Starter starting fits and starts
Well, here I thought this would be easy...smh
I have two starters being lazy. The first I used a commercial yeast recipe from AllRecipes. It was going fine for a bit, then it just tanked. It barely peaks at all. I'm not sure if it's temperature, ratio, flour type or what...but it's sluggish. It no longer has the sourness and clean smell...it's more sweet and floury. I feed 1:2:2 (2 oz starter, 4 oz water, 4 oz all purpose, bleached flour) after discard every 12 hours and put it in a warm (75°F-80°F) oven since my kitchen is colder. I'm thinking it just didn't populate enough before feeding and I was actually just reducing the yeast population....the floury sweet smell gives me that idea. Am I correct?
Secondly, I started a "wild" starter with UNbleached flour. It's yet to really be aggressive....the smell, definitely not a clean, yeasty fermentation smell, it's got a pungent and slightly unpleasant smell. It is young, only 6 days old. The unpleasant aroma is decreasing, but it's just not thriving yet. I keep the same conditions and ratios of 1:2:2 but use only the unbleached flour. Will this eventually get going, or should I just toss it and try a wild starter using whole wheat accelerated with a pinch of rye?
Thanks
D