Hello all,
I created my own starter abou 8-9 years ago using flour, water and time. I baked successfully from it then, but then we had building work done and it got put to the back of the fridge for *a long time*. Difficult to say how long but at least 2, maybe more, years of neglect (life took over).
Anyway. About 12 months ago I got it out, fed it and got a good loaf from it. My main problem was over proving, which says to me it was working well. It has been returned to the fridge for a number of months (neglected) And I brought it out again this week. So far I have attempted two loaves.
The first rose so little that I didn't even bake it.
The second I took more time over resuscitating the starter, using some of the discard from the first loaf's recharge feeding it twice over 48h and using it when I could see bubbles and I knew it was working because hooch had appeared.
I made a dough. First prove in the bread maker (pizza dough programme) and then left for 4 hours. It hadincreased, but not hugely. Second prove after shaping overnight at room temperature. No action. I baked it and I think it could be used as a deadly weapon or builiding material. Brick is the best description.
I realise what I need to do is to reactivate my starter, but how?
Should I use discard from my brick, go back to the neglected paste in the fridge (that still smells good and sour), or the discard from the loaf that never got cooked?
Help
(and yes I know I should have looked after it better in the first place, but it survived before)
My advice is patience. If the starter in the fridge still smells good, and you got at least some rise from it in your second loaf, I'd go back to that starter and feed it every 12 hours until you get a good doubling of the volume once or twice before using it again.
Not sure what percentage your starter is at right now (100%?), but I'd take some starter (call it 1 volume of starter) and I'd add 2 volumes of water, stir, and then add 2 volumes of flour. (For example, if you have 50g of starter I'd add 100g of water and 100g of flour.) Every 12 hours I'd take out 4 volumes and replace it with 2 volumes each of water and flour. (For example remove 200g starter, and replace it with 100g water and 100g flour).
If you had some activity in your starter recently, and you follow these instructions, you should have a starter that doubles in volume within 2-3 days.
Can you explain what you mean bythe percentage of the starter.
My latest resuscitation attempt is 1part starter that partially worked, 1 parts flour and 2parts water. I only increased the water to get it to thick batter consistency rather than paste! That's at room temp (18C approx).
Starters can be of various percentages. If you have 100g of water for every 100g of flour in your starter, it's considered a 100% starter. If you have 65g of water for every 100g of flour in your starter, it's a 65% starter. Simple bakers percentages.
Volumes don't work quite as well, as the weight of 1 volume of water is about 1.7x heavier than 1 volume of flour (1 cup of water is about 240g, and 1 cup of flour is about 140g (in my kitchen anyway)).
I typically run my starter at 100%, and that's a "thick batter" like consistency. Not like pancake batter (which is pretty thin), more like a thick waffle batter. When I stir it together and remove the spoon, the batter doesn't easily come off the spoon. And that too is at room temperature.
You don't say what flour your starter is, but if its wheat then what I'd do is to take (say) 50g of what's in the fridge, put it in a bowl or big jar and feed it with 100g flour and 100g water and leave it covered at room temperature for half a day and see what happens. If you get some nice bubbles then give it another 100+100 and leave it another day.
At the very worst, the starter is dead and you're creating a new one - with "essence" of the old one thrown in. You may find that the initial bubbling is really the new flour kicking off, so it will take a few days to settle down, so you may have to enter into a feed, feed, feed, discard type of thing on consecutive days.
then if it looks lively use some to create a "production" starter and bake a loaf or 2...
If its Rye then you can probably do the same, but my Rye starter has 1.5 times the water to flour, so 100g flour plus 150g water. it's very sloppy.
-Gordon
It's taken 4 days but there's life in the old man!
It's looking more lively than it ever has, so I'm attempting a loaf, 500g flour 7g salt, 250g starter and on this occasion 200g water (always varies a bit). I'm leaving it at room temp (18C) while I go to work. Here's hoping!
oh yes I'm using 100% wheat bread flour at present.