using bleached flour will take a lot longer, especially if covered. Best bet is to get some rye or whole wheat (as unprocessed as possible - like organic) and feed exclusively with that until you get a lot of activity. When you get that consistently for a few days or a week, work back in the white flour. I have used bleached flour to start a starter before, but it's not the best way to start out. I'll bet once you hit it with the rye or ww, it'll perk up pretty quick, like a few days. Enjoy!
I think you should consider changing it (or creating an experimental fork as it were) so you have a lower starter to new ingredients ratio. E.g. 1:2:2
I maintain a tiny starter with 10g starter / 20g flour / 20g water. At 25 deg C it takes about 8 hours to reach maturity.
I have found that doing a 1:1:1 ratio doesn't create the same kind of raise.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll try to scrounge up another jar in which I can perform an A-B test, and I’ll try out the ratio that you suggested.
As for the flour I’m using, I’m kind of at the mercy of what’s available at my local Walmart, and it was a minor miracle that I found the King Arthur Unbleached AP flour when I did (they haven’t had it back in stock since then). I have noticed an improvement since switching away from the bleached bread flour that I had on hand when I started this adventure. The downside is that I haven’t seen whole wheat or Rye since the start of the pandemic, so it’s a bit of a case of making do with what I’ve got. (Interestingly, this was what led me to attempting to use Cream of Wheat in the beginning, thinking that it might provide some nutrient to my starter that the bleached flour lacked. Strangely, I did see some rise when using the Cream of Wheat, but that was during the day 2-3 bacterial bloom. I stopped using the Cream of Wheat fairly early, fearing that its added ingredients would be detrimental to my starter).
I've not been doing this for long but i get the sense that there's a lot too much fussing over the details of the starter. I've had a 2.5x raise using standard plain flour (which in Australia is about 10%)
I'd be looking to tweak more the ratios of S:F:W and play with the temperature.
Try oatmeal, again, organic if possible. The whole grain makes a nice repository for our little friends. Also, search Wal-Mart for Wheat Montana. Half the price of KA, almost 17% protein, I use it for everything, good stuff - and it's in stock again.
Oh no, it hasn't worked yet! I second that I think you're mixing things up too much. I know it's been three weeks since you started your starter, but it's only been three days since you made adjustments to how/what you're feeding it, and that might be a more accurate time gauge. When I was getting my starter going, I kept tweaking it too, and in the end I started a new one with just plain (bleached) flour and water and kept two other "experiments" which I also started feeding the same way as the new starter. All three became active at about the same time - in fact the "new" starter was a few days earlier than the others - showing that all my tweaks had basically been useless. I'm sure if I'd made a starter before I'd have been able to read it better and known how to modify things, but I was probably making things worse by trying to help it along. Why don't you try keeping the same food and schedule for three weeks and see what happens? If that would make you uncomfortable, you can keep a separate starter for tweaking, too. I know that's hard with the flour shortages, though :(
Thanks, Sabina :-)
Patience has definitely been the biggest challenge so far, and apparently I’m not as good at it as I thought I was. It’s hard for me to accept that there are things that work better if I don’t fiddle with them. ::deep breath::
Mrs Immortal has an appointment tomorrow in Evansville, which, at a little over an hour’s drive, is the closest decent sized city. I’m hopeful that I’ll get a chance to check out the flour selection at one of their grocery stores while I’m there. I kinda like the idea of setting up a new starter with some Rye or whole wheat (and pineapple juice!) and letting the starters battle it out lol.
Ugh patience is not one of my strong suits either! This whole sourdough baking thing has been really challenging for me. "Oh, we are out of bread...I'll just make a loaf...which will be ready to eat...in 3 days...if it turns out to even be edible!" Sourdough baking is not for the impatient.
I think you actually need less starter and more food for it to get good activity. I do 2-5-5. Dissolve the starter in water then add the flour. The starter will make its way around the new food and make bubbles. If you have higher starter ratio. They consume the food very quickly. This will also build up the right yeast and bacteria combination over time better. And whole grains definitely help.
Hi, Ciabatta!
Thanks for the advice. Dissolving the starter in the water is how I’ve been doing it, I’m glad to know that my reasoning for doing so matches up with the common consensus. I had actually switched my ratio the other night to 1:2:2 (sadly, I was unable to resist the urge to fiddle with it, even though I knew I should stick to what I was doing before until the wee yeasties had strengthened. Live and learn...). My starter no longer rises at all, and goodbye to all those pesky bubbles, too!
The silver lining, though, is that on my trip to Evansville today, I managed to find (at Schnuck’s) Bob’s Red Mill Organic Stone Ground Dark Rye flour! I also found rice flour, but oddly the store I went to was out of whole wheat. I also picked up some pineapple juice, even though it’s not hard to find that locally.
So here is my new plan:
A) Start a new starter with the Rye and pineapple juice,
B) Create a schedule and pick a ratio, and
C) Don’t screw it up this time.
(I’m guessing that step “C” was where I made my mistake last time).
I think I will also add some Rye to my existing starter, and see if I can resurrect it. Time for some reading!
So I started the new starter last night, using the formula Debra Wink lists in The Pineapple Juice Solution, Pt 2 (although I did cut it down from Tablespoons to teaspoons, just to preserve my precious new bag of Rye flour). As expected, there is no noticeable change to it this morning.
But where I am very pleasantly surprised is with my original starter. After the previous night’s feeding, there was no change to it after 24 hours, but it did at least taste a little bit sour to me (I’m not fantastic at detecting sour). So I added 2tsp Rye flour to the existing 50g (didn’t do a discard), and gave it a stir. After 12 hours, it has almost doubled! This is the most rise I’ve seen from it to date! I am going to monitor it today, and as soon as I see it start to fall, I will do a 1:2:2 feeding (50/50 mix of Rye and AP)
Last night, I did a 1:2:2 feeding (50/50 rye & unbleached AP) on my original starter, which had doubled and started to deflate at about the 20 hour mark (after adding 2tsp rye flour the night before). This morning it had more than tripled, and had started to fall in under 10 hours.
I think that my starter has made it. And I think that I’m going to give using it in a loaf of bread a try. I know it may still be a bit premature, but it’s time to give it a go. I did a 1:2:2 feeding this morning using 100% Unbleached AP (with no discard, in order to boost my quantity). Even if it turns out to be a failed experiment, it will be a failed experiment that tastes like fresh-baked bread.
And now that I know that this starter is going to make it, I feel he’s finally earned a name. Welcome to the family, Randolph!
This method has always given me and my students reliable results. It's a 1:5:5 ratio, feeding it once a day with a 50/50 mix of bread flour and wholemeal flour. Maybe worth a shot?
Hi, Herman!
Even though I’ve made a few mistakes along the way, and a few bad choices born from faulty logic, I think Randolph has actually finally reached the magic mark of being ready to rock & roll. I’ll keep my current ratio until I’m certain that he’s strong and healthy, but I may look into a 1:5:5 ratio for routine feedings after that. I’ve also started a very small rye & pineapple juice starter, based off of Debra Wink’s formula in her excellent Pineapple Juice Solution article, but Randolph’s little brother (Mortimer) is only just on Day 2.