Sourdough from Fruit Yeast Water?
First I have to thank all of the contributors to this forum. Your collective powers of investigation and lively discussion are directly responsible for my happy liberation from commercial yeast -- forever, if I so choose. :)
I nurtured lots of viable yeast in a fruit water medium, played and baked with them, and then became curious about a sourdough-fruit yeast hybrid. In principle, I thought it would be possible to jump start one with the fruit yeast -- a fizzy, dry, grape brew in this case. I couldn't find a specific account of the procedure in the other fruit water threads -- most of you seem to expertly raise sourdough cultures before experimenting with fruit waters, so I improvised from the advice given to others for reviving their troubled sourdough cultures.
I made a small 40g levain at 100% hydration with the grape water, and have fed it 1:1:1 (starter: AP flour: plain, filtered water) on a 12h schedule.
It's been 2 days and getting weaker and weaker, from dilution I assume. There's much less rise and fewer bubbles than when I started. It does rise a tiny bit -- maybe 25% in a 12h period, but this is a fraction of the original strength of the levain which doubled in 6h. Was I naive in thinking that I could get a sourdough culture from my grape yeast water? I could feed with my grape yeast water, but I wondered if that would merely impede the sourdough yeasts from gaining a foothold.