Type of flour and starter activity- A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT
Hello, I'm new to this site but I really needed some suggestions from experienced bakers for a science project that I'm planning to do it school.
I want to measure the different rates of activity of starters made with different types of flours (whole wheat, refined wheat, rye, corn meal(?), corn flour(?), rice(?) etc), keeping all the other variables constant, of course.
If I'm not wrong, starter activity depends on the amount of starch (what the microorganisms feed on) and possibly the amount of gluten in the flour (traps in the CO2 bubbles as it is formed), correct? Then hypothetically, since the rice and corn flour have the highest starch content, they should allow for the starter to form very quickly? But also as they don't have much gluten (if at all), the starters won't visibly rise a lot?
Before I actually started the experiments I just wanted to question whether:
1.) This would actually work- if I prepare multiple small batches of starters and make each of the starters with one type of flour beginning to end, will the non-conventional flours actually make an active starter?
2.) Will the different starters yield a big enough difference in their activity that I'll be able to write an analysis on it?
3.) Are there any other factors that affect starter activity other than starch and gluten content?