the night before last, i started a starter...i used 1cup flour, 1cup warm water, and a tad of honey....the next morning, i checked it and say alot of bubble (good right?)..i stirred it a little and when i got home from work i took half away and added another cup of flour and another cup of water...today when i got home i checked it and it smells like vinegar...ive also been researching the wine making process and know that a vinegar smell is bad..is it the same for sourdough, or is it ok?...ive always heard its suppoed to smell like alcohol......should i throw it away and try again?...and could it possible have been the honey that made it vinegary?...also , when making wine, sugar helps the fermentation process, i kinda figured it to be true with sourdough as well, but ............any thoughts?
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Don't worry about the vinegar smell of your starter. It is normal.
The leaven fermentation is quite complex because leaded by several kind of micro-organisms : wild yeasts and lactic bacterias. The yeasts produce mainly ethanol (alcool). The bacterias produce mainly lactic and acetic acids. The vinegar smell comes from the acetic acid.
The art of the baker is to find the right method to get the researched leaven : mainly lactic, strongly acetic (personally, I don't like), balanced... You also have to get enough yeasts in your culture (do not add baker's yeast) in order to get the rising potential (the yeasts produce much more CO2 than the bacterias).
A tip : when you refresh your leaven (adding flour and water), use just 20 % of your old leaven compared to the quantity of flour.
ex. : 100 g flour + 100 g water + 20 g old leaven.
To use your leaven to make a dough, use it at its maximum of activity. So, before it starts to collapse or to get a too strong smelling.
The more you will practice, the more you will get the experience and the knowledge to get nice loaves...
:-)
I grew up in Clarksburg!
Eric is right - Vinegar smell is normal! Just wait, it will get worse before it gets better! But make sure you go through at least 8 days before you call it quits.
Right now the activity you had was from multiple microbes, not all good friendly bugs. Soon the acid that you are noticing will make your starter less habitable to all but the desired bugs, i.e. lactic acid bacteria and yeasts. In the next stage most people think that their starters have died. But keep tossing out most of the starter and refreshing with good preferably organic ingredients. See Dom's starter recipe at the following url: http://sourdough.com/blog/sourdom/beginners-blog-starter-scratch
No you don't need sugar for a dough culture, just flour and water. Start on day three of Dom's instructions... If you don't have a scale save about 1/2 cup of your current starter - in a liquid measure. Place it in a very clean or sterile quart glass jar. Add 1/2 cup + 2tsp of water and 1 cup of unbleached white flour and mix well. This should put you on day three. If you can get some organic rye flour and substitute about a tablespoon of your unbleached white flour. After it is well mixed let it go for 24hours - this should put you on track for day 4. Follow Dom's recipe from there on.
You should make sure you read all that Dom has to say about starting a starter... Also check out his starter experiment blog it will give you some idea of what to expect! Your method is different but probably will still get you to the desired end. I like what Dom has to say about that...
Your are on your way to wonderful bread!
Terri
Regards,
Nils