Hi all,
Just started a new sourdough starter about 5 days ago using the KA recipe, first time doing one without using pineapple juice etc (usually use my Baker's Apprentice book for that recipe). Consistency is like thick batter, smells slightly tangy and not disgusting at all, I have baked with some of the discard and more of the 'sourdough' flavor has been coming through in recent days. It is slightly bubbly but not overly so.
The only thing is I have not seen any doubling, it's risen a bit but not much over the rubber band I placed on day one. I moved it into a new clear (was using a purple Ball jar) food safe plastic container until I can get a hold of a nice clear glass one for the final storage, hopefully I can watch it better.
Any advice on this is great, is it normal for day 5 to not see any doubling? I am just covering it with a cloth (not folded, thin tea cloth) and a rubber band. Is this still chugging along? It is rainy and humid here in Portland and I have the windows open most days, except when it is raining which has been the past 2 days. It is roughly 66-68 degrees in here with no air or heat on, I have been storing this on top of the counter and on the fridge as well.
Any assistance is great!
Water-Portland tap
Unbleached A.P. to feed (cannot find Bread flour at the moment)
Started with Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat
Feeding 113g of starter with 113g flour and 1c water, now doing that every approx. 12 hours.
Mine took about 12 days. I was starting to get anxious but I did see on the king arthur website that it can take up to 2 weeks or so. I was even taking the temperature so I knew that wasn't a problem. In any case it suddenly sprung to life and has produced some really nice loaves!
I am getting back into it as well -- I used to bake a lot about 10 years ago and at some point my sourdough died and I left off. Good luck!
Thank you! I will keep the faith and just keep feeding this needy sourdough. It's a good thing to make because now I have to bake as I have all this sourdough discard that I don't want to waste. Carb it up!
I just posted about white flour a few minutes ago - white flour tends to be thinner than straight ww and that may cause it to be thin enough to not be able to hold on to the air bubbles, so you won't notice rising or won't notice rising as much (white flour tends to not rise as much as ww anyway). So thicken it up a tad and keep going. Enjoy!
Thank you! I will do that. Today I fed it with more unbleached AP and some WW to add a little something in there. For the discard I fed it with only WW as an experiment to see how it goes. I had been feeding it every 12 hrs but let it rest for 24 and then fed it, was definitely a little less thick than the past few days and became a bit watery after feeding. Just wanted to give it a bit of rest and time to grow or develop more.