I am new to baking. I am developing my starter with whole wheat flour. Daily feeding 1:1:1 by 9pm.
Ambient is varying between 23c at night to 32peak at day time. Hence keeping my starter in cool box maintaining between 25 to 29c
Day 1kept in ambient - it completely doubled after 24 hours
from Day 2 fed and kept in cooler box, till day 5 not much action
Day6 little rise in volume. Day7 50% rise in volume
Day 8 today have to check
Till date no hooch or molt or any over ferment sign is not there.
Is this normal? After 8 day it is normal to take more than 24 hrs for doubling in volume? Or should I change feeding schedule/ratio?
Elan -- despite what many sites say, 8 days is a pretty short time to be worrying about your starter. Keep going. The task, initially, is to let the mix get a bit acidified -- killing bad bacteria, allowing good bacteria, promoting yeast growth. It wil falter at times. Starters wax and wane a bit.
As I recently told BreadandFriendship -- see https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/75195/starter-still-not-mature-and-smelling-alcohol -- it took me months of wrangling to stabilize my starter ... and it is still occasionally unpredictable years later.
At some point you will want to change the feeding ratio -- but I doubt that point is now.
Notice the consistency & the size of the bubbles you get. Notice what your starter smells like. Keep on.
Rob
Thank you Rob,
After a wait of eight days, today it rise about 75% above the mark. And it smells pleasant sour smell and the consistency is thick batter(not watery). As you suggested will continue my feeding schedule as it is, if I find acidic then will reduce the time between the feedings.
Actually yesterday I made two sets from day 6 starter, one with the flour which I used from day 1
And another with a new brand. The new brand also same ratio mixed 1:1:1. But the hydration seems not equivalent to the another flour, this one was hard and tighter after mixing.
Both rose to same level, the bubbles in new brand was very larger and the starter was very stiff( not pouring consistency). It makes me feel the new brand flour will be good for baking in my weather temperature range.
It's normal to see some fizziness at first, then little or nothing for many days. That noticeable rise on day 7 could indicate that it's just about ready. But you didn't say that you have fed the culture after day 2. If you didn't feed the culture you should do it now. Also it's good to stir it once or twice a day, especially in the early days when nothing seems to be happening.
As the culture sits around, some bacterial grow but they aren't ones you want. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) also grow and start to acidify the culture, and you do want this. as time goes on, the mixture grows more acidic, and at each level of acidity a different kind of bacteria may become favored. Some of them may produce some visible activity or smell, but the yeast hasn't starter to grow yet.
During this time, if you feed the starter you will dilute the LAB and reduce the acidity, which is the opposite of what you want. Yet those other bacteria and the LAB will eventually eat up too much of the available food so eventually it will need to be fed but not too much so the effect on the acidity is small.
After enough time, and if the mixture hasn't been taken over by some nasty critter, the acidity will increase to the point where the dormant yeast can activate and start growing. That's what you are looking for. The culture will become active, and grow and generate gas.
There's some guesswork about the whole process because we can't know what is really growing nor what the nutrient situation is at any point. So we just have to guess about feeding.
At any rate, you may be about there. Or it could take several more days. Just stick with the program. If there's little activity, don't feed. If there has been, do feed. Your temperatures are higher than my usual room temperature (21C - 24C) and I'm not sure what effect that would have but development ought to speed up at higher temperatures. OTOH, it might promote the growth of undesirable bacteria over the LAB, which wouldn't be good. I think keeping the temperature below 30C would be good, if you can do it.
TomP
Thank you Tom for your detailed explanation.
Actually I am feeding Daily from day 1 after about 24 hrs time gap. And I am keeping it in cooler box and maintaining temperature between 25-29c.
Till I never got a smell of acidic. Should I need to worry about it. Or is it on right direction?
Sounds like you have got yourself two starters. About the smell, I rarely get much of an odor with my starters (it maybe because my sense of smell isn't the best) and acidic only if I've left mine in the fridge way too long. OTOH, I have never noticed that a very fruity starter produces bread that tastes different from a similar but mild-smelling one.
This should help you.
Unless there's something wrong with the ingredients (such as chlorinated water or water which lacks in minerals which would slow it down) or the temperature then the only thing that can really go wrong is mistimed feeds.
Recipes generally have you feeding by the clock and rarely explain what is, or isn't, normal for a starter. For instance a relatively quick bubbling up then a quiet period is normal. But you have to now when it is a good time to feed and how much. Hopefully the attached article should help.
P.s. don't use string bread flour. Get a low protein weak flour like spelt or rye. It won't be the be all and end all as it is possible to make a starter from any flour but it will make it easier.
And you shouldn't have issues.
Follow directions supplied. Aside from that - 8 days isn't enough time to get a starter. 8 weeks is more like it. Enjoy!
8 weeks?? Not at all. Once the starter pops and gets to doubling well, it's fit to be used. It will slowly change over time, but that's different. I once made a new starter and put a chunk of apple into it at the beginning. When it had developed into a working starter, after about a week, it smelled very fruity, not like my old starter. But the bread tasted the same. Over the next several months, that fruity smell slowly got weaker and weaker but all that time the bread tasted the same and the starter behaved the same.
Others have had different experiences. Debra Wink wrote about using fresh spring flowers in a starter, and that starter made the best bread of any she'd used; it too changed over time. But it didn't take any 8 weeks to be usable.
Now starters for panettone - you only need to read a few of the panettone threads on TFL to realize that starters can be very fussy and their character can be changed by deliberate actions like special feeding schedules, etc. It you aren't doing something demanding like that, though, most people seem to get a very usable starter in 7 to perhaps 12 days if they don't get unlucky or feed it too often.
TomP
My last two starters took 3 days.
Yes, and I once used beaten rice flakes to make a starter. They didn't show any activity until a little fizziness the
thirdfourth day. I just stirred them twice a day. On thefourthfifth day I fed the mix some white wheat flour and water, and it sprang into activity and just like that, I had a starter. See https://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/534879#comment-534879 for more details.As long as everything else is good (e.g. nothing preventing it like chlorinated water) it shouldn't take longer than a few days.
If one waits for the initial burst of activity to feed then does not feed again, once it has gone quiet, till it wakes up then it matures fast. The problem arises when one feeds according to a schedule rather than reading the starter.
If one carries on feeding it, come what may, when the starter quietens down then it can go into weeks. That is a crucial time. Apart from the initial mix i've made bread after just feeding twice with the second feed being the pre-ferment.
Most recipes have one discarding and feeding in a frenzy.