November 13, 2014 - 11:00am
starter not rising
Hi All - I'm new to all of this... I'm on my third starter attempt (with no success so far). This is day 7 and this is what it looks like a few hours after each feeding. On day 3 or 4 (cant remember), my starter stopped rising.
It smells like sourdough, has bubbles but seems gluey and just has no lift.
I'm following KA recipe (started first feeding with whole wheat KA brand and then switched to unbleached all purpose KA brand). Feeding 2X per day. Temp in house is low to mid 70s, starter is in glass... What am I missing? Thanks for any help you can provide!!
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Have you given it a float test?
I'm not sure what that is, but I will look it up! :)
... that's all. If it smells right and you get bubbles I would imagine that your starter is actually fine, just very liquid. As a result, the bubbles produced will simply rise to the top and break through the surface. Try thickening the starter to the consistency of a very soft hummus and see what happens then.
Looks like you're on the right track. You've got some good bubbles going there. I agree with rozeboosje: you might need to just thicken the starter up so that it's got the structure to hold the bubbles rather than letting them rise to the top and escape.
Ok thanks for the replies. It failed the float test. I will try thickening it ....
Looks very liquid. Are you doing this at 100% hydration? i.e. same qty (by weight) of flour and water added at each feed?
A drier starter is much easier to control. So consider dropping to say 75% hydration.
Also what general temperature are you keeping it at?
Overall, and all other recipes aside, I would always stick with either rye or wheat flour for your feeds and wait until the starter is very well established before then switching to white/AP flour.
Yes I was doing 100% hydration. I'll switch to 75%. It's been 72-75 degrees in our home and I'm using room temp bottled water. So do you think I should switch to wheat flour at the next feed? Thanks for the tips!
just lowering the hydration a little first. Your starter looks to have plenty of bubbles so it's probably better than you think. For a 100% starter it does look quite wet though. Can I ask, are you weighing the flour and water when feeding or are you using cup measurements?
No I'm not weighing the flour, only using measuring cups...I know, not the most accurate.
Equal volumes of flour and water are not equal weights. When people talk about 100% hydration, they're referring to equal weights of flour and water.
In fact it's SO bad that while one cup of water, provided you always use the same cup for your measurements, will always weigh the same, one cup of flour doesn't. Not even if you take two cups of the very same flour. If the flour in the first cup is less compacted than that in the second cup, the first cup will weigh less than the second. That sort of inaccuracy is simply intolerable.
Not that accuracy is of critical importance for feeding a starter, by the way, but it does explain why your starter is so liquidy. A cup of water will always weigh much more than the same cup filled with flour, so what you thought was a 100% hydration was a lot more than that.
You don't have to weigh your flour and water every time you feed your starter, but it may not be a bad idea to do it for a while at the start, just so you get a feel for the consistency of a 100% hydration or a 50% hydration and so on. Once you are familiar with what your preferred hydration looks and feels like, and what it looks and feels like to add the scheduled feeds to your starter you can relax and do it "by eye" most of the time.
A wetter starter like yours should look nice and frothy when very active. If you've been feeding it twice a day since day one, it's likely that you've been diluting the culture too often for the yeast and bacteria to get fully established.
Try letting it sit on the counter for at least 24 hours before feeding it again. Two or three days might even be better. Once it's getting frothy every 24 hours then you can try feeding it twice a day. When it's frothy every 12 hours then you can use it to make bread and store it in the fridge if you like.
Cheers!
Trevor
Ok, thank you for all the tips! I thickened it and it seems to be working. Definitely getting some lift now and a more frothy texture. Trevor I think you answered my next question regarding whether I'm feeding it too often. I noticed that it doesn't seem to start rising until around the 12 hour mark. This morning I did not feed it and it has continued rise and become more frothy. I've also noticed a nice yeasty smell - I have renewed hope! :)
Should I continue with AP flour? I'm asking b/c I'm almost out but I have a bag of whole wheat. What is the ideal feeding time for these starters? Is the 12 or 24 hour mark just general guidelines? Should it be fed when it has risen to its peak (and before it collapses) or after it collapses?
Thanks again to all who chimed in!
Either flour will work fine. The whole wheat will make for a more active starter due to it's greater supply of nutrients. It will also absorb more water than AP so you'll need more water to get a similar consistency. And probably more frequent refreshments.
As for feeding times, different starters behave differently -- the 12/24 hour marks are just guides. Better to feed it based on it's activity level. After a while, you'll learn the signs, but in general, wet starters should be saturated with bubbles and fairly risen while dough-like starters should be at least doubled in volume (tripled is even better). Don't sweat it too much though, there's a fairly large window when it comes to feeding your starter. So long as you see noticeable activity, you're usually pretty good. But a safe guide is to feed it after it's risen and just starts to collapse. Good luck!
And your starter is now, what, almost 10 days old?
You have lift off! Now you just need to take good care of it, but you're in business now.
There is a difference between WW and AP or bread flour, and I have found that it makes a difference in making starter.
There is a property of flour called the falling number. Because WW flour is basically just ground-up wheat, you don't really know what the falling number is unless it is tested in a lab. Why this is important to sourdough starter is that the falling number is a gauge of the activity of an enzyme called amylase. Amylase converts the starch in flour to simple sugars which the yeast and LABs feed on. AP flour and bread flour usually contain an ingredient called malted barley flour, also known as diastatic malt. This is added by the wheat miller to improve the falling number, so one can be reasonably certain that the flour will have good amylase activity. My first efforts at starter used organic WW flour with no malted barley flour added and I had a great deal of difficulty with it. I now use AP flour containing malted barley flour, and I've had much more success getting starters going.
Not all is lost if you want to use WW flour. You can get diastatic malt from King Arthur Flour and add it to your starter. A little goes a long way, though. If you're just making a cup or two of starter, a fraction of a teaspoon should get you going.
Flour does make a difference.
I've never experienced that problem myself. I've started several starters from 100% WW, usually King Arthur (which is unmalted), and they've always taken right off.
It is most certainly more helpful to create a new starter with wholemeal.
Trevor: you may have lucked into some WW flour which had a good falling number/amylase activity. For my first starter efforts I used KA organic whole wheat, falling number unknown, and had a devil of a time getting a starter going. When I switched to AP with malted barley flour I had success. Alternatively, I could have added some diastatic malt to the WW flour. If I knew then ...
I'm not disputing your individual experience mixinator, but are you 100% sure that amylase was the problem there? I've seen too many starters culled from WW to believe that that is a common problem.
Making a starter from wholewheat flour is a doddle and just as easy as using rye. I would definitely use one of these flours to create a new starter, never white flour.
El Panadero: rye has more amylase activity than wheat, which is why people recommend it for starter. I was trying specifically to make a wheat starter.
Trevor: The ingredients are just flour and water. There are not many variables. I would have to do lots more testing than I have the time or patience for to reach a definitive conclusion, but the absence or presence of malted barley flour was certainly a smoking gun. Part of the testing I don't have the time or patience for would be sending flour samples out to get falling numbers. That could be the "something else", but again, simply adding some diastatic malt would bring the falling number up.
I may have had a sack of WW flour with a low falling number, thus the difficulty. Such is the risk of using organic WW.