Well, this fool has managed to make Debra Wink's "foolproof" pineapple juice method not-so-foolproof (URL: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10901/pineapple-juice-solution-part-2?page=3). Does anyone else have trouble building their starter past the pineapple juice phase?
After reading Debra's post (and many others on this great site) I followed the recommended path, using rye flour, but substituting OJ for the pineapple juice (had OJ on hand).
Day 1, a lump of brown-flecked goop (as expected).
Day 2, a larger lump of brown flecked goop. Toward the end of day 2, I could make out a few small bubbles in the goop, but otherwise inactive to the naked eye (as expected).
Day 3, an even larger lump of brown-flecked goop in the AM. By early evening, my lump had come alive, looking all the world like a rising dough. Since I wasn't expecting much from day 3, I hadn't marked the start point, but am confident that the rise was close to 100% by the next morning (day 4). Smell was sweet (kind of like OJ), not really yeasty yet, but boy did that look like yeast in action!
When I get to the day 4 feeding, the rise had started falling back and the starter had beautiful bubble structure and was popping nicely as I scooped it out to mix it with the feed. So, I figured, the yeast had activated. I did the recommended 2:1:1 feed, switching to water and unbleached AP flour instead of OJ and whole grain flour.
By early that afternoon, I had gotten a >100% rise, and the rise had started to fall back, so I fed again at the 2:1:1 ratio (using AP flour and water).
By the next morning (day 5), the build was still doing OK, but the rise was only about 75% before the batch started to fall back. I fed again at the 2:1:1 ratio and not much happened. I let it sit a full 24 hours (now day 6). I only got about a 10-15% rise. I thought my yeast had activated!
So, frustrated (and a little suspicious), I fed it this morning (day 6) at the same 2:1:1 ratio using AP flour, but back to OJ instead of water. Lo and behold, I'm looking at a ~150% rise as of 2:00pm.
With all that I've read here, I have 2 theories:
- That my yeast have not yet activated -- that my rises have been due to LAB reproducing their little brains out but not yet getting the starter to the pH necessary for yeast to get going, or;
- My yeast had activated, but were gorging on the simple sugars in the OJ, and that once I switched to water (and the OJ sugars exhausted) the yeast decided that breaking down starch was too much work so went on strike. Adding OJ again seems to have brought them back to work.
Any thoughts or advice?
Tim
orange juice acan be as loaw as 3.3 or as high as 4.19. I assume that pineapple juice varies a bit as well.
The idea of adding an acid to the mix at the beginning is to reduce the reproductive rate of the bad LAB which don't like a low pH and to reduce the activity of the non acid tolerant yeast in the flour - leaving a mire even playing field for the good wee beasties to inhabit without as much competition.
The problem is that too low a phH can also slow down the acid tolerant LAB as well when the mix gets below a pH of 4. Once the acid is mixed with the flour the pH is much higher until the LAB start producing acid.
Since the acid loving Lab and Yeast are slow to populate the culture as compared to the bad non acid loving LAB and yeast, the culture may appear to go a bit dead after day 3-5 depending on what wee beasties are in your mix. But after that, the culture should continue to grow and be more vigorous with the good wee beasties building their strength. Usually by day 10 the culture has built itself up to max yeast and LAB 12 hours after feeding depending on what scientific paper you read.
A 100% rye culture that is not switched over to wheat will be faster and quite different than one that was switched over.
Happy starter tending
Thanks da brownman. I get that I may not yet have achieved the right environment for yeast & good LAB. But I still can't figure out what accounts for the big rise after OJ. Something's growing!
So how should I go about feeding at this point? Once per day? What if, as happened today, I get a big rise? Feed when it starts falling or wait for the appointed daily feeding time? I have been feeding when the fall is apparent, but perhaps I should just be more patient and let it keep falling?
Tim
a thick enough starter,100% hydration or less, when it doubles and starts to level off you can feed it. Otherwise you are just diluting the culture too much and raising the pH too high. If it is slow, just stir it to make more food available to the wee beasties without adding more flour and water.
Thanks again. I'll incorporate more stirring in my routine.
Have to say, though, that I'm skeptical. If my jar of stagnant goo actually comes to life just by stirring more, I promise to start believing in unicorns.
Tim
slow things down faster. Better to stir and watch the starter bear fruit when it is ready.
You'd be surprised what frequent stirring will do for a new starter.
split the starter into two starters
Feed one 1:4:4 and the other 2:1;1 and see which one reacts. Which one gets yeasty and which one separates. Time them for peaking and then feed again. but use less water with the next feeding making it thicker and more like a soft dough. Discard and feed at peak or and hour or so afterward.
Switching to AP actually makes the goop thinner and less apt to rise. Whole flours are more absorbent so reducing the water with AP flour will let you have a better rise because you can trap bubbles easier and longer. They won't just pot on the surface and escape. :)
I suspect you missed your opportunity to feed the starter double flour when the yeast were doubling the volume of the culture but it's always hard to tell the first time Temperatures play such a big role. What are your temperatures?
Per da brownman's suggestion, I stirred and waited. After 4 stirs over 30 hours, I was seeing very little activity. Getting a slight nail polish remover smell prior to stirs, but definitely smelling yeast following the stirs. A few bubbles emerging on top prior to each stir, but no one would describe it as "frothy".
Before seeing mini's post, I had split the starter to try my own experiment. I took 70g of my languishing starter and added 35g each of rye flour and water. The other, I left alone and continued stirring. 7 hours later, I had a 200% rise in the one that I added rye flour to. The original (stirred) batch continued to have very little activity and no appreciable rise.
OK, so this is interesting. Clearly the flour matters. I'm getting little activity with AP flour, but a big rise with rye. My next experiment -- done overnight -- was to try to feed my "stir-only" batter with bread flour and water (did I have bag of bad AP flour that was somehow inhibiting the yeast?). I also fed my new rye batch with another hit of rye flour and water.
Using a 1:1:1 ratio for each experiment, as of 10 hours later, my rye batch is again rising nicely while my bread flour batch is doing next to nothing. Here are pics.
Above pics of bread flour batch.
Rye flour batch.
With some of the discard from the rye flour batch feed, I tried a test levain using 20g of the starter and 75g each of bread flour and water. Definitely some activity (see the pic), but I don't think it will pass the float test when I do that -- I'm giving it at least 12 hours before trying.
I can only conclude that my yeast are not ready for a diet of white flour and water. Think I should be weening off rye flour more slowly? I didn't think yeast were that picky!
Tim
not doing much. It obviously had been very active at one time after the last feeding since it ate through all of the food in the culture and needed to be fed again.
You will be ready to bake soon!
You might want to try transition from rye to AP/bread flour gradually.
feed 1,3,4 or about for 25°C or 77°F (still waiting to know the room temps, please)
"70g of my languishing starter and added 35g each of rye flour and water."
The key word is languishing starter (getting worse and less active) Normally if you feed it equal weights of flour to starter it manages to double, more flour than starter it will peak higher. It also has to be thicker (less water) to trap gas if you are looking at rise to determine maturity. A feeding of 70,35,35 is 2,1,1 (s.w.f) far too little if it has reached a yeasty stage and rising.
Thanks all for the replies and advice.
Mini, room temp has been ~72F.
Recapping, I started with the Deb Wink pineapple juice method. Good day 3 rise. By day 4 I started feeding using AP flour & water at a 2:1:1 ratio. The day 5 rise was disappointing, so I divided the starter into 2 experimental batches. On day 6 I fed one with OJ in place of water, and the other continued to use water; both at the recommended 2:1:1 ratio. The OJ batch rose 150% in 7 hours, while the water batch did nothing. Following the OJ batch rise, I fed both batches using water (2:1:1 ratio). 24 hours later (now day 7), I had 2 batches that seem to be going nowhere. As suggested here, I had incorporated more stirring in my routine through day 6 into day 7.
It was on day 7 that I added rye flour to the feed for one of the batches (I chose the one that didn't get the OJ kick-start for no particular reason), and switched to bread flour for the other. Results and pics for that are above.
Since then, I have managed to keep the rye flour batch going. I have gradually incorporated more bread flour into the feeds (started at 25% white; 75% rye, now at 75% white; 25% rye) and have increased the feed ratio to 1:1.5:1.5 so that I'm not having to feed every 6 hours. The bread flour batch was my "stir more and wait for activity before feeding" batch. It never showed more activity, so I concluded that it had indeed been starved. Since I had a decent batch going, I didn't see a need in trying to revive the starved batch so it went in the trash.
It's now day 10. I built a levain overnight and will try my first loaf today!
My conclusions? As Mini suggests, I needed to feed more. That said, there is a fine line in knowing when to start feeding more. My starter seemed to go quiet after I started feeding with white flour. As a newbie, I wasn't sure how to interpret that. Did my yeast just need more time to build (stir more, feed less) or were they already starving (feed more)? Without some experience, it's hard to know how to read a stagnant batch of starter.
In retrospect, the one observation that may be the key to reading a stagnant starter is smell. If you get a decent whiff of yeast when you stir, chances are good that you have to feed, even if the rise tops out at <10%. Does that sound right to the experts out here?
Tim
So it takes about two weeks or more. Get the starter up to 75°F minimum to see proper results. I take back my suggestion to feed more if the developing starter is so cold. It is also not ready to convert to wheat yet. Include a little wheat with the rye but still wait for the overpowering of the yeasts to convert over several feedings.
At 72° feed only a tiny bit every second day. Cut the normal directions/guidelines in half, time wise, so that the first day directions takes two days, the second day directions, days 3 & 4 days in reality etc. See how that compares with your culture and the growth rates to be more accurate.
If you have to stir to get a whiff of the yeasties, the population isn't strong enough. Reduce the size of starter if needed and feed 1,1,1 House guests should be complaining or asking if you are making wine or beer in the kitchen. :)
You can test the starter for yeast by doing a small yeast experiment. take 10g starter and mix with 70g water and 100g AP flour. Time it from mix to peak without stirring. Use a tall straight narrow glass, something you can see thru and mark the level, cover. Wait about 4 hrs (at 75°F) longer 6 to 12 hrs at 72°F before starting to mark the glass ever hour during the rise. Give it 24 hrs to peak. If nothing is happening, it can't raise bread.
I'd be surprised if you could starve a starter that quickly. They're not that fragile, even a new one.
My guess is the problem you ran into was caused by abruptly changing from rye to AP/bread flour. I ran into the same behavior the last time I experimented with making a new starter. After the first feeding with bread flour, I saw only a tepid rise, and it grew weaker with subsequent feedings.
But I have used pineapple juice before and followed my instinct.
The pineapple juice is to make your starter acidic. This is a bad environment for the bad bacteria and an ideal environment for the yeasts and good bacteria. If you only used water your starter would eventually become acidic naturally but the pineapple juice gives it a kick start. After which you switch to water.
2:1:1 is an interesting feed. I always do 1:1:1 or higher. If 2:1:1 was recommended I can only assume that, for this stage, feeding less fresh flour encourages a more acidic environment while your starter is becoming viable.
However once your starter is strong it'll eat through this poorer feed very quickly, will stop rising as much and will be more sluggish.
Your starter might benefit from better feeds and feed when you see activity. Watch your starter and not the clock. When it bubbles up on cue every time it is fed then it's ready.
Thanks all again for the helpful advice. My starter is doing fine -- am now fine-tuning the feeds to get strength up and get feed timing predictably at 12 hour intervals. My most recent bake results were great so I think I'm just about there.
So now having had exactly 2 experiences with creating a new starter, here are my observations.
The pineapple juice method made getting yeast activity going pretty foolproof. My downfall came as I tried to transition to maintenance. I followed the 2:1:1 feed ratio suggested in that method for day 4. The logic is as Lechem states above -- to keep the acid level up and to maintain a critical mass of yeast since the population is still rather low at this point.
I also simultaneously changed my flour from 100% rye to 100% AP (the method says that is an option now that the yeast are active). After observing how flour changes affect starter development, I think Placebo has it right -- the abrupt change slowed down my yeast to a near standstill.
I'd suggest to anyone else out there following the pineapple juice method to stick with whatever whole grain flour you used to get the starter going for a while (day 4 and beyond). What ultimately worked for me was stepping down from 100% rye to 25% rye over 4 days. Even then, the rises were not robust (>100%) for a few days after that.
Not sure why the yeast seem to be so picky on flour, but I'd guess that there is some need for the right kind of bacteria or enzyme (or both) that needs to build up so that the yeast can really make full use of the white flour.
Tim