Fall is here and the temperatures are dropping down to where I can do long fermentations on the bench so I thought I would make a new starter to join in on the fun.
Day 1 Zero hour.
The flour is 10 grams of the following home milled flours, Wheat, Rye, Barley, Spelt, and Kamut. I ended up with 50 grams of flour all total. To this I added 50 grams of well water, water that is chlorinated can inhibit the bacteria and yeast from growing. The last special ingredient is some human saliva.
No activity yet and I don't expect any for a couple of days so I'll just leave it be until I see some activity. There is plenty of food there for them to eat so no since in throwing any of it out yet. The starter is on top of a upright freezer which is a nice warm spot to help them to get growing. Why all the different flours? I figure there has to be some different and interesting yeast and bacteria on them and the new starter's flavors will be influenced by them. I'm kind of curious to see what kind of flavors the bread will have and if I like it I'll keep it. Next update I figure will be in a couple of days.
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What do you mean by " The last special ingredient is some human saliva"?
24 hours later.
There might be some tiny bubbles forming.
The smell is very nice. It still has some wet flour smell it it but there are some other very nice aromas developing. I really like how it is starting out. Maybe I need to feed this starter this flour combination all the time. The starter had nothing done to it just let it sit and ferment.
[quote=Gamya]
What do you mean by " The last special ingredient is some human saliva"?
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I spit into the flour and water mixture. I want to see if doing this gets Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis in the starter. The only place this bacteria has ever been isolated from is the saliva of the human mouth. I thought it was quite a mystery of how this bacteria got into the sourdough starter until John Downs wrote on the forum here that the Gold Miners here in California spit into their starters. Baking the bread will kill all the germs if the acid of the starter doesn't.
Eureka there is a lot of activity. I missed telling was I did yesterday so I'll just say the starter looked and smelled like the day before so I stirred the starter up. Today it had almost tripled in size. The smell is still very pleasant. I tossed out all but ten grams and put the same amount of water and flour as day one. The flour is still the same mix as my starting mix. Maybe I'll have to make this blend my starter feed.
A couple more days since my last post. I'm feeding the starter once a day and it is doubling in size everyday now. I moved the container from the top of the freezer to the counter so the starter is a little bit cooler and to slow it down. There is still a very nice delicious aroma about the starter. I think my first loaf will be made of the same flours as I'm making the starter with. Maybe I'll give it a try this weekend.
Starter has been doubling everyday and looking about the same as last photos above. I though I would take some of it and do a build for a preferment to see what it looked like.
I'm very happy with the results so now I'm going to bake a bread with it.
Pictures of the new loaf. The end result of making a new starter is to see if it will make bread. Here are a couple of pictures of it.
The bread has each of the 5 flours that the starter does in equal parts. I really like this bread and have already eaten half a loaf. It looks like it it over proofed a little bit but that might just be the combination of the flours and that they are real close to being a whole grain flour. When I put the dough in the oven it hadn't flattened out so that just might be how this bread is going to act when it is cooked. The flavors of the bread are very nice. The main flavor reminds me of the taste of the flakes in Raisin Bran cereal. There is also a sour flavor to it with a sweet finish. I love how it tastes. I'll write how I made it in the recipe section.