How to start a sour dough starter

[ORChick]

Not really concrete, more like .... library paste Flour and water, and a few million healthy bacteria ... a very healthy library paste. This is why I always keep a layer of wax paper between the container and the lid.

 

[miss_thenorth]

Not imperitive, no. For that matter you don't even really need to switch over at all, unless it is important to you to have snowy white bread. Although in the end a loaf of bread will only have a small fraction that was the starter; a rye starter in a white loaf will hardly be noticeable. What do you have - bleached white, whole wheat? If you are concerned about the outcome you can always divide your baby starter, and just switch over with half of it, and see what happens.

I am using 1/4 cup rye, 1/2 cup WW, and 1/2 cup water. This mixture has been working wonderfully for me--rising more than twice it's size. Tomorrow it will be a week old and I am going to try and bake with it. I know I read somewhere to switch over to white,(and the only white I have is bleached) but I can't find out why we should switch. Is it for the gluten content? My family prefers WW bread, so I was just wondering.

Boy, I gotta tell ya this whole sourdough starter starting thing is turning into an obsession. Now, I hope my bread turns out. I'll bake with it tomorrow.

 

[miss_thenorth]

Oh, so I found out why we switch to white flour.
The other issue I've gone back and forth on is when to switch to white flour. I DO suggest switching to unbleached white flour, even if you want to use whole grain flours. The reason we start with a whole grain flour is because it has more microorganisms on it, which makes it a better flour to start a starter. However, every time you feed with whole grain flour you are adding a large number of stray organisms you don't want into the starter. At this point in the starter development we want to refine the starter, encouraging the growth of the organisms we want and discouraging the ones we don't want. White flour helps us by adding fewer stray microorganisms.

So this morning, I will add 1/2 white flour , but also instead of dumping some, i will keep that going just in case.

 

[ORChick]

Thank you MissTN, I didn't know that. I have always had a white (unbleached) starter, because DH prefers my homemade bread to be predominantly white, so I've never looked into the whys and wherefors. Although the rye starter that I have had going for the last couple of weeks seems to be working OK. Good luck with todays' baking.

 

[Dace]

I learned something new, so I thought I would share!

I rehydrated ORchicks starter and have fed it a few times now. The consistency of the starter is way different form what I had going...which sort of tells me that my *starter* never really made it to starter status

This starter is very thick and glue-y if that makes sense. The consistency is not just what you would expect from flour and water, it is gloppy and sort of sticks together.

Not a very good description, but I guess my point is that when your starter is really STARTER the consistency changes.....must be all those happy little beasties!

Thanks again ORchick!

So I have fed it the 1 TBS flour and 1TBS water combo a few times. It is nicley bubbly.....when should I up the volume? I don't want to starve the beasties and I woudl like to bake this week. right now the total volume is probably close to 1/2 cup.

 

[ORChick]

That sounds like a good description of starter ... *gloppy* I believe is the correct technical term

I think that if it is nicely bubbly and smelling sour you could use more flour at your next feeding - maybe twice as much as you have been. When that is up and going then double it again. When you get to the amount you want to keep just dump some of the old before adding the new.

I am so glad the starter is liking it at your place