Lots of questions....how much starter for how much yeast? What else did you add to the dough?
Were there any bubbles at all in it when you dumped it?
Linda C

I don't have the recipe for the rye bread here, but the basic white needed 2 cups of proofed sponge. Following their directions I took 1 cup of the starter, then added equal amounts of flour and water. I let it sit in the oven overnight, and by the next morning it had increased nicely and had *tons* of bubbles, even a little hooch.

I measured out 2 cups of it, added a little more than 3 c. bread flour, 1/2c. milk, and some butter, sugar and salt. Kneaded it until it was smooth and satiny, formed it, and let it sit back in the oven. Nada.

I'm assuming 100% hydration.

An active healthy starter that is ready for use will double within 4-6 hours (varies with room temperature) while remaining thick and elastic, will not separate into layers or develop a layer of liquid on the top and will smell slightly tangy-sweet.

It's possible that despite the activity you observe, your sourdough wasn't quite ready or resilient enough for the job.

Carol

Tip #1: If your starter doesn't double in bulk when fed, then it won't raise your bread. You can supplement the weak starter by adding 1/8 t. of SAF-Instant Yeast to your DOUGH (not the starter), and this may help you out. This is also a tip if you want to speed the whole process up a little.

Tip #2: You may need to feed your starter several times before using it for bread to make sure there is a large enough colony of yeast in it to raise bread. While you do this you can take that 1-cup of starter they tell you to toss and make 8 crumpets with it. You'll find the recipe at the link below. I hate wasted food, and this recipe is so simple and easy and there's nothing so nice as a stack of crumpets in the freezer. There are all kinds of things to use starter for besides bread until you get it established and raising enough to use for bread.

Tip #3: Keep studying the subject. You can do that by doing a search on "care and feeding of sourdough starter". You'll get a good base on the subject, as well as all the conflicting information, but hopefully will gather enough to help you out. I've never had two starters work the same or have the same characteristics. When one type didn't work for me I made another.

Tip #4: If you use rye flour for your beginning starter, it ferments faster than wheat flour - smells rather bad, but works well. Using wholegrain flour will help to supply the yeast. There are more "wild" yeast on the outside of grain than can be "caught from the air" to provide yeast for your starter. You can mill enough whole wheat flour in a spice/coffee mill to make flour for getting your starter going using whole wheat berries. I like to use wholegrain spelt flour for beginning a starter. After several feedings with wholegrain flour, then you can switch to whatever kind of flour you'd like to use.

Tip #5: If you only want to make sourdough bread infrequently and don't want a new "pet" in your refrigerator to take care of, I'd suggest purchasing a packet of French Sourdough Starter from King Arthur Flour - http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/french-sourdough-starter-5g. With the small yeast-size envelope of culture you can make enough starter for 12-loaves of bread. I've even taken a portion of this starter and kept it going until I tired of making sourdough bread.

When it comes to naturally-leavened bread and starters, there are as many ways as there are people who make/use them - which makes them so very interesting.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: King Arthur Flour - Sourdough Crumpets

I definitely will keep working with it -- the goal is too tasty to abandon. But I'm mystified because it feels like I'm following all the directions I'm getting, and everything seems to be working -- until it's time for the dough itself to rise.

The starter *does* double -- and the proofed sponge doubled too. Several of the books I'd read suggested that if you like a tangier sourdough, let the sponge proof a bit longer. They also say that, especially with home-grown starters, the amount of time it takes to rise can vary. So I judged it done by it's growth, rather than the amount of time.

Thanks for that crumpet recipe, grainlady. I agree with you about the waste -- I put the portion they said to toss away in pancakes and corn fritters. Yum! I did feed it for a week, actually I think it was 10 days, before I tried making bread with it. I was afraid it might be puny.

Carol -- hydration? There were no clumps of dry flour, if that what you mean. The starter didn't actually separate; I mean not into flour and water. The books I've been reading indicate that the layer of "hooch" on the top is perfectly normal, and have said you can pour it off or stir it in, depending on your preference. I've been stirring it back in.

Appreciate all the advice -- cooking is always an adventure, and baking doubly so!

Alison,

I feel your pain. I did the same thing last year; tried to "catch" wild yeast. I swear I ended up with paste.

Haven't tried since, although I hear catching wild yeast is a very capricious endeavor.

Jo

It sure seems to me like your starter is alive and well. I've made a very similar starter and it did rise overnight, although not much. It rose a ton in the oven. Something about a long fermentation leads to a lot of ovenspring. If the dough seemed dried out on top, that can stop it from rising. You might try putting some hot water in the oven with it next time or covering it. If it hasn't risen much and you bake it anyway, covering it for the first part of baking can help a lot in making sure that the bread does its rising and gets cooked all the way through before it browns.

The other thing you can do is make a wet dough with a small amount of yeast and stick it in the fridge for four days or so. It gets plenty sour. You don't actually need a starter to make sourdough.

The "hooch" is normal for starter that's been stored in the refrigerator a while. It isn't normal for starter that's out on the counter being fed on a regular cycle. So hooch is for established starter that's not been fed for some time, not starter you're developing.

A refreshed mature starter should be creamy and viscous. You can pull glutinous threads.

100% hydration means that the weight of water in the starter is equal to the weight of the flour. Once established you may be working with a higher or lower hydration, but that's a good ratio for new natural leaven. Hypothetically, a very thin starter may be more acidic, in which case the higher acid level may break the gluten strands, causing the dough to collapse. A stiffer starter is more stable.

"Sourdough" is just a naturally leavened fermented dough. It isn't necessarily sour. Sourness is a function of a lot of different factors. In commercial bread it's often due to the addition of acid in the recipe, not a natural result.

Carol

I've never had homemade sourdough taste anything like commercial sourdough. As Carol pointed out, it's usually added flavorings. Many commercial sourdough breads don't even use starter or any of the other methods associated with naturally-leavened breads. I inquired about that at a local restaurant that made their own "sourdough" bread and it was flavored baker's yeast risen bread.

In my grandmother's day, when the bread started tasting sour (usually due to a lower ratio of water in the starter) they did what they called "sweeten the pot" because sour bread wasn't the goal and it was never called sourdough bread - just bread made with starter. They sweetened the pot by taking out a small amount of starter, one or two tablespoons, and fed it repeatedly, increasing the amount each time, until it got back to their normal amount. All that new flour and water took out the acidic "sour" taste and increased the yeast. You'll always get more yeast from the flour you use than you can ever "catch" from the air.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: What is Sourdough?

Yeast is a spore. As Grainlady indicated, you can't "catch" it, LOL.

If you really want to learn about sourdough, then the site I've linked to below is one of the very best resources. It covers all the basics. Additionally, Teresa's 3-part e-book (PDF) is a fabulous gift to any baking aficionado. Excellent and free, what more could one ask?

Currently the book is not available on her site due to a glitch with the links following site re-design.

However, it has been archived for Teresa by some fellow members of The Fresh Loaf. A search of that site for Discovering Sourdough will bring it up.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Northwest Sourdough

I'm glad I posted this -- I'm learning all sorts of things!

I didn't realize that sourdough isn't necessarily sour -- but it makes sense the commerical stuff is more so. (I had a friend's homemade sourdough recently, and while it was a very nice bread I remember thinking it wasn't nearly sour enough!) The sour taste is really what I'm going for -- if I can't get that going naturally, I'll looking into adding the taste in with other things. (I picked up a littl container of buttermilk powder for another recipe -- that might be a good taste to play around with!)

Thanks for the explanation on acidity and the viscosity of the starter, Carol; that's helps a lot. The alchemy of baking has always intimidated me -- it's good to have a clearer idea of what's going on.

I'll keep plugging away for a while longer with this starter, perhaps feed it whole wheat for a while and see if that builds up it's puny flour-lifting muscles.

If not, the soured yeast dough may be the way to go, jessica; I didn't know you could do that. It might actually be better way to go, given the infrequency with which I bake.

I'm still going to work with this starter -- Ill keep you posted!

King Arthur Instant Sourdough Flavor may be worth a try if you don't develop the flavor you are looking for.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Instant Sourdough Flavor

King Arthur Flour has an "extra-tangy sourdough bread" recipe in its archives. It calls for additional citric acid, IIRC.

The problem with adding acid, from my perspective, is that it's not a subtle natural sour, it's hit-you-over-the-head-with-acid sour, not the levels of flavor you achieve with a really balanced natural leaven. What you may be objecting to is blandness or a lack of character in your starter; merely adding acid doesn't really address that issue.

This link provides one of the best discussions of the sour note in sourdough; it not only explains how to move nearer the sour end of the flavor spectrum naturally, but also how sour is just one element of a balanced flavor.

Here is a link that might be useful: All About Sour

Alison, that's exactly why I do it that way. I don't bake reliably, and I can't stand to keep feeding and discarding. I suspect that the sourdough taste is really just about the amount of fermentation going on, and that most of us couldn't tell the difference between a starter bread and an old yeast bread. Still, I think you can make your starter work if you so desire. And it is pretty exciting to bake with organisms you captured yourself out of the air! Makes you feel like a pioneer woman.

Not so much out of the air as off the flour.

One advantage of sourdough bread is it has much better keeping qualities; due to the acidity of the leaven it doesn't stale as quickly as a typical commercial yeast bread.

Carol

Carol, most of the sites I've read describe "catching yeast out of the air". When I try to make a starter in a sealed container, it smells rotten. I can't prove where they come from, but I suspect it's the air. Old yeast dough will be acidic as well. That's why it tastes sour.

Yes, most of the sites do. But while there are yeast spores in the air (amongst other types), the majority of spores come from the flour, not the air, which is why the caliber of flour you begin a starter with is so critical.

It's amazing how much debate and disagreement the issue of sourdough can attract. I suppose the main point is, if what you're doing works and you like the results, keep on doing it.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Sourdough Myths and Folklore

This fellow baked flour and boiled water and got a nice starter on the first try: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23103/sterile-sourdough-x http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23261/altamura-tantrum-loaf

I only read the first thread. It's interesting, though I see at the end there were some other suppositions regarding the degree of sterility in the flour and possible other sources of spores. It wasn't a double-blind study and any home is far from a clean room, but it is worth pursuing in greater depth.

However, for myself, barring more controlled testing, I'll stick with rye or whole wheat for my starter. The main thing, though, is what I said previously.

For every truism there's a contradiction. The "right" way is hatever works for you. There're innumerable methods and they all seem to work for some one.

Carol

Baking the flour at 350 and boiling the water for half an hour seems far more likely to sterilize it than pouring boiling water over flour (which, per your source, had a 90% failure rate). I'm not sure an experiment like this even needs to be single blind; he showed a picture of the bread, and it's clearly risen. Making it double blind would be really tough, since we'd have to blind the flour. A clean room would destroy the experiment, since the point was to capture microbes from the environment. I think we can all agree that you wouldn't get a starter from sterilized flour and water in a sterilized environment.