July 31, 2024 - 11:13pm
Is my sourdough starter ready yet?
Hi everyone! I started making a sourdough starter on July 22nd (10 days ago). I started it with 50% rye flour and 50% AP flour. I feed it the same ratio of flour everyday.
On July 24th and 25th, there was water separation. I asked here and some people said that my starter is still weak and in its early stages.
After that, there's no water separation and I notice a consistent rise in the last four days. It usually nearly doubled after 24 hours (I feed it once a day). But today, I notice a rise just after 12+ hours.
My starter smells sweet and alcoholic.
How do I know if my starter is ready?
Here are some pics from the previous days:
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A rise after 12 hours seems awfully slow. It's supposed to consistently double a few hours after feeding (with the typical 1:0.5:0.5, 1:1:1 or 1:2:2 ratios of feeding). My starter if fed in 1:1:1 ratio would double in 3 hours, but I usually feed it 1:2:2 and it would double/triple and peak in 4-5 hours. Then at that point it would be ready, mine took 8 days to get to consistent doubling, and by the next few weeks it could consistently triple in size.
I've only been feeding it once every 24 hours, but people said that feeding it twice a day can make the progress faster. Should I do that?
Also I usually feed it at night before I go to sleep, so I don't know if it rises in that time period. But today I think it shows more progress as it rises faster 😊
Feed it more if it ramps up in activity. I don't know if your conditions are same as mine even though we live in same country (coastal vs mountain regions have different climates), but if your conditions are similar to mine which is around 30° C daytime temp, I think 24 hours is a really long time if the starter starts ramping up in activity. ~12 hours between feeds is what I did which is twice per day.
A day would be way too long even at a cooler temperature line say 24C if the starter were all white flour. Here it's half rye. I'm not sure just how that would change things but I would expect it to ferment even faster.
If a start is left unfed for much too long, at least these things will happen (besides a subsidence):
- It will get very acidic;
- It may suffer from protein or starch degradation;
- it may not respond well to the next feeding.
TomP
Hope it would ferment faster over time! Should I try feeding it twice a day?
I also discard 40 gr everyday and keep only 40 gr.
I've had AP flour starter before but this one with half rye seems to progress faster than my AP starter.
Faster means that it needs to be fed more often. Higher refresh ratios take longer to rise. Lower hydration takes longer to rise. Adding a bit of salt (I use 1%) slows the rise. Bread flour will withstand the longer fermentation times without excessive degradation.
IMHO if you want the starter to get through 24 hours between refreshes, especially since your temperature is on the high side, you should consider any or all of the above. If that won't do it, you will need to put the nearly-risen starter in the refrigerator for part of the day.
For example, say you refresh the starter at 11 PM, You are going to get up at 7 AM and you will have to go to work so you won't be around to feed it. Soon after you get up, put the starter jar into the fridge. Pull it out the evening, and repeat. The starter should adjust to the routine as long as it's reasonably consistent.
What refresh ratio? If your goal is to keep to the 24-hour refresh cycle, I'd go with 1:5:5, or for a slightly stiffer starter 1:4.5:5 (starter:water:flour). The presence of the rye may call for making adjustments but you could start there.
Here's what I'm doing myself, with an all white or mostly white starter at 90 - 95% hydration (I'm not too precise about it). Bear in mind that I'm retired and can be home most any time. Refresh at night; If I'm planning to make bread the next day, I will plan for 90 - 100g of starter for the bread and I will need a little more for backslopping (refreshing an existing starter). So 10g old starter + 45g water 50g bread flour + 0.5g salt. Sometime by mid morning this starter will be in prime shape to use. The useful time window will be many hours - that's a nice benefit of using this kind of formula.
I usually get lazy and don't refresh again until bedtime that night. That's really too long, but with the bread flour and salt it's been working out. Sometimes I include 10% whole wheat atta flour and a gram or two of rye bran (since I still have some lying around), but I don't think they affect the timing much.
I only keep that small amount after discard, because I rarely need more starter than around 90g. I don't actually weigh the 10g but estimate it by eyeball. I'm sure sometimes I have ended up with some 20g, especially since there's always some sticking to the sides of the container. That's fine.
The temperature here is around 25-29°. What feeding ratio do you recommend?
No - only add more when it's finished with the previous amount. Enjoy!
So I should watch when the starter rise and back to its normal state and then feed it?
Or is it better to follow a feeding schedule?
That looks like a very small amount of starter. It might help you get it in shape faster if you increased the volume. It looks like it really needs more time and it looks like you are on the path to success..
I usually keep 40 gr of starter and feed it in 1:1:1 ratio. Should I increase the starter ratio?
C above. Enjoy!
There are two concepts you may need to consider. Both address food for your sourdough beasties.
Ratio. When developing a starter I prefer to mature the starter slower rather than faster. It seems to help the balance of yeasts and bacterias to normalize better. I use a 1:5:5, 1 part olde starter to 5 parts each water and flour.
Volume. Greater volume gives the starter more food to eat and a longer lunchtime. The smallest amount I use for refreshing a starter is 50g water and 50 g flour, and find it better to use 100g water and flour. The excess isn't waste if you use it to make sourdough pancakes or waffles. :)
40 g is a really small amount. You should see a lot more bubbles than what is depicted in the opening post photos.
If I feed it in 1:5:5 ratio, how often should I feed it? As it rises slower, should I feed it like I always do (once a day)?
Also, I keep only 40 gr of it as I want to save ingredients. But how much should I keep ideally?
One more thing, can I use a non-mature sourdough discard to cook or bake? Thanks! :)
Add another rubber band to your jar so you can mark the full rise point. When the starter falls, then feed it as that indicates that it is hungry again. The starter can easily wait a day or so after falling to be fed. You don't need to become a slave to your starter; they are very flexible to work with.
There are ways to use immature starter discards. Some sourdough pancake and waffle recipes do not rely on the starter for leavening but more for flavor. That's one use. Another way is to (gasp, I'll probably get blocked from this site for suggesting this)... bake bread but add yeast.
36 hours since last feeding with 1:5:5 ratio. After around 12 hours, it rise a bit and I stirred it one time, so it was flat again. I decided to skip a feed.
Now (around 36 hours) it rises to this point and it has the nail polish smell. It has bubbles all around it, but not on the top. Could it be that it rises slower because the consistency is quite thick? How long should I keep it unfed (or should I just wait until it reaches its peak?)
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Bubbles seen through the side but not the top are completely fine, especially for a kind of sludgy starter. The bubbles show gas output. But if it's actively generating gas, 36 hours is way too long between feedings. It's just getting starved, and the nail polish smell is evidence of that. It's time to discard most of the almost-starter and feed it again.
I think that one problem you are having is that what you see is not lining up with descriptions you have read. That's because most people have all-white flour starters, often at 100% hydration, but yours is heavy with rye. That makes it very sludgy and lowers the gluten level a lot. So the visible signs are different. That can even affect how much visible rising you will see. It probably won't be as much as what one usually read. The difference between being thick and being thin or soupy won't be as clear, my not even happen, and may not be a good guide until you get more used to your starter.
Gas bubbles visible through the side of the jar have been a good guide for me. How big individual bubbles get can vary from one starter formulation to another but they can't be there unless the starter has been generating gas. With an all-white or nearly all-white starter they seem to correlate pretty well with the amount of rise.
Do you plan to make bread that has a lot of rye in it? Is that why you have this 50% rye in your starter formulation? If you plan to make bread that's mostly white, or white with a modest amount of whole wheat or rye, I would take some of the starter and start increasing the amount of white flour in it little by little. You can keep feeding the rest with the 50% rye mixture and see how that goes. This suggestion might be useful because the organisms in a starter are very adaptable but it takes time for them to adapt well to changes.
I tried to add rye flour because people said that rye flour makes your starter grows quicker and stronger. Today, I tried to reduce the rye flour as per your advice. Hope it works! :)
Just can't help to point out that tupperware bottle in the background, its very common here in Indonesia. But 36 hours is a really, really long time for a starter that is starting to get some gas going, especially in warm conditions. I advised or mentioned in your previous that I should've fed my starter less during starting, but that applied for the low activity stage. Now that its starting to produce gas, try to feed every 12 hours or so with less extreme feeding ratios (like 1:1:1). You can feed with more extreme feeding ratios when the starter is stronger (rises more and quicker).
Haha thanks for noticing! Yes, it's very common in Indonesia 🤣
Today I tried feeding it in 1:1:1 ratio. Will watch the progress and maybe try your advice to feed it more often. Thanks!
Like Tom (and others) have mentioned, in 36 hours the starter has likely consumed the food and is hungry again. When refreshing my starter after a vacation in the refrigerator, I find that two daily (24-hour) refreshes is what it takes (100% hydraton and white wheat flour only). One thing I don't do is stir once the feeding has been started as that makes tracking the rise very difficult. The yeast and bacteria will find the food on their own. Looking at the side bubbles, I'd say that you are getting there; congratulations! Looking at the starter residue on the sides of the jar it looks like your starter may have doubled at some point when you wren't looking. It's hard to say unless you cleaned up the sides of thejar when it was last fed.
Yup, stirring it makes it hard to track, so maybe I won't stir it in between feedings again.
I'm not sure about the starter residue at the sides of the jar. My starter jar is quite dirty and I should clean it up soon so I can see better.
Here's how much my starter rise after 48 hours (maybe + the volume I lose when I stirred the starter one time. It should've been a bit higher!)
The first rubber band is the starting line. The second rubber band is the height when I left it this afternoon. It rise a bit when I came back home at the evening.
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You are on your way to a healthy starter. That's what it should look like. Even if it doesn't exactly double, you can start baking wiht it. The bulk fermentation (first rist) may take a little longer but time is flavor. Congratulations!
Thank you Brian! Will update you if there's any significant progress 😊
That picture looks like a fine, happy starter to me. See all those big bubbles? That shows us that a lot of gas has been produced. And it just about doubled in height. You ought to be able to bake with it, after another refresh.
At this point, I suggest you start feeding with larger refresh ratios. maybe 1:3:3. That will reduce any tendency to become more and more acidic, which you don't want any more. It will also let you go longer between feedings (since there is more flour for the yeast to consume) - and we know that you have been leaving this starter way too long between feedings, even more so in the warm temperature.
My starter containers have much more residue than yours. I don't worry about it - although your kitchen seems to be warmer than mine (78 deg F/25-26C) during the day, )73 deg F/23C) overnight. I do clean them, but not until they have more residue than yours.
Hi everyone! I came back cause I have some questions to ask.
So it's been a week since the last update and my starter is still sluggish. It still rises consistently every 24 hours but I've never seen it rises 2X in less than that. It always have bubbles on the side though.
Also, I tried to reduce the rye flour ratio. It does make my starter less stiff, and it shows more bubble on the surface. Last time I fed it 10 gr rye flour and 40 gr AP flour, it became too watery (pancake batter consistency) so I changed it back to 15-20 gr rye and 30-35 gr AP flour.
I also tried the float test but my starter has never passed the float test. What should I do? 😅
Also I'm planning to go on vacation for 5 days and I'm planning to put my starter in the fridge. How much should I feed it before it goes in the fridge and how should I store it?
Thank you!
I do not know the problem at first glance since I haven't had much experience in starting new starters, but a few questions. What ratio are you currently feeding the starter with? How does it smell as it progresses in rising?
I usually don't rely on the float test too much, I rely more on smell and volume tracking, but I don't know if this info would be that useful now since your starter is relatively young. For white starters the smell is supposed to start like mostly flour and water, then banana-like as it approaches ripening, and then it will smell more and more sour during peak, then unpleasant and alcoholic as it breaks down very thin. For more (wholegrain) rye-heavy starters it usually starts off smelling like wholegrains instead of banana-like until it starts to sour near peaking.
Another thought is maybe the bubbles are escaping somehow so tracking rise is a little bit hard? But seems unlikely when the starter itself is rising up to 24 hours in, seems to be another issue. Maybe try tweaking feeding ratios and times and see if much changes or not.
As for storing (white) starters, most people say that you can get away with 1 week of no feedings, but the longest I've gone without feedings is 3 weeks, and I fed it with normal hydration. Got a thick layer of alcohol on top, but after 3-4 feedings of 1:2:2 and 1:3:3 feedings, it was fine. What is generally recommended is a stiff feeding with relatively high ratio, but for 5 days away a lower ratio and normal hydration feeding is fine. I usually feed it 1:2:2 and let it rise halfway to peaking (about 100% rise for me since mine goes to 200% peak) so that it still has plenty of food before sticking it into the fridge.
Stir completely once every 24hrs. - that's best - except for it thinning out - but that's another story. Enjoy!
Update: I tried to feed it in 1:5:5 ratio as you said! Will update the progress later :)
I reduced the amount of my starter to 20 gr and fed it 50 gr of rye flour, 50 gr of AP Flour and around 115 gr of water.
...in 2018 I was going to use the screen name "Lazy Baker" but it was already taken, along with several other variations on that theme.
I took my starter container out of the fridge yesterday after more than a month. Salvaged 10 grams off the bottom and gave it a stout feeding, about 1:3:4. It will be ready to use tomorrow but I'll probably give it another feeding and another day. Don't try this at home.
My point is, your immature starter is behaving very differently now than it will behave later when the two of you have trained each other and established peaceful coexistence. Then your starter's behavior will have become familiar, predictable and forgiving. Don't rush it.
Well said!
Thank you for the insights! :)