Establishing and Working with Homegrown Sourdough Starter

[Soupcon]

On 4/26/2017 at 9:44 AM, lindag said:

Could the odor have come from the container?

I never did find out as I pitched both starters and started again, this time with great success. The smell of nail polish has not returned to any starter I have on the go now. I have two: a whole wheat starter and an AP starter both of which I have successfully baked from.

[Luke]

On 3/14/2017 at 5:47 AM, Soupcon said:

Updates? Sure. I am glad you asked.

The one on the counter smelled of nail polish remover. I can't for the life of me figure out what would cause so it must be some strange bacteria from somewhere.... either in the flour or picked up in the house. I have just pitched it as I can's seem to get the smell to go away even after a few refreshments.

The one in the fridge is still in hibernation. I am not sure what to do with that one. Any suggestions?

 

I would not throw it out. It happens to my starter as well, if left out of the fridge for a few days without a refresh of flour. 

 

The root cause is Ethyl Acetate. I think, but not 100% sure, it's caused by the yeast running out of food and being left at ambient temperatures.

 

I follow Ken Forkish's method for Sourdough starter, so when this happens (normally caused by lazyness or forgetting to put into the fridge after a bake), I simply remove all but 50g of starter, refresh with new flour and water, let it sit for a day at ambient temperature, and then pop back into the fridge.

 

Cheers

Luke

[Soupcon]

Hi all

My second starter (the really active one from which I have had some good bakes with AP flour and 1 bake using whole wheat) is now acting quite strange. I confess I left it out on the bench for 2 days without refreshing and when I remembered it, it had of course completely run out of food but there was no hooch at all. So I continued as usual. Next the starter decided to act really sluggish and took 24 hours to double or more so I increased the number of feeds to speed it up and it did oblige for a while and then slowed right down again. So I switched flours to a commercial brand (Robin Hood AP non bleached for those Canadians following this thread) and it again went into overdrive to the point where my ratios are 1:4:4. At 1:2:2 the starter more than doubled in 8 and appeared to be trending down to 7 or 6 hours consistently. So I increased the ration to 1:4:4. Now the starter takes 9 hours one refreshment to more than double and 15 to 18 hours the next refreshment. Huh? This has continued for the past 4 days. What on earth is happening and can it be fixed?

[joiei]

A very real and interested newbie here.  I have never baked  a loaf of bread that I though was interesting.  I saw a recipe for creating a homemade starter a couple of weeks ago.  I really have no idea what I am doing.  I went for it.  My memories of the best breads in my history is the loaves the bakeries in Tampa used to leave for the Cuban Sandwich places, I was in college and we would occasionally wander around Ybor city and help ourselves,  we were so bad.  Then in the mid to late 70s when I lived in San Francisco the Larabaru guy left bread for the day in the morning.  Sometimes it was even still warm.  Needless to say, 3 staff and a lb of butter stopped for this we called it breakfast.  So my experiences with bread making pretty much is some incredible bread memories and very little experience.  I have started creating a starter over the last week.  What do I do next.  I have about 2 cups of starter, remember this started as an experiment so can I actually bake a loaf of bread that I enjoy.  What I have now is this sort of medium thick mass, how do I use it?  The starter is in the fridge, do I feed it and immediately put it back in the fridge?  Unfortunately where I live there is no incredible bread bakery.  There are now a few patisseries that make acceptable bread but I want to make it my self dang it.  I have made loaf bread and i have experimented with the no-knead bread but they are boring.  Give me some direction.  I will be busy with steak judging this weekend but next week, my calendar is clear.