Hi!
its my first time making starter and recently a ton bubbles started to appear within my starter which I took as a good sign. I tried the float test just for fun and it floated with a huge chunk of starter but the following days havent been showing the same result. My starter only floats if I pour in strands of the starter (but a lot of strands) it just cant seem to take a huge plump like mentioned before. Is there something wrong with my starter?? How else can I know if its ready or not. Its been a week since I started.
More details would be a help. As in, what was used to create this starter, and specific timeline results. Like when exactly was "recently".
started and fed with all purpose flour. this is mostly an experiment before i really invest in trying to get better flour. I got the floating chunk on the first feeding of day 6. I feed every 12hrs, 1:1:1 (250g) basically twice a day. day 7-first feeding of day 8 hasnt brought the same results and only showed what i described as stringy!
Stir it up and keep going. Many starters go through an active first phase, then quieten down, then get going again around the 12-14 day mark. You could easily reduce your amounts to 25g rather than 250g. That would let you move to a more expensive flour now, if that's what is holding you back.
nice thats very reassuring. thank you!
Re: 25g feeding.
reduce my starter to 25g and feed it 25g? the recipe im following requires 250g of starter. do I just feed it more a few days before bake day to get it to 250?
I imagine you are discarding quite a lot of starter each day at the moment. People choose different feeding and maintenance schedules, but what you're doing is not uncommon. You're feeding 1 unit of flour and 1 unit (by weight) of water to 1 unit of starter. Once the starter is good and active, it can easily cope with twice its weight in flour and water, or even more.
For now, I would continue what you are doing -- 1:1:1 twice a day -- for another week or so, but with much less starter. As I said, 25g is plenty.
Two days before you are ready to bake, feed your mature starter, which will weigh 75g (25+25+25), with 100g of flour and 100g of water. That will give you 275g of starter. Use 250g of that in your recipe, and continue as before, feeding the 25g left over with 25 of flour and 25 of water.
Good luck.
This is so helpful thank you so much!!