My rye culture sat in the fridge for 3 weeks. There was no rye flour in Alice Springs to enable me to refresh. Finally found some at the local organic shop. I've also ordered a 10 Kg bag from Laucke Flour. It's arriving in 2 weeks.
Anyway, I think it's active. I threw most of it out and refreshed the rest. It started bubbling away!
The first picture is my culture after 15 hours. After 6 hours, the jar I originally had it in was obviously too smal to hold it, so I transferred to a bigger jar. The top line on the piece of white tape shows the level 6 hours previous to the current level.
The other jar on the right (which is the original jar I had my culture in) is the start of my basic sour in my attempt to make a 90% rye loaf.
I'll send another post as I progress.
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Once you've got a starter going, it's practically imperishable. Lots of flours = lots of bread = show and tell!
The Basic sour after 24 hours' fermentation. I didn't get any pictures of the full sour.
I found the basic sour didn't rise much. The full sour domed a little bit. The finished dough seemed to rise OK. I should've left the shaped loaves to prove a bit longer.
The recipe called for a little added commercial yeast in the finished dough, but I didn't use it. It said to prove the loaves for one hour, but I didn't read the bit about the commercial yeast.
I baked at 450 F (my oven struggles to get past 450. If it gets to 500, it quickly drops to 450 once the door is open to load the bread, steam etc. It stays around 450 after that).
I baked at 450 for 10 minutes, then cracked the door open using a teaspoon (the book said to vent the oven). I reduced the temp to 410 for a total baking time of 50 minutes.
The crust was quite thick, especially on the bottom.
The crumb was dense (inadequate proof ,I reckon).
Question: Do the basic and full sours usually take a long time to ferment? I think the acidity was OK, but it seemed to take forever to get the sours to look domed.