Sourdough newbie here, looking for some help! Recently decided to try my hand at this whole sourdough thing and need some guidance. I'll try to provide as much info/details as I can to make it easier to assist, so I apologise in advance if this gets long-winded!
I've got 2 starters going. 1 is whole wheat (Homer) and the other is unbleached, AP flour (Bart). Both are made using Gold Medal brand flour, 100% hydration, and fed every 24 hours or so using a ratio of 1-1-1...usually 50g starter, 50g flour, and 50g bottled/filtered water. Started Homer first (maybe 10-12 days ago) then roughly 4 days later used a bit of him to start Bart. My house is typically on the cooler side...maybe 69-72 degrees, so I keep both starters in a kitchen cabinet and each has a small kitchen towel wrapped around the jar to help keep the temp up a bit.
Homer is more active than Bart, but is still not super active at this point. He will usually double in volume at some point after a feeding, but it does not happen in the 4-6 or 6-8 hour timeframe I understand it should happen in to indicate a mature starter that is ready to bake with. It usually takes longer than 12ish hours or so to double. Bart does not double at all at this point. Immediately after a feeding, his consistency is like a thick pancake batter, but by the next morning is has become much more runny/liquidy. Homer has a much thicker consistency with very little change by the next morning. They are kept in Mason jars and covered with just the flat lid part sitting on top, not the ring part screwed down tight.
I don't anticipate doing a whole bunch of baking so I'm trying to keep the starter amount on the lower side. Also, I'm interested in any good recipes for whole grain/whole wheat sourdough breads. Are they made using only whole wheat flour, or do they nearly always include a portion of AP flour? And is the process different?
I think that about covers it...any suggestions, guidance, advise, etc would be greatly appreciated!
Just keep going. Do note however that Bart will be slower than Homer due to the flour difference - I'd imaging it'll be a week or 2 behind. Enjoy!
I'm gonna keep on going...that seems to be the consensus...just be patient and things will eventually start working. It just seems to be taking FOREVER! Both of my starters have been going for quite some time and I still don't see the activity I think I should see. One has very little activity overall and the other shows good activity, lots of air pockets/bubbles in the body and doubles in size between feedings, but it usually takes longer than 12 hours to do it. I'm just not sure what the issue is...
You'll find your own path, but if you want to go a little easier on yourself than I did, first learn to bake a good plain whole-wheat yeast bread before you go for whole wheat sourdough. Whole wheat needs a bit of special treatment and things can go very wrong. So it's good to bake with regular yeast first so you can learn what good, well-fermented, well-developed whole wheat bread dough looks and feels like. That way you will know what you're aiming for with your sourdough bakes.
A great beginner recipe for whole wheat bread is here:
https://youtu.be/d3qDLrpQh10
You can make this recipe with almost any whole wheat flour (probably not pastry flour). but make it be the texture that you see in the video. If it's dryer than the video, add more water. If wetter, add a little more flour.
In short, lots of people (myself included) make 100% whole wheat sourdough. The trick is to first learn to make 100% whole wheat bread, and then apply a sourdough leavening to that process.
For a very nice hundo sourdough recipe, once you're ready, see this video:
https://youtu.be/0Z3ae1vPNQ0
Thanks for the reply and the link to the recipe...it does look quite good, and I am looking forward to trying it out if I can ever get my starters working. The process seems to be taking an abnormally long time relative to the various instructions I've seen and the experiences of others I've read about.