Sourdough starter questions
Hi everyone, new to the forums and actually joined specifically to ask this question. I've scoured the interwebs, and can't find this particular issue.
I made a starter from scratch last Sunday, so today is day 6 for it. It has done nothing, and I mean nothing, for all 6 days. No bubbles, no smells, zip, zero, zilch. No signs of fermentation whatsoever. I used KA organic whole wheat flour, mixed 1:1 by weight with reverse osmosis filtered well water (no chlorine in the system).
First 24 hours, nothing was happening, so I let it go for another 24. Still nothing, so I fed it (no discard, just added to the whole starter) about 20g water and 20g unbleached ap flour and checked again the next day. Nothing. No bubbles, no rising, still smelled like wet flour. The temps here were cool, so it was in a 70-75 F environment. On day 4 I started keeping it in the oven at 80-85 F and didn't feed it, just kept watching for signs of life, stirring 2-3 times per day.
Still, nothing. Last night on day 5, I went ahead and fed 1:1:1 starter:flour:water with a 50/50 mix of UAP and OWW, no discard, was hoping to harness any potential critters that might just not be showing themselves yet. I went ahead and started another starter with 50/50 UAP/OWW this morning just to see if I could get SOMETHING going
I made a starter 2 weeks ago, it went like crazy for the first couple days like it's supposed to, then went quiet and stupidly I threw it out on day 7 (4 days little/no activity) thinking it was dead. After a bunch of reading I now realize that was a stupid mistake.
Any insights would be appreciated. Thank you!