7 days old starter

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Ola on 8 Mar 2020 at 04:42

Hi everyone 

i’m new in that sourdoughs thing.. i just started creating my own starters, i created two the first is 8 days old now I’m feeding it now once a day with 2:1:1 according to a recipe i found all in white flour. its bubbly, smells acidic but doesn’t really double, i started the other one 2 days later 100% hydration its 6 days old now feeding once a day 1:1:1 but not much activity just few bubbles and no doubling, i’m wondering where did i ho wrong, if anyone can help or i’m just being impatient?

Such as 1:2:2 by weight. For example 50 g starter to 100 g water and 100 g flour. Your feeds might be starving your starter. 

One more thing, only feed when you see activity otherwise you might dilute your culture too much. 

I will try that, actually 2:1:1 doesn’t seem right to me, another thing when you said activity did you mean a few bubles! Or lots of them and doubling?

Keep doing what you are doing but feed both 1:1:1 or 1:2:2 like Danni wrote. Try feeding one of them every 12 hours, it will be less acidic. Eight days is still quite young, be patient.

I am really confused in that part of feeding every 12hrs or every 24, I can’t tell which one is better, or what are the circumstances that leads me to switching from 24 hrs to 12 hrs?

Usually you feed once it has reached peak but in your case, it isn’t really rising and falling yet. So smell it. If it has a strong acid or acetone smell, it’s telling you that it is hungry and needs food. 

It's best to try one of your starters with 12 hour feeding, the other with 24 hours. You should notice that the 24 hour will smell a bit like vinegar, the 12 hour will smell milky and a bit sweet. You will find your preference if you try yourself. There is not a right or wrong way, it just depends on the flavor you would like in your bread.

Your starter is still pretty young, so don't worry too much - it's got a long productive life ahead of it.

First things first: if it starts smelling really disgusting and then seems to have 'died' DO NOT throw it away!  It's a natural stage and it's to do with an intermediate set of microbes that are just helping to make it acidic enough for the guys you want, to take over. If this happens, just keep discarding and feeding (it may take as long as two weeks so be patient :-)

The next thing I'll say, is that at this stage in your starter's existence, it may help to keep topping up the number and variety of microbes in it (yeasts and lactic acid bacteria); so as well as feeding it white flour I would include about 25% of organic stoneground wholewheat flour in your feeds.

Trust me, your starter WILL work, and once it's working it will be very difficult to completely mess it up. It helps a LOT to understand what is going on 'under the hood' when you begin a new starter. Therefore I would STRONGLY recommend reading two excellent posts by our very own Debra Wink. Read these, and then you will really understand what your starter is doing - and how far along the developmental process you've already got (don't be put off by the odd title):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10856/pineapple-juice-solution-part-1

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10901/pineapple-juice-solution-part-2

Enjoy!