Flour affecting starter development..
I've had an interesting experience this week. For the past month I had been feeding my starter with AP flour, rather than bread as I ran out and wanted to use up the AP. During this last few weeks my starter has been performing very well. I've fed it twice daily 1:3:3 every twelve hours to suit my schedule in the week to bake on the weekend. Using AP I was getting a great triple rise every 12 hours. Two weeks ago I fed it 1:3:5 to make a stiff starter and put it in the fridge for a week. This past week I decided I would bake and pulled some out and began my counter top feeding schedule all over again. But in the meanwhile I bought some unbleached locally milled bread flour and have been using that instead of AP to get my starter ready to bake.
And this is where it got interesting. Using bread flour I was barely getting a double every twelve hours. So I decided to compare and now have two counter-top starter feeds on the go - one fed with bread flour and one with AP. Everything was identical - feeding schedule, counter placement, weights, etc. What I've noticed is that the AP flour fed starter has risen earlier through the 12 hour window and slightly more by the end. It also smells a bit sweeter/yeastier and less acidic than the bread flour starter. I also suspect that as I feed them more (it's now been two days of doing this experiment) that I'm going to get he AP fed starter to pull ahead and get back to tripling. Also, in an odd way the AP fed starter also seems to feel more active / developed when I scoop out the 10g for the next feed. I think as I continue to feed the AP starter a few more times, and continue to reduce any bread flour in the starter, that it will continue to improve.
I'm totally surprised by this. Does anyone know why this would be happening?