Hello!
I am brand new to bread baking and am so thankful to have stumbled upon this forum site! This is so helpful!!
I am currently attempting to make my first sourdough starter. I am on day 5 of my starter journey and wondering if it has gone sour (as in bad sour... not sourdough bread kind sour). It still smells strongly and I can't really tell if it's just the "gym sock" smell that I am reading is okay or if it's the sour "cheese" kind of smell that I hear is bad. The rise is not very good each day, although it does still rise.
I used half bread flour/half whole wheat flour and feed it 50 g water and 50 g of this flour mixture each day.
Should I stick it out and keep feeding it and see what comes? Any way to save this starter or is it a lost cause?
I used tap water and have read recently that distilled water is recommended instead. That's the only thing I can think of that I did wrong.
Would love any and all insight you may have!
I think the problem is this... you are using equal parts of flour and water in weight when you're feeding the starter, and should be using volume instead. That's why your starter isn't rising properly... it's being starved. For every 4 ozs of water (113.4g), you should be using 8 oz of flour (226.8g).
Next time you feed it, use this ratio, for a few days, it should start to behave more normally.
Equal parts four/water in weight is absolutely correct.
Just keep doing what your are doing and be patient.
https://youtu.be/SuU0xmqEZyI
Stage in your starter’s life. It can go through a very stinky stage where the different types of bacteria slug it out until the pH drops low enough and the good bacteria wins out. So basically, you need to leave it alone to do that. Stop feeding it (by the way, you have been feeding it correctly with the amounts based on weight and not volume), and stir it every 12 hours. When you see that it has bubbles and is showing activity (rising some), then go back to feeding it. Remember to only keep 25g and feed it your 50 g each of flour and water. Once you see it doubling, then you can try baking with it.
A couple of hints: If you use whole grain flour such as rye, it tends to speed up the process a bit. And if you ever decide to do another starter, look up the pineapple juice solution on this site. Basically you use pineapple juice for a couple of days at the beginning to help bypass the stinky stage. Then you use water for the rest of your starters life.
Hope this helps.
Reduce the water a little and keep going. If ya can't tell between the cheese and gym sock smell, it's on track (and neither is really a bad thing with a new starter). Less water will make s rise (if and when it rises) noticeable. I would also feed it a little less at this point - let the bugs and fungi do their thing - you don't want to dilute things - which will slow down progress. Only increase food when there is noticeable activity - if it isn't bubbling and rising it isn't hungry. Good luck!
I can't stress it enough when trying to compare days and schedules. You are doing just fine but temperature is most important when trying to get little organisms going and predicting when they will do so. So... what is the temperature of the starter? (Water and flour temp is also important but within an hour of feeding will be about the same as the surrounding air. )
Get the starter temp to 75°F or slightly more will encourage yeast to propagate.
If the temp is below 75°F. I strongly suggest waiting a day or two to feed again and then skip a day when feeding as lower temps may take twice as long to get a viable starter. When you mentioned stinky sport socks, I knew you had a ww starter. Very typical, keep going! :)
This is all SO helpful! Thank you! I will keep going then - thanks for the advice and encouragement! :)