A new starter is born

Hello Mike, just wanted to say thanks for all the knowledge sharing / the absolute nuggets of tips in your videos and blogs over the years. I have sucessfully made my first panettones yesterday. I spent some time getting my lievito madre working. I firtst converted my regular starter mid August, but that never worked out, somebody later gifted me some organic grapes, so I started afresh with those, back in maybe early October. To be frank there are a lot of useless guides out there. Interesting to see your approach, e.g. looks like you are really going for investing time in yeast power above, even before converting to a pasta. Compare with the like of : if your fruit water mixture hasn't gone frothy in a day, throw it away!

Appreciated your youtube video of you kneading your madre, compared wth guides that say it has to be as dry as possible, which I found to be unworkable/ unkneadable. Appreciated your comments in blogs over the years urging people to stop messing about with lower temperatures and spend time with it in warmer temperatures, comparable to a bakery in the mediterranean. Compared with guides saying it's okay to feed once a day at cooler temperatures, it might just take a few more days to gain some sort of strength. Like week by week I watched my madre's performance deteriorate. 

I'm generally pleased with how it went, my first dough went more than 4 x volume in 8 hours at 28 deg C overnight. To be honest, it caught me out a bit, I wanted to mix the second after 3 x expansion, to leave enough gas in the tank. The second dough I could tell was a bit too sticky, and I learned that I need to be more comfortable with wetter doughs. The recipe I was using used an excess of liquid to soak the raisins, which, even when drained, resulted in a wet second dough, which I adjusted by adding more flour by feel. I got there in the end and was pleased with it as a first attempt.

Thanks for keeping it real and staying as true to the proper knowledge as possible! Peter