Sour Dough Starter...

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Rossco or Jay, I need your help:
I ignored my Sourdough Starter for a few months too many and on my return from a 2 week cruise, found my SD Starter dried out and greenish in the back of the fridge oops.

So, I've got to make up a starter again and it's been a few years. Rossco, did you use Pineapple Juice for your last SD starter liquid?

I've been reading posts & blogs all morning and although I've used organic grapes in the past, these posts say that using the available bacteria/yeasts on grapes (or raisins or cabbage) is not the final bacteria that wheat flours create so I should forego them and just use flour. The key would be to stir it up 2-3 times a day and to try to refresh it at its peak. Peter Reinharts books and blog use straight flour with or without pineapple juice.

Has anyone had any success recently making a sourdough starter?

Thanks, Dino

[texassourdough]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Hi Dino!

Hard, dried, and green suggest more than two weeks of abuse!

It can probably be rescued but rescuing it MAY be as much trouble as starting from scratch.

To rescue....wash the solids..i.e. rinse the remains with water. Don't wash it away...but keep the whitish residue and add some water and flour to feed it. (say a 4 to one ratio 1 part "paste", 2 parts water, and 2 parts flour by weight. You will probably do better if you use whole wheat or rye flour for now. The "paste" will have the bacteria and yeast you had before and they can "jump start" the process.

To start from scratch, it is basically foolproof if you don't use chlorinated water. It will EVENTUALLY work almost no matter what. It is simplest with rye flour (more beasties and nutrients than wheat flour) or whole wheat (same relative to white flour). Mix it up 50/50 by weight (or volume at first - it doesn't matter) and feed it at 2 to one (1 part to 1 part to 1 part for about five days or more later...) You don't need much 25 grams of flour and 25 of water are plenty to begin with. 10 grams will work. If you do it this way in about one to three days it will bubble pretty aggressively which is bacteria - and not the bacteria you want. About two/three days later they will drop the pH to the point where they will begin to shut down and the bubbling will slow/stop. Far too many newbies to sourdough get way too excited about this early action and decide it dies and throw it out. NO! Keep feeding it!. Take only part of the "starter" if it gets too big. Again, you don't really need much. About two days later - maybe longer - you will start getting bubbles again as the good bacteria and acid tolerant wild yeast you want start to take over the starter. At that point go to feeding twice a day and increase the feeding to 4 to one (1 part starter to 2 water to 2 of flour).. All of this is at room temp! Feed it for at least a week more before trying to use it. It should be doubling within 12 hours. It will continue to get more robust for some time. Keeping it at room temp for a month or more is not stupid. It will help the starter develop. Once it is leavening well you can start refrigerating it if you want.

You can begin your starter with pineapple juice instead of water (and you can feed it with either pineapple juice or water for the first two days) if you want to. Pineapple juice is adequately acid to be hostile to the first burst of "bad" bacteria. So there is no flurry of bubbling around day 2-3. Some think it speeds up the process but...I question it for the wild yeast and the "good" bacteria are multiplying along with the "bad" ones. In any case it doesn't make much difference. Both work!

Your message is a good reminder to people to take part of their starter and smear it on a piece of was paper and dry it out. Then freeze it.

Don't be afraid to try to rescue your starter chip. It can probably be done fairly easily.

Good Luck!
Jay

[heliman]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Hi Dino - yes, I used pineapple juice to start mine. It' s been dead a long while though!

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Sorry about your dead starter Rossco. Congradulations on becomming an "Il Pizzaiolo". Your title is greatly deserved as I've enjoyed your cooking/baking on the forum.

Jay, this year has flown by so fast and I did forget about my starter since the begging of the year . I already tossed it out so I can't resuscitate it. I WILL freeze some from now on. I've got my annual pizza-pool party coming up in a month and I'm caught without a starter for pizza bases.

So, I mixed up my 50/50 batch by weight this morning using new stone-ground whole wheat and bottled water. In 1-3 days I should see bubbling. When the bubbling begins to die down and flatten, is that when I begin the twice-daily "feeding"? I'll feed it twice a day for about a week with the 4 to 1 ratio (twice the flour/h20 to base which is normal).

If I keep this part up for a week (assuming it's lively and smells nice) do you think I can change the feeding to AP flour at that point? I've got 5 weeks until I bake and I want it robust.

Scarlett O'Hara said it best: "As God is my witness, I'll never leave my SD Starter to go hungry again!" I've humbly learned my lesson.

Thanks-Dino

[texassourdough]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Yes...wrt feeding but it is really a bit more complicated than that. Telling people how to feed is kind of tricky. You actually want the bad bacteria to do their thing and make the starter more acidic, so feeding dilutes the acid and arguably slows the process at first. Thus feeding early on has some pretty negative effects. Still it should probably be refreshed at least every other day. And it should bubble vigorously at some point but won't smell yeasty. At that point you definitely should go to at least once a day. That activity is the bad bacteria. Their slowing tells you that the acid level is reaching their tolerance. Once they are in decline you can begin feeding and not prolong their activity much...But you don't have to be aggressive in going to twice a day. Once a day is probably enough until you start getting activity again. (Yeah, I know, I am somewhat contradicting my other instructions, but the first set was laid out to give a simpler version - and it will work.) I would personally just go from one 2 to 1 feeding a day (during the first bubbling session) to one 4 to 1 feeding (1 plus 2 water plus 2 flour) daily once the bubbling mostly stops. And to twice a day once the activity picks back up. If you feed too much you simply dilute your beasties and they have a hard time increasing population. If you don't feed enough the right populations have a hard time taking over.

With five weeks you should have plenty of time. And there are plenty of good nonSD recipes so you can survive either way. Do you want me to send you some starter??? (I bet you can find some if you ask around!)

Hang in there!
Jay

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Thanks for offer to send starter. I'm sure this will work for me though. I've been reading my various bread baking books section on SD Starters (never paid much attention in the past) and found the science as interesting as you've described it. Baking is quite the alchemistic (is that a word?) process and I take if for granted.
If it weren't for the long holiday weekend, I might have brought the jar to my office and watched for it's feeding time!
Thanks, Dino

[lwood]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

You guys have inspired me to retry my starter again.

[texassourdough]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Hi lwood!

Go for it!

Where does your flour come from?

While the lore is that the beasties come from the air, recent university experiments show that it is very hard to establish a sourdough starter using sterilized flour, suggesting the beasties are present in the flour. Whole wheat has more beasties and nutrients than white flour and is usually a bit easier to get going. Rye flour is even higher still and is typically the easiest. (Note: it is not that I think your flour is a problem, but more a curiousity for your from scratch starter will probably have the character of the source wherever that is.)

Good luck!
Jay

[GianniFocaccia]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Jay,

Sounds logical that beasties attached to a piece of grain could be the catalyst for a given starter. If a healthy starter is then moved from its origination point and (according to lore) morphs into the new location's starter profile, wouldn't this be from the local airborne yeasts?

John

[splatgirl]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

IIRC, I read someplace that most sourdough starters contain more than one kind of bacteria, so it could be that changing location or environment changes the profile of the starter because the conditions better suit a different strain in the mix.

Someday we're gonna get ourselves a member who is a lab chemist or biologist who will offer to conduct DNA analysis on all of our starters, sustain them for a while in their new conditions, and then reanalyze and then we'll have some real info!
Actually, I think this would make a stellar kids science project. I remember doing DNA electrophoresis in 9th grade biology lab, except with subject matter that was way less interesting than the ingredients of great bread.

[texassourdough]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Hi John!

Experiments suggest that the yeast populations in healthy are pretty robust and difficult to penetrate. I.e. the dominant yeast strain is difficult to displace. Also...from what I know the yeast strain has more to do with its acid tolerance, dividing speed, and thus speed in leavening dough than in flavor.

The primary differences among starters from a flavor perspective lie in the bacteria. While the baceria in a healthy starter are also relatively robust, they will be infiltrated by other bacteria over time - from flour, air, and other potential sources of contamination (like hands!) It is supposedly rather difficult to keep a starter bacterial populaiton pure for an extended period in an "alien" location (like SF starter in Boston). I personally find the fact that Baccillus sanfranciscus is not bulletproof intersting since it is a bacterium that yields very acidic environments. I would think the high acid would be a hostile environment to most other sourdough bacteria... But... it does get corrupted.

The best defense to keep your starter "true" is to keep it well fed. The less robust it is the more vulnerable it is to being infiltrated by either other yeasts or bacteria.

I think you are right, splatgirl! A great science fair project!

Jay

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

8 days later, I have a normal looking, smelling, acting SD culture. It's been this way for 4 days now, consistently.

It only had 2 days (early on) when it started smelling a tad cheesy with tiny (low-foamy bubbles). That's when I converted to the 4 to 1 feeding and switched to AP bread flour instead of whole-wheat and it just took off on each daily feeding with that wonderful doughy-sour-yeasty aroma and activity you want.

I used Arrowhead Mills Whole Wheat flour to start. I thought I'd be more likely to use the whole wheat flour in baking than the rye flour. I'll do some trial bread baking this weekend, see how strong it is. BTW: I'll be freezing some dried flakes of my SD so I don't have to do this again

thanks for the help, Dino

[texassourdough]

Re: Sour Dough Starter...

Sounds like you had it easy, Dino! Keep feeding it for a while though. It will (almost certainly) get more robust and change character some over the next few weeks as the bacterial and yeast populations find their happy balance. (I actually think they change gradually for at least a year but...???)

Glad you are "back"!
Jay