Hi all, I have recently started a somewhat successful starter after a few attempts in the past.
I have used a 1:1:1 ratio, starting with 50g Whole-wheat flour in the beginning and have switched to all purpose white flour for the past two days. Flour is unbleached and has no additives.
After heaps of activity and bubbles on the first two days, and almost doubling is size on the second day. I found it with a bit of "hooch" on the bottom when checking it today after roughly 16-18 hours. I mixed it in and discarded 50g and fed it again with the usual 1:1 ratio using white flour. Checking back after roughly 5.5 hours, it seems to have started developing a dark liquid again and the bubbles have slowed down significantly. It has also gotten extremely runny/loose in the same timeframe.
I live in a very warm/humid area of Australia and it has been roughly 26-28c the past few days, dropping to nothing lower than 16-18c at night. It's in a well ventilated and large walk in pantry which houses the fridge as well, so it stays warmer than other parts of the house at night.
Is this normal? Or did I go wrong somewhere? After failing three times in the past due to lack of activity and eventually mold issues, I have done everything in my power to sterilise all utensils/vessels and even boiling my tap water and letting it come back down to room temperature before using it.
Any advice would be hugely appreciated, thanks in advance
Hello there!
Phew that's pretty hot... I'm in southern England, but in one part of Scotland it got down to -7ºC last night. That said, I'm are your starter will be alright; it may just follow a slightly different path to normal :)
I had a few tries too before I was successful and it basically came down to me not having a good enough understanding of what was actually going on in my culture. Once I had a better understanding I realised that I was just giving up too soon... Please may I recommend that you read these two articles, written by someone with a bit more professional expertise on the subject than most of us: The Pineapple Juice Solution, Part 1 and The Pineapple Juice Solution, Part 2. They were a turning point in my understanding.
Good luck and don't fall off the underneath of the planet!