The untrained eye

Hello Nitnat,

Don't give up and start again.  Things have a way of coming good when you least expect it.

I'd have thought things should be going fairly well by seven or eight days but it does sound as if something is going on.

Have you tried adding rye flour to your blend?  It might just give the beasties the boost they need.  I routinely add about 20% of rye and 80% wheat flour to mine although in the past I have also successfully used all wheat starters.

On the container thing, I use a mini soup ladle (about 50mm dia - it holds about 50g of starter) to extract from the jar  and get very little on the sides.  What does get there I just scrape back down with a spatula/spoon and don't panic about getting it spotless. I have not experienced any mould formation.  Wash and sterilise your jar when it suits - I haven't done mine for ages.

Let us know how you go.

Farinam

[quote=nitnat]When people are throwing out their starter to feed it, what is the best way to do it so that the whole jar doesn't get all covered in the starter? I'm paranoid this bit will go mouldy so furiously attempt to wipe it down. Surely I don't need to be changing containers on a daily basis?!

Thanks in advance....[/quote]

Don't use a jar, at least not during the first phase of establishing the starter. Just use a bowl or something relatively wide, that should make it easier taking half of the content out. Once you have the starter established, then move it to a jar and store it in the fridge.

Mine is in a jar and once/twice a week when I use it the sides do get dirty. I just wipe it as best as I can with a little paper towel, and switch to a clean jar every forthnight or so.

I know that everybody has an opinion on this, but seeing how I just managed to get my first starter going, and know why I had trouble, I will share my observations with you.

These are the things did, some right, some wrong.

 Made the starter too soupy, it should be more like slightly thick pancake batter.

I Set the bowl in a warm room of an air conditioned home.  It needed to a bit warmer than that, so I put the bowl on top of my DSL modem, and it did speed up the process considerably.

I tried all sorts of flour, but in the end, it was simple unbleached King Arthur Bread flour that I used. Any flour will work, but some might work faster due to the increase in yeast levels in some flours.

The first time I tried I used the yeast method, and had I gotten all the other points correctly, it would have worked fine.

One thing I noticed was in how the temperature effects what you are trying to accomplish. If the temperature is a bit cooler it will slow the process way down, so it will take longer. if it takes longer, you might be discouraged from taking proper care of the starter. Stir, and then feed your starter every day. Use a clean spoon, try to keep other forms of bacteria out of what you are doing.

Sometimes the bubbles won't be so visible through the sides of the bowl. They will form slowly because you may be working without yeast to give a fast kick start. As much as it takes 12 or more hours for your sour dough bread to rise, it takes a long time for the starter to develop the proper level of gas to clue you into knowing that it is working.

When you stir the starter bowl, the first few turns should show you that you have gas trapped in the starter ,and it is indeed doing what it should. Especially if you have not started with a yeast based starter, any bubbles you see are from the yeast in your flour eating like it should.

Keep the bowl warm, not hot.  If you have a DVR that gets hot, or any other electronic item that gets warm to the touch, try putting  the bowl on top of it. Check it often, but only feed it, or stir it once a day.

Once I got my first sour dough bread,  I fed my starter, let it rise ,and sealed it to go into the frig. The frig is very cold ,and when I went to use it again, I put it out on the counter and never got any rise out of the bowl. I began leaving it out of the frig ,and fed it for a few days, and put it back on the DSL modem.It is now back to what it was before  I refrigerated it. This is where I am now, able to get a good starter, but not understanding why I can't rejuvenate it from the frig in any reasonable time.   I hope some of this helps you.  Joe

Although hygiene is important in breadmaking, you don't need to be too paranoid about your starter container. The acid environment created by the wild yeast and lactobacillus combo is no good for moulds and other spoilage organisms to survive.

Wipe the edges after taking and topping-up and change the container every month or so.

Here are a couple of thoughts.  The ideal temperature to encourage the right bacteria to grow is 32 degrees Celsius (90 F).  Get your starter to as close to that temperature as possible.

Of course, to get the bacteria (most desirable is lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, but other lactobacilli are fine) growing, you need to have the bacteria in the first place, which is often in the air around us--more or less depending on the location and climate.  The lactobacilli are what you need because they metabolize maltose--the sugar found in grains.  Because this is what they metabolize, they are found on virtually all grains.  However, commercial milling routinely raises the temperature of the flour as high as 200 degrees Celsius (400 F).  So, you should not expect the any commercially milled flour to have the bacteria you are looking for.  Home grinders generally do not get the temperature anywhere near that hot, so that's a better option.

Here's my recommendation.  Get some refined (white) flour (rye, wheat, whatever), what you are really looking for is a flour with a high concentration of maltose.  There is no maltose in the bran or the germ, so refined flour has a higher concentration of maltose that do whole grain flours.  Mix it water in the ration of 1:1 by volume.  (earlier comment about thick pancake batter is right on).  Then add a handful of unground grain--the fresher the better.  Some people--especially Mormons--have wheat that has been in storage for decades, don't use this.  Remember that we are looking for a concentration of the right kind of living lactobacilli.  Then do what you have been doing.  This should get you going.  Don't give up on your starter, it may take up to a week before you are seeing any signs of metabolization (bubbles).  Once it starts to bubble you can get rid of the grain by pouring the top of the strater into a new jar and feeding that, discarding the bottom half.

The earlier comment about not needing to be overly concerned about the cleansing the container between feedings is also right on the money.  You need to create the right conditions for the lactobacilli to out compete all other organisms and then you will have no worry about spoilage.

Thanks, theGove - I think a good beginner's cheat for both (a) lactobacillae and (b) wild yeast is:

(a) natural, live yoghourt and (b) fresh grapes or plums (for the bloom on the skins).

I have used it with great success and a great 'sour' flavour.

What do more experienced bakers than me think of this idea?

I'd like to add my 2c to this (very informative and helpful) discussion.

When I first began messing with a freshly-started starter a few months ago, I had a similar problem with the starter.  I had started it with some wholegrain coarsely ground Swedish wheat flour and some plain white local flour, and tap water (it's very soft and rather pure here in Stockholm).  It did bubble but not rise the way I'd wanted it to for the first few days (about 10-14 days actually).  I fed it on an every-12-hour schedule by discarding half and adding approx. weight of water and plain white flour (no additions of whole-wheat flour after initial).

The summer had been very warm here and the kitchen was routinely getting to 25°C during peak day temperature.  Still, no rise.  I stuck the starter in the fridge for a while as I was tired of daily mess, following some advice to feed it right before putting in fridge, and left it to languish there for about a week.  Then I took it out and used about 2 tablespoons of it in a clean container with flour to reactivate - and viola!  Within about a day I had a jar full of bubbly risen starter!  I discarded remaining stuff in fridge and kept the new culture which had risen so happily.  Ever since then the starter works fine and rises both, from fridge and from room-temperature after feeding.

Since this is all very unscientific and based on pure observation of my one starter, here is what I think could have contributed:

1. Either the starter culture composition had changed somewhat during its week in the fridge without feeding after the intiial feed before sticking it in there, or...

2. It just needed to age more than the minimum 1 week that a lot of people recommend.  Keyword there is "minimum" and I've read a lot of bakers saying that their old, established starter behaves much better and much more consistently than a newly-started one, which would make sense from a microbiological POV (I'm a biologist myself): after a while, the strains which predominate in the starter would be the ones that get along best with your flour, your water and each other, and out-compete (kill off) any other varieties of whatever else is in there, thus leading to better rises and more consistent results.

I suspect it is the combination of the two (rest in fridge for a week and persevering) that did the trick - so if you want to try this, you can take a small part of your starter (2 tablespoons that you'd discard at any feed), feed it with 1dl of water and about 1.5 dl of flour, stick in a jar (large enough for it to expand - it may do that in the fridge too, just slower, close the lid almost but not quite all the way, and forget about it for a week.  Then take it out, refresh it and see if that has helped!

I know i will probably start a riot but i have my starter in an icecream container with a lid and i keep it in the fridge! It is about three years old now and it spent some time in  the freezer as well when i went overseas. i was able to defrost and resusitate it when i came back. So once it's active it's pretty forgiving. I originally followed the instructions in the bourke street bakery book which has good step by step instructions. I had both rye and white starter going at one stage and if i remember right the rye one more active sooner so it might be a better one to start with, you can always convert to to white once it's active.

... behind the scenes with your starter, one of the best factual descriptions which blows away many of the myths, is Debra Winks amazing post on The Fresh Loaf:

www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10901/pineapple-juice-solution-part-2

Part One of that is good too, but in Part Two she really gets down to the nitty gritty. If you're like me and have very little background in this area, you might have to read it more than once, but it's worth it.

It would make sense to go on from that and read her overview of lactic acid fermentation in sourdough:

www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10375/lactic-acid-fermentation-sourdough

Both threads contain a lot of really useful explanation in the comments too.