Ok, I've finaly gotten a starter to be consistently rising. I've had my patience tested, to be sure, but my starter is doubling (and more) within 2-3 hours. I just discard half, add 2 oz bottled water and 3 oz unbleached flour. The 1 oz starter to 2 oz water and 2 oz flour just never worked.
So now the question becomes, "Now what?" How do I use this beast? When I measure a starter to add to a recipe do I use it while puffed up or stir it down first? I figure stirred down would include much more yeast.
Also, the timing...do I feed it first then let it double before using? Or do I wait a certain amount of time? And if I'm going to use a "discard" recipe, should I use a 12 hour after-fed discard, or use my regular 24 hour cycle?
I figure these are the conundrums to get over before I can actually get going. I know there's a lot of fine tuning in the future but I just need to get over the hump.
Stir it down. When weighing one gets around the problem of bubbles in the starter. Weighing is the way to go!
Prepare your starter and used when peaked.
My suggestion is find a good simple recipe and practice till perfect before moving on. Watch videos, of which there are plenty, for good ideas.
Hamleman's Vermont Sourdough is a good place to starter. Or this one here https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/sourdough-pain-naturel/
Follow the recipe step by step. It even has a starter build where you take some of your starter and build an off shoot to go into your loaf - this is called a Levain (the recipe calls it a poolish but that is technically the wrong word).
Enjoy!
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Safe to say your starter works a treat. Very impressive. No looking back now.
is a starter worth baking with , thats for sure .
Good one (Y)
Well done (Y)
And I hope it tastes even better! Do you mind please sharing your recipe and perhaps how exactly you went about constructing and baking this great loaf? I still have some challenges getting mine look good, even though I have a good starter and get a great taste of my ... well, whatever comes out of the oven. :-)
https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/sourdough-pain-naturel/
A very nice one indeed. Everything you need to know is all there for you, Step-by-step!
Enjoy.
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Extra sharp cheddar loaf
Whole wheat
AP/bread flour 50/50
Using the above recipe, my first loaf ended up a bit too chewy, which was probably a combination of over kneading and 100% bread flour. These are kneaded one minute less by machine, and for the 50/50 I folded more gently as it felt well developed.
The tooth is much better on these three. Now I need bannetons for more reliable shaping. Toweling and bowls are good in a pinch, but you get creases and lobes sometimes
Beautiful loaf!