Converting Whole Wheat Starter to Bread Flour
Hi all,
Finally my whole wheat starter is alive and it all thanks Debra Wink, I found out about the articles she wrote and it helped me a LOT. (I'll share the link below so that if you guys stumble upon this message and have the same problem making a new starter, you can check it out)
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/10901/pineapple-juice-solution-part-2 [1]
Actually what I wanted to make in the first place was white starter (fed with bread flour), and since I have too many failed attempts (like 8 failed attempts) and I read about the blog Debra wrote, I finally have success in making one starter with whole wheat.
Then I tried to split my whole wheat starter and fed it with combination of whole wheat + bread flour, eventually it failed to rise. At first I tried to feed it with combination of 50% whole wheat + 50% bread flour. It was active and still rose to double. As I gradually increased the bread flour % until it's all bread flour, it started to slow down and it ended up failing to rise eventually and had just very few tiny bubbles.
And I decided to split another new one (taken from my whole wheat one that I still keep and feed regularly). This time I decided to feed all bread flour at once without any gradual attempt. At first feeding with bread flour, it still rose to double but still slower compared to my whole wheat starter. And then 12 hours later, I discarded and fed it, and it did not rise at all after second feeding with bread flour, just few tiny bubbles.
I ended up with the same result (gradual transition with whole bread + bread flour and full bread flour, they have the same result). And the smell when it's on gradual transition is fine, a bit alcohol, fruity like banana, and mild sour smell. But when it finally stopped rising and just had few tiny bubbles, all those smell I describe was not there, just a bit maybe, just a hint of those smell if I sniffed it with all my senses, LOL.
Should I keep it going, feeding and discarding it? I don't wanna make a new starter from scratch since I already wasted too much flour, lol, (I have made 8 failed attempts in a row to make a starter)
I suppose there's nothing wrong with the bread flour I use because I know some famous people on Instragram feed their starter with this bread flour. And the water is also fine since my whole wheat starter is alive and well. The temperature now is fine (recently it was too hot, and now season is changing and it's much cooler and quite nice), my starter is always 100% hydration, fed regularly at 12 hours feeding cycle.
Or do you think maybe my WW starter is too young to convert to white starter since it's just about 14 days since the yeast activated (not counting the smelly days and quiet days, 14 days is age since the yeast appeared)
note:
My active whole wheat starter (from which I attempted to take some part and split into white starter) feed ratio is 1.2.2 and it doubles and peaks in about 10-12 hours.
Thank you.