Need some starter help
After reading a lot of inspiring stuff on here I started a sough dough starter just over two weeks ago using the pineapple juice method and flour described as stoneground wholemeal bread flour which the store told me was whole grain flour. Two weeks on and very little has happened. I have few or no bubbles, it smells slightly sour but not too sour, doesn't rise or do anything really. I've discarded and kept a portion and fed with equal flour and water every day. I've increased that to twice a day for a few days at a time but nothing happened. For a while I was using tap water but for the last week I have been boiling it in case the water was the problem. I'm keeping it in a container on the kitchen bench. Should I discard it and try again?
Cheryl
equal volume or equal weighit of flour and water?
Yes. Equal weight.
and you are over feeding. Keep it at 75 F. I would nor discard and feed it twice a much flour than water by weight and just let it sit till it strengthens. You can use white flour if you want. It should perk up.;
How will I know when it strengthens?
Cheryl
grow in volume and double in size.
I agree with dabrownman, fewer feedings right now should help you build some strength.
Are you feeding it with white flour at this point?
If so, feed 25g starter with 50g flour and 50g water and let it sit at room temp for 48 hours.
Check on it every 3 hours or so. See if it will double in volume. If this can't double in volume in 48 hours, your starter is very weak.
For about a week now. Could it just be the temperature? It's winter here. The temperature is about 68 degrees of a day. I have two preferments that will raise dough. Can I convert one of them to a sourdough?
Cheryl
I use a heating pad with kitchen towels on it to regulate the heat and put my prob thermometer under the jar of starter and cover the whole thing with a bath towel. There are lots of other ways to like hot water in the MW and the starter in there to stay warm.
You definitely want to find a warmer place for the starter. At 68 degrees, it'll take much longer (like twice as long) for the starter to take off.
When a starter is first developing, what's happening is that bacteria are consuming the food and producing acid, which lowers the pH of the mixture. The goal is to have the acids accumulate because the dormant yeast awaken when the culture becomes acidic enough. (The use of pineapple juice, which is acidic, is to jump-start this process.)
The problem is that when you feed the mixture to provide fresh food for the bacteria, you dilute it, raising the pH, which is exactly what you don't want. So one compromise is to use small, infrequent feedings. Only use enough fresh flour and water to double the amount of starter. For example, if you have 50 grams of starter, feed it only 25 grams of flour and 25 grams of water. And feed the starter at most once a day at normal room temperature. If it's chilly, you should feed less frequently.
If you are seeing no activity, you really shouldn't be feeding it at all. Leave it alone. Look in on it from time to time, and be ready to feed (without discard at first) when you see some activity = growing and/or bubbling. Then, feed as placebo said - ratio of 2:1:1. When you start to see it growing to double the size in less than 12 hours, you can increase the flour and water you feed to it.
So I'll reduce the feeding. It smells ok but just nothing happening.
Cheryl