My patience with creating my starter has paid off, I finally decided the little guy was vigorous enough to be forced into labor.  I put together a small loaf so that I could do a test run, and get some confidence that my cultured yeast could do the job.  First, the money shots......

Ok, I have to say, I'm pretty darn pleased.  My scoring turned out better, I love the color on the loaf, and am very happy with the crumb texture, flavor, etc.  I honestly didn't detect a ton of sourness, but I can play with amount of starter, ferment times, etc. for that variable.  I think I would back off on the whole wheat just a bit for the next go 'round.

A bit of a confession.....the first photo is showing my loaf from its best side.  I did get some "blowout" at the very bottom of the sides.  What causes this?  I'm thinking underproofed or overworked.  Maybe a bit of both?  Here are the particulars:

120 g whole wheat starter (100% hydration)

145 g H2O

225 g Bread flour (King Arthur)

15 g Whole wheat flour (also King Arthur)

8 g salt

My math says this is 68.3% hydration.  I mixed all to combine (starter and water first), forgetting to leave the salt out for a 10 minute rest.  After the rest, I kneaded briefly every 10-15 minutes for 90 minutes, then let it bulk ferment on the counter for another hour with 3 sets of stretch/fold.  At that point, I was trying to accomodate my schedule, so the whole shooting match went into the fridge for a bit of retarded fermentation.  After 16 hours in the fridge, the dough had not risen noticeably at all, so out it came for about 3 hours still in bulk.  At that point, it appeared to have not quite doubled (defininte signs of fermentation), so I shaped it, and let it rest inverted on a tea towel in my plastic colander.  After two hours, I turned it out onto my pizza peel, and scooted it onto my stone in a 500 degree oven.  I added about a cup of water to an empty pan beneath the stone for some steam.  After 20 minutes, I had nice spring and some great color forming, so I took out the water tray (dry at this point), and turned the oven down to 400 degrees.  I let the loaf cook for another 25 minutes when temp measured about 210 (so said my Thermapen), and it sounded hollow.  Out it came to rest, and the remainder you see.

I would welcome any and all comments based on my text and photos.  I feel like I had a pretty good command of the timing, though the blowout suggests that I may have not proofed long enough.  No comment is off limits, I want to bake the best bread that I can.  This one was really good (one of my best so far), and I'm eager to turn it up as many notches as I can.

Thanks for looking!

Rich

I know this has probably been posted a million times but I looked around and I'm still not sure what to do.  I want to believe there is hope but this is my first starter.

Here are the details:

I am following PR's starter technique using organic raisins soaked in water from his Crust and Crumb book.  I am currently on day five although I have not performed the day five steps yet.  Everything was looking good, I had a decent amount of bubbling under the "hooch".  It wasn't a whole lot but it seemed to match the description in the book.  Yesterday's task was to half the starter and feed it, I did that and now I am 4 hours away from doing day five steps and it looks pretty dormant.  In the book it said to put it in the fridge if it was really bubbly so if it's been 20 hours and it isn't really bubbly at all I'm thinking something is going wrong here.

As you can see, there are bubbles in the "hooch" and, although you can't see it in the picture there are tiny bubbles in the starter, very tiny and far and few between.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/54485125/Sourdough%20Starter%204D%2020H.jpg

EDIT: Sorry if you tried to view this and got some weird download.  I forgot the .jpg on the end of the address so it downloaded the picture with the wrong file extension.

I made a whole wheat biga and a multigrain poolish - then life happened and I forgot about them for 2 days.  they were in the fridge the whole time.  I still didn't have time to bake, so I fed them and added a bit of salt every day.  Total salt content is no more than 2%.  The both are bubbly but the biga looks a little wet on top.  they smell weakly like a sourdough.  are they still any good?  If I bake with them, will I get that yuck overfermented taste in the background?

Read several articles but none really tell me what makes San Francisco sourdough so special. Some say it is REAL sour dough, others say it is just a hint of sour. Several say it is the delightfully crunchy crust that make it special, others it is all about the crumb.

If San Francisco Sourdough is the ideal sourdough bread I would love to know what it is that makes it worth striving for.

Please pardon my ignorance in this matter, I have never been to San Francisco to try the bread. The one time I had the opportunity to eat it, it was in the form of a bread bowl filled with Texas chili.(all the foods were to remind his wife of all the places she lived - snails were also on the menu.)

Hi All, I have generally been following the guideline that when you feed the starter, you double it each time, i.e., if starting with 100g of starter, when you feed it, you need to get it to 200g, then 400g, etc....I follow a 100% hydration starter that i built years ago, following Nancy Silverton's instructions.

So, it becomes a pain to feed the starter 3 times or more per day....so i had this thought, can i slow down this process by increasing the amount of flour and water i add to the starter when i feed.  I think i have gotten some good results...so, instead of doubling the starter when i feed it, i increase by more, start with 100g starter and build it to 300g. What this enables me to do is to feed the starter only twice per day, morning/night.

Any thoughts here? Am i messing up my starter in any way. Am i wrong to do this? Will i somehow dilute the starter rendering it useless? Would love to hear from some pros on this.

BTW, i am making killer bread....so it does not seem to hurt.

Hi Gang,

I recently made the Tartine Country Bread and it was very fun to make and eat.  I'd like to do it again, but I need a little help.  In step 4 of my recipe, Chad says, "Save your leftover leaven; it is now the beginning of a new starter.  To keep it alive to make future loaves, continue to feed it as described in step 2."  Can I feed it once then start another loaf tomorrow?  or does he want me to feed it until it predicably rises and falls, perhaps another 15 days?

http://www.marthastewart.com/how-to/tartine-country-bread

(The steps I refer to are listed at Martha's website)

Thanks for all the help and a great website.

Frank

Hi there, i have been a keen reader of blogs of this web site for some time now without actually signing up myself. So today  decided to jump in !! I am a keen baker and have been baking with fresh / dried yeasts for a while now. Although im getting the hang of baking in general, i am completely new to the strange and wonderful world of sourdough . Last week i finally decided to start my own  starter from scratch. I read up as much as i could  (could handle) , and got going. I ended up taking quite a relaxed approach to my starter, opting for the " feel as you go " approach, as this as always boded well for me with baking in the past . 

My hydration level for my starter was essentially equal quantities of flour and water ( 50 g - 50 g ) , adding the same amount daily for around three days. On the third day my starter was looking active and was smelling of a mix between a nice pear type smell, and a more nauseous paint stripper smell ! But as i have read up on, this i all normal so i continued. It is now day 5 and ive split my starter into two jars as i felt i couldn't just throw half of it away to accommodate more flour and water, thus i know have to starters to look after weighing a very approximately 400 grams each. 

My real question/questions is/are , how do i practically really know when my starter i ready from today onwards ( keeping in mind this is day 5 ) , and when and if it is ready, what is the formula ( as apposed to a recipe ) for adding your live starter into any recipe you would want to add it in. If anybody has experience in this matter, i would literally be very grateful for any feedback , as i would really like this particular starter to work out for me. Thank You , craig.

Whilst doing some research on bacon curing I came across these today:

http://www.surlatable.com/product/PRO-661256/Charcoal-Companion-Moistly-Grilled-Cast-Iron-Grill-Humidifiers

Just what I've been looking for my baking ...

So, after 10-11 days of discarding half my starter, it was finally at the point yesterday where saving half to use in a recipe seemed like it would be ok (and possibly beneficial in the flavor category.)  I used the KA English Muffin recipe that's been posted here a few times, and mixed up my starter, flour and milk last night.  This morning I added the additional ingredients, mixed and kneaded then rolled it out.  I can't seem to find my round biscuit cutters, so a wine glass did the trick.  I cooked them up about 7 minutes per side on a very lightly buttered griddle, and they came out looking very nice.

Here's where I could use some help.  They were still a little doughy in the middle, a little more than the toaster could counteract.  They tasted great, but a bit more soft/dense in the middle than I would prefer.  My thoughts to fix this are to either cook a bit longer, or roll out the dough a little thinner (this may be it, as I had to re-roll scraps twice to get the 12 muffins indicated in the recipe.)  Perhaps both?  Any thoughts, tips or hints?

Here is the finished product:

Thanks for any input!

Rich

So, I've just dived into the deep end with this sourdough thing (well, really, I'm still on the board I guess), and started a starter on the 23rd.  It's been a bit sluggish to get going, so, being impatient, I started another one on the 31st! :)  The first is a 100% hydration whole wheat starter, and the second is a 100% hydration rye starter.  I'm trying really hard to be a patient sourdough newbie, and let my starters get established so that they can do my leavening for me, but I'm a naturally impatient guy.  So, I amused myself today by doing a bit of time lapse photography with my two starters.  It's very interesting to see the difference in the rate of expansion of the two, noting that the younger one is more vigorous than the older one (....and yes, I'm aware that this is likely caused by bacterial growth in the early starter stages rather than by the yeast that I am trying to culture.)  Anyway, I thought you might be interested to see the comparison, though, I suppose this might be somewhat of a yawner for those of you with lots of experience......

2 hrs

4 hrs

6 hrs

8 hrs

10 hrs

12 hrs

I hope this isn't considered too many photos for one post on this site!  I thought that this was interesting to see, and actually the series in one-hour increments was even cooler, but I don't want to get banned on my first day here.

Anyway, hope this is of some interest to you, and I hope to be baking with my starters soon (I did save my discard from the WW starter tonight to make up some english muffins in the morning.

Cheers,

Rich