I grow and stone-mill my own organic wheat for bread flour. The wheat variety is Glenn. I produce three different sifted flours at each milling: bread flour, a coarse wheat for texture and farina. Technically, the bread flour isn't "whole wheat" in that parts have been sifted out, but it is unbleached, unenriched, and the color of beach sand. Its texture is also slightly grittier than store-bought bread flour since it is stone-milled and not hammer-milled.
At any rate, I wanted to try my hand at sourdough using my flour so I found a 1:1:1 formula that called for the whole grain flour for the first four days, switching to AP flour at that point to avoid rancidity. This was my first attempt at natural sourdough. The first four days of my starter were magical with bubbles and rise by day four. The smell was sweet, floral and slightly sour with no unpleasant bite. As soon as I started the AP flour additions in place of my flour, the bubbles all but stopped, there was no rise (not even in secret when I wasn't watching), and the starter seemed very sad. It was using all the food between feedings and produced hooch, so I thought the 12 hour spacing might be too far apart. I experimented for 3 days with 8 hour feedings with no improvement. The smell also became unpleasant, with a strong alcohol odor due to the hooch production with hints of poison mushroom. So, I rescued 2 oz of my starter and began using my whole grain flour again. It took three days of 12 hour feedings and dividings, but my starter is happy again. It is bubbling, the pleasant fragrance has returned, the hooch between feedings has stopped, and I used it today to make my first two loaves of bread with impressive rise. I increased it at 1:2:2 prior to baking today and it performed amazingly.
My question is, from a scientific perspective, why did the AP flour tank the starter? It was unbleached, unbrominated from King Arthur's. Is the sugar in the AP flour too readily available and the yeast gets a quick sugar high and crashes (like twinkies do to people)? Is it sort of "sterile" due to processing and its inclusion removes a lot of the natural flora from the culture? I don't want my starter to go rancid due to using my whole grain flour, but I also don't want a sad, puny starter with disappointing results. So far, there are no signs of rancidity and the whole grain version actually smells and appears more pleasant than the AP. It also seems very happy, and is now stored in the fridge awaiting next week's baking day. Any thoughts from the experienced sourdough bakers?
I think that the use of AP flour and the "tanking" possibly was not cause and effect but just the timing for the rise of a strain of bacteria called leuconostoc. This bacteria is self destructive as it produces acid and that kills the bacteria. The use of pineapple juice in the start-up procedure will prevent the leuconostoc from forming.
Go ahead and make your AP flour starter from the whole wheat. I think you will have no problem. I have two starters: King Arthur AP, snd King Arthur whole wheat. I keep them in the refrigerator and freshen once a month, if not sooner.
Ford
I agree with Ford. You started using AP flour, and your starter died. Both things are true, but I'm not sure there's a cause and effect relationship. As we say in medicine "True. True. And unrelated". Both of these events are true, but I think they're only related temporally and not by "cause and effect". I've made starters with hand milled wheat and/or wild grains and switched them to AP flour no problem. That switch should not, in and of itself, kill the starter.
I agree. I was unaware of the existence of the bacteria and the timing of the AP flour additions seems to have coincided with a natural starter decline due to the bacteria. I would have panicked much less had I known about the bacteria, and laid less blame on the AP flour :).
your starter was still in its infancy. There's usually a rush of bubbles from bacterial activity in the first few days, followed by a day or two of apparent lifelessness, then the yeast eventually kicks in. You may have just fed the AP when the starter was about to go flat, anyway.
If not that, your starter hadn't really had time to stabilize. Throwing an entirely different food supply at it would have upended the flora that were still trying to establish themselves as a stable community.
You can experiment by taking a small sample of your starter and feeding it a mix of whole wheat and AP over the next few days. Start with mostly whole wheat and very little AP and gradually transition to mostly AP and very little whole wheat over several days' feedings. That will give the bacteria and yeasts an opportunity to transition gradually.
My starter is usually fed a combination of AP or bread flour, whole wheat flour, and whole rye flour, which seems to keep it happy.
Paul
I always feed my starter with mostly unbleached bread flour and sometimes add whole wheat flour. This is all commercial flour. My starter seems perfectly happy. If I feed it too often and leave it on the counter it will get very acidy, and if I ignore it for too long it will smell like acetone (and develop hooch). A couple of feedings and it is pillowy, bubbly and sweet smelling again. Different critters like different conditions.
I can see based on your replies that the starter recipe I followed was very oversimplified :). The bacterial infestation timeline does seem to coincide with the timeline for starting the AP flour transition, and robbing the the immature sourdough ecosystem of its familiar food supply could have contributed as well. The perfect storm, so to speak. I feel like the yeast is very active in the starter now based on the rise I got today (assuming the imposter CO2 producing bacteria wouldn't also cause a rise), so I will try a slow transition to AP with a small amount of starter to see if the results are the same. I wouldn't mind continuing to feed the starter my own flour, but it is in much shorter supply than King Arthur's and I would rather have it for baking the final product. Thank you for your feedback! It is enlightening.
rye you starter would look dead. That is the natural way with starters on day 4-6. The AP flour had absolutely nothing to do with it. Your starter is fine. It will soon pick up steam again now that the right LAB abd yeast are r=taking over the culture. BY day 10 you can see if it is ready to bake a loaf or not by making a leavain with a small bit iof it and see how it performs.
Just don't over feed it now or feed it at all, now that it has finally become more acidic from the bad LAB that are now gone. Only feed it when it needs it so that the culture stays acidic and donlt let it get too liquid. Stay in the 80-100% hydration range by weight.
Happy SD baking soon enough
The AP flour may have contained malted barley flour, which has a higher content of an enzyme called amylase than your WW flour. As a grain farmer I'm sure you're aware that amylase breaks down starch into simple sugars. This may account for the extra activity you saw when you added the AP flour.
Rancidity is caused by the oxidation of fats. There is not enough fat in your starter for this to be a concern.
The way to make starter is to combine flour and water and walk away for a week, even 9 to 10 days. If it's a liquid starter, stir the mixture once per day to keep the ingredients dispersed.
That's it.