sourdough starter struggling in London
Hi,
over the last 12 years I've made literally dozens of starters (both solid and liquid) that have given me a lot of satisfactions: explosive starters and great rise.
In London it's a totally different story: starters are sluggish, they barely double (in Italy they more than tripled) always very slowly. The temperature in the house is more or less the same here as it was there: around 21/22°C.
Suspecting the level of chlorine/chloramine in water I've tried tap water and various brands of bottled water, with better success rate with bottled water.
As for the flours, in Italy there's a infinitely richer choice of brands and types, while in the UK the choice is extremely limited and technical flours that I had in Italy are just a dream.
Even with wholemeal rye flour the starters are very sluggish and even tend to die.
So, my question to Uk users is: what flours and water do you use for your SD starter?
At the moment (after having tried nearly all flour in major supermarkets) I'm using Allinson "very strong white" canadian flour, that at least resists very well to long fermentation without turning into mud (it was time!).
Thanks