Hi,
For a couple months I’ve been trying to get a starter going. At first I followed the King Arthur instructions, and more recently the Tartine book.
But every starter goes bad. This morning I have three going to test.
1. Day 2, water and AP: yellow streak
2. Day 2, water, 50/50 AP and WW: smells not quite right but no streaking
3. Day 3, water, 50/50 bread flour and WW: smells absolutely horrible for the second day in a row, split in two, maybe a yellow streak it’s hard to tell.
Is it my water? I can’t figure out what else would be causing this to happen
thanks!
You use rye flour?
Just keep going. Unless it's fuzzy I would wait it out. Yellow is probably bacteria that's battling it out.
I was going off of the King Arthur website about streaks of color in the starter being bad...
I used rye flour and unsweetened pineapple juice for the first 2 days of the process. The Bread Baker's Apprentice has more details and you should also be able to find for info on the Fresh Loaf about starting out with rye and pineapple juice.
First try I used white flour and water, oh boy, that smell... into the bin.
2nd try I use rye and water, all fine. I would use just water and rye flour. Nothing else.
If the water is very strong chlorinated, may that could be an issue. Get some still bottled water, or distilled water.
I’ll see if I can’t eat some the flour and try that - and maybe some bottle water as well.
I wouldn't eat raw flour. Get some bottled spring water and try that. My white flour starter never stank
Sorry my phone autocorrected - I meant get not eat.
The bad smell doesn’t always happen, but it’s very very normal.
It’s nothing to do with spring water or only using white flour - in fact you are FAR better off using a mixture of white flour and at least 20% whole wheat. It’s just a stage that many starters go through (and then they appear to ‘die’ for a while - except they are NOT dead: this is very important.
You really need to read these two articles, very accessible but written by a proper microbiologist. Then you will have a very clear understanding of what’s going on and why:
Don’t be put off by the ‘weird’ reference to pineapple juice: you don’t have to use it (I didn’t) - it’s the understanding of what’s going on that’s important.
I believe the point is that wheat is less stable than rye and it goes faster bad. Many professional bakers avoid wheat based starters.
Plus, the only benefit I see with wheat is that it's cheaper. For me 1Kg rye flour is about $3.00 - I use usually 50g for feeding every 10 days or so (or more frequent when I bake more), so 1Kg rye lasts a few month for me.
You can use a 100% rye starter for wheat breads without any problem. It works even well to start oats.
I want to come back to wheat and smell. I wanted to avoid this unpleasant topic. When the smell happened I did lots of reading. Some binned it, some said it's normal. I used my common wheat flour. I don't have the ash content, it's probably low, probably lower than 550/T55. It's not classified. I am even not sure if that flour is bleached or not - what I know now is, it does not react well with sourdough (compare to 550) but works fine with yeast.
Sensitive people - stop reading now!
The smell was a strong, really strong vomit smell. When I opened the jar for a Second the whole house stank - and it's a multi-floor place. There was no mold or discoloring.
BTW, a really failsafe method is to get a little bit starter from somebody with sourdough. You can just feed right away and bake the next day without the 5-day fresh sourdough starting procedure.
I began a starter with whole wheat 3 days ago and the smell is straight-up vomit right now.