This was scary
I started building my first sourdough starter on Friday night. I used a simple 100%hydration method, 1 cup KA white whole wheat flour and 1 cup water. On Saturday morning I noticed that I was already getting activity, nice bubbly surface, slight sour smell. I removed haf of it and fed the starter with 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup water. Sunday morning I noticed that the starter appeared to break. The flour contents seemed to seperate and were floating on top of the water and the smell that was coming out of the container was , well lets just say it was offensive to say the least. (I am also a home brewer and this was not that nice yeasty fermentation smell) Do you think I got a bacterial infestation of my starter or do you think somthing else happened.
Thanks,
Erik
I too have noticed an off-aroma (like salt-rising bread dough) when I started with whole-wheat flour and water alone. Debra Wink discovered this was due to a strain of bacteria called leuconostoc that seems to be more prevalent in flour now than it was formerly. This bacterium is self-destructive as it produces acid that inhibits its growth. Apparently, the bacteria are not harmful. Four remedies are readily available: 1/ keep feeding the culture (whisking to aerate it); 2/ add a slight amount of acid (a pinch of citric acid, or a pinch of ascorbic acid); 3/ start with canned pineapple juice (acid enough to inhibit the growth of these bacteria) instead of water; or 4/ start with rye flour and later switch to wheat flour.
see: Bread Lines, a publication of The Bread Bakers Guild of America. Vol. 16, Issue 1, March 2008
also -- http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10856/pineapple-juice-solution-part-1
Ford
Thanks for the reply Ford. Ill try starting with the Pineapple juice like in Reinhards book. It makes sense that a slightly acidic environment would inhibit the bacterial growth. Ill let you know how it works out.
Erik
Your initial results are completely normal for home starting, and nothing to be afraid of :-)
-dw
Ok, take two on the starter went prety well. I baked my first loaf with it this weekend and it turned out nicely. The issue in question now is after refreshing my starter it is starting to smell like vodka, super high alcohol smell. Will this eventually go away or am I feeding it too much. In addition I want to increase the ammount of starter so that I can do more than one loaf of bread at a time so what is the procedure for increasing the starter volume.
Thanks,
Erik
I can't answer your second question, but if it's smelling like alcohol, it could be underfed. Personally, I keep a small amount fed 30g of starter/flour/water ratio. At baking time, I find out how much starter I need and a couple days before I bump up the ratio to what is necessary and feed at that for a couple days before baking.
feeding schedule and your starter should be discarded to about a heaping teaspoon (10g.) Feed it 30g water and 30g flour. That every 12 hours at room temperature and at each feeding, the starter should be reduced to 10g.
Now by increasing for bread, you might want to think backwards. Say your recipe calls for 300g 100%hydration starter. If you divide 320 (+20g for starter) by 70g (starter) it comes out to between 4 or 5 times. Easy peasy. After several days of the above feeding of 1:3:3 ratio, take 40g of that last mature day feed and add 140g water +140g flour for a night feed. In the morning there is 320g, 300g for the recipe with 20g to feed as the starter. (Feed the starter, set aside and then put your dough recipe together.) Need more? 70gS + 210gW + 210gF = 490g starter (remove 10g to continue the starter)
You may have noticed I vary between 10g and 20g for starters, that is because some gets lost in evaporation and lost on spoons and bowls. Better to add a few grams more than to be caught short. One can always discard a spoon or two.
As your starter gets stronger with yeast, you may find yourself using less to inoculate the same amount of flour (but stay above 10g.) If you can't make a feeding, give the starter lots more food, thicken it up, or cool the starter down by placing it into a cooler room or as last resort, the refrigerator. Skipping feedings is not good. Always discard and feed. When the starter is older, you may opt to use the refrigerator on a continual basis. A lot depends on your baking schedule.
Mini