Hi all,
So I have about a 3-4 week old starter. The first few days it seemed to be growing like I expected. About day 5-6, it had a horrendous smell and stop responding to feedings. I read on this site that it may have been due to a bacteria and I kept pushing on. By about two weeks old, the starter was again responding to feedings and smelled/tasted sour. I proceeded to bake using the starter. The first batch seemed to rise a decent amount but did not have that sourdough tang I was expected. This was something I figured would develop with time. I have continued to feed it daily on the countertop (at about 72 degrees) for the next week. Baked another batch using the starter this past Friday, again starter smells/tastes sour, but finished bread no distinct tang I was expecting. Read around the internet, find some info that maybe I am not giving enough time for the bacteria and yeast to do their job during proofing. So I decide to make a pizza dough with the starter and proof it for 18 hours, everything looks good but again no distinct taste to finished pizza dough after baking.
Hopefully people have made it this far. Am I doing something wrong? Should I just keep on trudging and hope some souring bacteria seed the starter over time?
A few questions to narrow this down:
How many times per day do you feed your starter? Does it rise and fall predictably? Are you using it at close to its peak (max height achieved after a refresh before falling?)
How long are you letting the bulk ferment go? Your 18 hour proof -- what temperature was that at?
I feed the starter once a day with a 1:1 ratio of AP and filtered water. It seems to be predictable, have not timed the max rise but when I have used it I try to use it in the rising period. Maybe timing it closer to max rise will help.
For bulk I have done roughly 4 hours at room temp ( 71 degrees F) and then into fridge for an additional 8-12 hours depending on my plans for next day. The 18 hour proof was all at room temp.
Once a day is not enough. The basic concept is you're building a colony, and as the colony grows in density, it needs more food. Once the food is exhausted, they begin to cannibalize one another, and that is not pretty. Below is a good guide to follow, a day by day guide. Notice how the proportion of flour grows every couple days.
http://yumarama.com/968/starter-from-scratch-intro/
Using it closer to the max rise will certainly help -- the closer you use it to the refresh time, the less time fermentation has had to do its work.
Generally agree that once per day is likely not enough to achieve optimal yeast/bacteria levels, though. (And those will contribute significantly to the quality and flavor profile of your bread.)
I would recommend searching for "The Pineapple Juice Solution" thread here on the Fresh Loaf, authored by Debra Wink. It contains a lot of information about starter, as well as a process for starting a healthy one. I do think scrapping your existing one and starting over would probably be warranted at this point -- you'll spend as much time, if not longer, trying to "save" what you currently have and it's unlikely there's all that much yeast in there anyway.
https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/san-francisco-style-sourdough-bread/
but the resulting bread might not. I'd say, lucky you!
Maintain this starter as is. Keep it small. Keep it healthy. This is your mother seed culture.
Now take off a tiny bit of mother starter to build a starter levain that will promote more lactobacteria flavour. Check out the steps involved. Experiment with it and use it up in a recipe.
First, a 3-4 week old starter might not be powerful enough, especially if you are feeding it only once a day. I recommend feeding it every 12 hours without refrigerating for at least as week, so it can gain in strength. Watch how long it takes to reach a peak, which might be anywhere from 5 hours to 14 hours depending on how fast/strong your starter is. Also watch the lag time (how long it just sits doing nothing after you feed it). Generally it will peak sooner and higher as it gets stronger, but at some point it will become predictable. If it is peaking in 6 hours, with a lag time of an hour or less, then it's good. But if it peaks at 6 hours, and then suffers for 18 hours until your next daily feeding.. well that's going to just degrade the quality of the starter causing it to lag more and peak later.
Secondly, In the style of modern architecture's maxim "form follows function," I purport that "sourness follows leavening" in the sense that you *must* leaven your bread, but sourness is optional... and so it should be tackled only after everything else is working well. Smells of sourdough very often don't carry over into the taste of the bread, that is totally normal (and unfortunate for us all, because I'm addicted to smelling my starter). Getting a sour loaf is simply quite challenging for everyone, and I'm no expert on it. But here are a few techniques I've picked up:
1) Build a levain. This is where you 'fork' your starter. So the original starter gets fed as usual, and this 'new' starter is going to be used up entirely in the bread. People call this a 'sponge' or a 'levain' or a 'poolish' (wet) or 'biga' (dry) or whatever.. too many words for the same kind of thing. You can build it in a way to favor LAB over yeast (make it especially wet, ferment it especially hot) and even over-ferment your levain so it gets extra sour flavor. Because it's not the final dough, over-fermenting it won't ruin your leavening ability of the final dough.
2) Bulk ferment for as long as you can w/o over proofing. This is a delicate balance, which is why I say it's hard to get a sour bread.
3) Proof in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, preferably closer to 24. This longer proof brings out the sourness (although it favours acetic acid, and some of us prefer more lactic acid).
4) Use whole grains. They get more sour than white bread (although again, this favours acetic acid)
5) Most of all, read everything you can. There are lots of posts on this website where people try to get the right amount and the right balance of acids (lactic and acetic) in their bread.
I focus only on leavening ability in my starter, and I try to build sourness with the levain. But other people try to make their starter itself sour. Read about the no muss no fuss (NMNF) rye starter that lives in the fridge. By using rye it can be both sour and powerful at the same time, which is almost impossible to achieve in a wheat starter.
Good luck.