Different flours for bread and starter?
Hi there! I have a question that I just can't google no matter what keywords I use. I have a gluten free starter that is VERY robust when I feed it with Bob's Red Mill GF flour. However, the gluten free world suggests using GFJules flour for baking bread. I tried to transition my starter to the GFJules flour, over about a week, and it just did not work. I was so sad -- thought I killed it! But then I switched back to Bob's and it was bubbly and beautiful again within hours. So I'm not going to try feeding it with GFJules again. But my question is, can I bake the bread using GFJules flour and the Bob's Red Mill starter? Or does the starter hating GFJules mean that the bread won't rise well if I use that flour? Can I use different flours for the starter and the bread? I guess I don't understand the science of what the starter does to the dry flour in the dough, and whether the yeast needs to love the dry flour as much as it loves the flour in the leaven. I hoping that I can do this mixed-flour method, but I'm not optimistic, because I tried a loaf with regular (gluten-containing) flour with my GF starter and it wasn't great... Thank you!!
Sounds like you need a way to tell if the gf flour is actually feeding yeast in the starter whether it rises or not. Stretch a thin latex glove offer the starter and watch the glove fill with gas. Then you know it's alive, the yeasty beasties just aren't rising but still munching away and put, put, putting out gas. When used for bread dough, they will be there. You can feed them just about any carbohydratejust keep in mind that not every carbohydrate can trap gas.
The fact that the starter was active again after switching back ment it was fermenting with the second flour, you just didn't SEE it.
Perhaps you have to feed similar to the bread dough instructions using same recommended hydration to see any rising although I tend to think the rising bread may need oven heat. Not a good idea to add heat over 80°F in maintaining a starter. Cover with a glove or deflated sandwich bag & rubber band. Judge by aroma, gas given off and reasonable time for the amount of food.