The Fresh Loaf

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Recieved a super active bread flour starter over Christmas!

Sugarowl's picture
Sugarowl

Recieved a super active bread flour starter over Christmas!

So my Mom went to a White Elephant gift party and got a homemade sourdough starter. (A white elephant party is where everyone brings a gift, you draw numbers and pick one from under the tree. It's completely anonymous, lots of laughing and trading ensues.) The starter came with organic KA bread flour and directions. Well, she let it sit in the fridge for a month before reading the directions. I went up for Christmas and fed it once, bubbled really well. I fed it again the next day and it doubled in cold temperatures (for FL anyways). so I stirred it down and put it outside on the freezer, The over night temp was 20-30F degrees, it doubled by noon (never got past 50F). So I mixed it up and baked it in a 68F degree house and this sucker acted like commercial yeast in 80F weather.

Holy-moly, this sucker is active. I hate to kill it. So I wonder if it's because my parents have well water with a softener and not city water. Maybe it's the minerals? I'll use my bottled water, but just curious if anyone else thinks it may be because of the water they use up there or is a bread flour starter normally this active?

I don't have pictures. I also couldn't keep my parents hands off it, so 5 minutes after it came out of the oven they dug in. I did have a piece, no sourness. She gave me the starter and the bag of flour since she doesn't bake. So at the very least, I'm going to bake some more bread then dry some out for storage in case I botch it up. And now I'm out of excuses for not starting sourdough again. ;)

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

Different starters behave differently, depending on the species of the microbes in it. Sounds like this one might have particularly active yeast that produce lots of CO2!

Sugarowl's picture
Sugarowl

I'm just very surprised since my rye/wheat starter was never this active and I had trouble getting it going. The temperatures were cold (for us at least) over the holidays so I had put it outside to slow it down. I left it on my counter last night at 71F and this morning it about trippled.

Dave Cee's picture
Dave Cee

When I first saw this thread I wondered if your new starter is merely behaving "properly" and it's the old starter which was performing less than optimally.

If the new starter changes performance over time, maybe you will try to replicate conditions at Mom's.

Best wishes. Dave

Sugarowl's picture
Sugarowl

If it slows down, maybe I'll get some bottled water with minerals added back in. I only use bottled water for feedings since in my first trials of trying to create a starter failed until I did that. My parents are on well water with a water softner. I'm on city with chlorine and chloramine. Chlorine will evaporate out, but the chloramine won't. I've read people say it matters and some who say it doesn't matter. But my experience is that my old starter did better with bottled water feedings. We might get some fish in the future and since chloramine kills fish I'll have to find a solution before then.