What is wrong with my starter? New Covid baker
Hi All,
I'm new to baking sourdough, When I started my starter (3 weeks ago) the temp here was a lovely 26c so after a few days it was ok bubbling along.... Then we got a huge drop and we have steadily been at around 13-19c so i have been keeping my starter in the oven with the light on. its about 20c in there according to my dollar shop candy thermometer.
I started my starter with
125g bakers flour and 125ml bottled water ( not sure how chemical free the tap water is in Sydney Aus)then every 24 hours i've discard at least 50%-70% and feed it with 125g bakers flour and 125ml water.
I do get a rise in volume perhaps 30% and the starter does float if I drop a spoonful of water.
I just can't get my dough to rise, even after 24 hours of proofing I get an Ok rise but nothing like the pics i see.
All i have achieved so far is a few loaves of very dense bread ( almost tacky) , and one loaf ( high hydration) of almost flat bread ....They all tasted good though.
and a lovely 3rd degree burn to my middle finger that requires on going medical supervision ... ( Pre heated clay pot at 275c for 1hr and sort of missed with the towels i was using to pick it up) .
Son says just go buy a loaf Mum, But I am going to win this battle!
What is your process of breadmaking? What exactly are you doing, start to finish?
I think I started out ok then lost my way by trying to fix it. My first two loaves I used this recipe and followed it exactly https://www.theclevercarrot.com/2014/01/sourdough-bread-a-beginners-guide/ and the loaves were ok-ish only a little tacky/ dense inside . the outside was devine though. The last loaf --- Complete disaster. i think if you hit someone with it it would have killed them. I used a high Hydration recipe and it was a sticky tacky mess I couldnt shape it. It ended up like a pizza made of cement. I thin k I may need to change my ratio in my starter. After reading a few posts I have a feeling its possible 1:1:1 at best it may even be closer to 1:0.5:0.5 would that be halting the volume of growth?
with a 3 week old starter, feeding it 1:.5:.5 is CERTAINLY underfeeding it, and 1:1:1 is still being very stingy. You want the yeast and bacteria in your starter to FLOURISH, you want them EXCITED and rapidly multiplying in an environment that is bountiful for them, overflowing with nutrients! I would feed 1:1:1 twice per day for the next day or two, then switch to 1:2:2. You can then switch to 1:3:3 if you like after a few days of that. Too sudden of a change can cause some bad results, so ease them into a higher feeding ratio. I would also not try to make bread with it again at least until you have begun feeding it at 1:2:2.
High hydration doughs are also fairly unfriendly for beginners, they require a learned hand to work with. Stick with your 50% recipe until it is yielding good results, then you can begin experimenting! As you become trained at working with it, you will be able to adjust any ratios in the dough recipe to suit your desires!
Thank you for the advice, i'm going to give that a try. I will let you know how i go
Interesting, I think I have a similar situation that I just posted about.
hasnt got off the ground yet and that the 1/3 rise is all bacterial. Get the temperature up to 26° C you can split the starter and treat half of it like above and the other half like day 4 with starting a new starter, one a day feedings. The initial first few days rise could be bacterial, almost sure it is. A cool 20°C temp takes a long time and with normal flour too so Im thinking the starter hasnt made the hop to getting yeasty.
If the 1/3 rise is yeast, then feed it at that peak and see what happens. If nothing happens, go back to feeding the oldest sample you have and treat it marginally as when the starter is just a few days old. It might even be good not to feed it for a day and then start a daily feeding. A lot can be read from the aroma. How does it smell?
I’m a covid-inspired sourdough baker as well, so I have more mistakes to tell you about than successes. Did you ever bake with regular yeast? Have you made a friendship bread? It helped me to be feeding, watching and smelling a friendship bread at the same time as making my first sourdough starter. You can definitely smell when the starter switches to yeast production. I found that I got a layer of hooch the day before I could smell the yeast. I poured it off and fed. I fed at 1:1:1 once a day until recently when I switched to 1:1:1 twice a day and now 1:2:2 once a day and in the fridge the days I’m not baking at all. I also have a backup starter in the fridge I’m feeding once a week because I have a habit of accidentally almost killing my starter.
So yesterday I split the starter into 2, I fed both 1.1.1 .Oone half I feed with 75g of organic Whole wheat four and 75g of baker flour the other I hald I just used bakers flour, This was at 7pm last night. This morning 12 hours later the WW jar was well over doubled in volume , while the bakers flour Jar was only 1/3 increase. I have them in the oven with the light on as it its around 17C atm
At the moment its really hard to get whole wheat flour in the shops , none of the major supermarkets have any . I found a local fruit market that sells organic flours (so many different types) by the scoopful.