Patience. Also, if it's smelling vinegary it might be hungry. When it's just fed it should smell yeasty/floury. When it starts to smell like overripe fruit, it needs feeding. That's the alcohols ("hooch") starting to form.

Here's what's going on: When you discard starter you're just making room for the food, and making it so you have to feed it less (i.e., less yeast equals less food). It's also important not to keep growing the amount of starter you have before you have a lake. :) During the time after feeding, the yeasts remaining from before the discard consume the starch and multiply. When you're feeding whole wheat, you're also reintroducing all the wild organisms, so the yeast is also fighting off the undesirable ones. That's the source of the putrid and stinky smells at the start--the casualties of the yeast conquering the starter.

During the 8-12 hrs. after feeding, the size of the starter should double, unless it's very soupy. With your daughter's method, it might take longer than standard, but it should have doubled before the next feeding. Use a piece of tape or a pen to mark the level just after feeding. As long as it's visibly bubbling and growing, at least some, it's alive and there's no need to start over. If it's soupy, rather than growing by the end, it might be frothing right when the flour is added. That's also evidence that it's alive.

Even a few bubbles means life.

Before feeding, is the starter looking grey? Is there loose liquid on top? Those are sure signs of hunger.

Both of these issues should iron out over time. It takes a couple of weeks to get a starter with whole wheat to stabilize, and can take a month before it becomes really hardy.

Some things to try:

If it has that hungry look or smell, feed it more often. It's hard to over feed by time. If you feed a lot more food than starter, however, it'll take a long time for the yeast to multiply enough to fill it out. That's why people "feed up" their starters before using. They give them a lot of volume, then let them feed and multiply for awhile, sometimes through several feedings. An alternative is to use a fairly small amount of starter to make a biga or levain or preferment, where instead of feeding up the whole pot of starter, some is sectioned off and fed independently, then the whole amount is used in the final dough.

Try putting the water in with the starter first, and getting it thoroughly mixed (a small scraper or large coffee stirrer works well for this). Look for the bubbling, then add the flour and stir well.

When you say equal amounts of flour and water, do you mean by weight or by volume? If the latter, it might be too wet to stabilize quicky. Try feeding the same portion of flour and half the volume of water for awhile. Once the starter is well established, gradually increase the amount of water at each feeding to make it wet again.

Another thing to try is feeding all white flour until it stabilizes, then adding back the whole wheat gradually (like 10% more each day). Changing flour can shock a starter, making it take a couple of days of figuring out the new food to get back to normal, but I think since it's already half and half, that won't happen. It couldn't hurt to transition to all white gradually, too, though. What all white does is takes adding in new organisms out of the equation. White flour can require less water, however, since there's no bran to suck it up, so decreasing the water by 10-20% might be good.

The old time formula I learned way back when for making starter--which I've learned since I started seriously pursuing it isn't by any means standard--is, at every feeding, discard half, and feed the same weight of flour and water together as the remaining amount of starter, every 12 hours. Different methods work fine, but might be less predictable in the beginning. Once it has spent a month or two on the counter getting regular feedings, it can be kept going for hundreds of years.

Oh! Question: Is she putting it in the fridge? That slows down the feeding a lot, which might mean it's not completely fed by the next feeding period. Generally, one doesn't put the starter in the fridge until it's well established and reliable, and even then, only if it won't be used daily.

Some people have starter that's thinner than cream and use it by the pint. Others have the consistency of thick porridge or thin paste (mine do). Still others are more like Play-doh (my levain starters are), and starter can be dried into little flakes or balls just like commercial dry yeast (which is a different strain). All of these differences are primarily due to the amount of water present.

Most of all, patience. They say you can use it within a week, but I think that's probably in a kitchen that's already baking with wild yeast and has a lot of it in the air. It really does take more like a month if the yeast has to be completely caught from the grain, even moreso when only half is whole grain (the wild yeasts live on the outsides of the grain and are ground into the whole wheat flour). A lot of people start their starters with rye (which is bubbletastic with yeast) or even musty grapes (which have the same kind of yeast on their skins), because it's easier, but since your daughter has been through the putrid and stinky phases, she has a good colony of maturing yeast. So keep at it. Maybe use a little more white flour and/or a little less water, but keep it on the counter, keep feeding it, and it'll come right in time.

Thanks, plllog.

DD is not putting the starter in the fridge. While she was visiting me this week, she kept it in an empty drawer in my kitchen. It was in a glass measuring cup covered with a white paper towel. Should she do something different?

She is measuring by weight not volume.

DD is concerned because the instructions from Tartine Breads say the starter will double in volume. Hers isn't doubling. But from reading your comments, I assume that may come in time.

I grew mine in a Pyrex measuring cup with plastic wrap. I don't know if the plastic is better than the paper. There does seem to be an oxidation effect. I get less hooch in my discard jar, for instance, when there's less air (i.e, the discarded starter isn't getting as old and hungry as fast). Similar effects with fed starter. It couldn't hurt to try a tight cover.

Measured by weight, it should definitely double. Eventually. I reduced the hydration of my 100% whole wheat, because it was nearly there but sinking. Instead of 1:1 water to flour, I use 4:5, which is 80% water to 100% flour (i.e., "80% hydration"). The white flour should shore it up, however.

If another week or two still doesn't have it doubling reliably, try a 50% discard, and a 12 hour feeding schedule. (12-ish. Like first thing in the morning and after dinner, or right before bed and mid-morning.)

Re doubling, she can use a paper towel to wipe down the sides of the cup after feeding, so she can see traces of the peak growth. She may be missing it. Once it's well established (and by the smell it isn't yet), it'll hold the peak for several hours. Until then it might just sink under its own weight.

And, yes, it will come in time.

I'd like to reinforce the yeast in the kitchen thing. Wild yeast is a different strain than commercial. The author's have usually been baking up with wild yeast for years and years, and if they actually test the instructions for making a new starter, rather than repeating the instructions they got a dozen years ago from the guy who gave them their starter, if they do it in their kitchens full of wild yeasts, it'll go a lot quicker and easier.

There's an old piece of folk wisdom that says yeast won't rise in a sterile kitchen. There's a lot of truth there. This quote is from King Arthur Flour (where it says "wild yeast" it means free in the air, not necessarily the wild yeast you're cultivating for starter):
Keep in mind, also, the characteristics of your own kitchen. If you bake bread all the time, your kitchen is full of wild yeast, and any dough you make there will rise vigorously. If you seldom bake bread, or are just beginning, your kitchen will be quite “sterile;” your dough won't be aided by wild yeast, and will rise more slowly than it would in a more “active” kitchen.

The more your daughter bakes, and uses her starter, the more active her rises will be, including in the starter cup. :)

Bbstx, I wonder about the fact that your daughter mixed the initial batch with her hands.

I found using just organic rye flour and spring water, makes a very easy to maintain wild yeast sourdough starter.

I kept a sourdough starter going for a few years, but let it die after we moved. I decided to get back into sourdough baking again earlier this year. I use Amy Scherber, (Amy's Bread ) method for a wild sourdough starter.

It takes less than a week to grow a starter that is ready to use. And once it is ready it is stored in the fridge.

I maintain a 12 ounce mother. Actually two. One fed with rye and one fed with white.

Maintaining is easy. I take it out of the fridge, usually once a week, feed six ounces of starter with three ounces of spring water and three ounces of flour, stir well, cover and leave it on the counter to double. Usually doubles in less than five hours , depending on the last time I fed it. Once the fed starter has doubled it goes back into the fridge until next feeding.

I use two or three ounces of the discard to make a preferment for a batch of dough. I add 1 1/2 cups of flour to the discard, and a cup of water. Again stir well and cover and leave to double. This goes into a batch of dough.

Even if I let it go for two weeks, it doesn't suffer. It bounces right back and has a wonderful smell.

Here is a link that might be useful: Amy's Bread Sourdough Starter

ann t, she used her (clean) hands for the initial mix because the book she was following instructed her to do so. I think the purpose was so that bacteria on her hands could get the fermentation process started.

Is spring water necessary?

plllog, the starter may do better when she gets home. DSIL brews beer. Granted the beer brewing is done in the garage storage room, but maybe with it being under the same roof, some of the yeast will be floating around. Perhaps her kitchen is not actually sterile (although having seen her and DSIL clean after cooking, I think you could do surgery in it with no problem!).

This post was edited by bbstx on Sun, Oct 19, 14 at 17:13

BBstx, the reason given for using spring water is tap water may contain different elements that may not be good for your starter. We have well water, which I use in my breads. I only use the spring water when I'm feeding the "mother". I buy little 330ml bottles, really inexpensive. I think they are 12 for $2.00. Just big enough to feed my two starters and what is left goes into the preferment.

There is good bacteria and bad which is why I wonder about using hands to mix.

I bake a lot so I think that my starter is healthy because of all the yeast spores in the air.

I never found that when growing that starter that it went through a putrid or stinky cheese/vinegar stage. Just a clean sour tangy and fruity smell.

~Ann

Ann, the smelly phase isn't absolute, but it's a very well known phenomenon. It was really really stinky when I made my rye starter. It may be that your starters were getting plenty of assist from the yeasts in the air. Once the good yeast builds a good strong colony, the smell goes away.

I don't know why it said to mix by hand because there's nothing on hands, clean or just not-dirty, that's beneficial. It may be that with one's hands one is more likely to get everything well incorporated and the author wants you to get a good feeling for the dough.

I forgot about the spring water since it's only in the last 10 years that our water has been fit for boiling pasta. I just naturally grab the spring water. Distilled/purefied isn't good for this, and mineral water is too hard, so, yes, it should be spring water. But it doesn't have to be fancy. That might help. Or not. The starter is already going.

"Sterile" is not about cleaning. It's about where a lot of cooking and baking hasn't taken place and were things do get well cleaned. As soon as your daughter gets into the swing of baking regularly, even with her kind of cleaning, there should still be stray yeasts in the air.

It really does sound fine. I don't know if the transitory brewing yeasts in the air will be much help, but they couldn't hurt!

I've made a starter starting with whole wheat flour and it never went through a stinky phase. It just smelt alcoholic and/or yeasty depending on when it was smelled.

The instructions I used called for leaving it uncovered for an hour or two after the initial mixing and then covering. I kept mine in a plastic container with a cover. With paper, water will evaporate from the starter and you won't know the hydration.

Part of the reason for recommending spring water is that chlorination in tap water might interfere with the yeast and good bacteria getting established. The water used should have little or no chlorine. I use the water from my water filter since the filter should remove the chlorine and the starter does fine.

After 5 days of daily feeding, mine made bread kind of sluggishly. It took a few more days to get all the way active.

A photo of the starter this morning. The top of the tape is where it was after it was fed yesterday.
{{gwi:2070947}}
What appears to be where the starter climbed to on the right of the container is merely a "slosh" not starter climbing and collapsing.

DD and DSIL keep the house very cold. I know nothing about the care and feeding of yeast, but I suggested to her that perhaps the chill of the house is retarding the growth of the yeast and that she move it to DSIL's brewing room in the garage which is more likely to hit the 75-77 range during the day.

Also, she has not bought spring water yet. The water where she lives may be more highly chlorinated than the water where I live and where the starter was started.

She is ready to throw it out and start over. I suggested that she not throw it out, but continue feeding the first batch using spring water and start a second batch using rye flour and spring water since both "Polly"* and Ann have had good luck with that combo.

Any words of wisdom from those of you who have experience with this?

*plllog, DD refers to you as Polly. Love it! Much better than the "Pill Log" I hear in my head when I see your user name.

I'm having trouble telling, but was there any activity in the starter?
I don't see any bubbles.

I would expect to see some sort of activity like I see when I feed my starters.

If your daughters starter isn't active and it is still smelling "off". I would start over using spring water rather than try and fix this one.

This is the sourdough bread I baked yesterday. It was started with a sourdough biga made on Sunday and left on the counter overnight to develop. I fed both my starters and used three ounces of the discard to make the biga. So the discard came from starter that was fed a week ago.

Ann

Bbstx, I haven't been called Polly in years. One of the guys in Kitchens used to call me that. :) It's actually three L's, though a lot of people figure one has to be an "i" and normalize it as the first one. Makes sense in a paid attention during first grade spelling kind of way. :) It could just as easily be "plilog", but that center L is actually a 1 as typed on an old style keyboard. Call me whatever you like as long as it's nice. :)

You're right about the temperature. It's not going to grow very fast if it's cold. When mine was new it only liked the heat (closer to 80°). Agreed with Ann about the bubbles.

If it were me, besides putting it somewhere warm, I'd go to twice a day feedings, and a 50% rather than 80% discard.

To check for life, add just the water after discard and stir it in. Look for bubbles. If there are bubbles, it's alive. If there are only a few bubbles, it's alive but weak.

An alternative approach, if it's weak, is to skip a feeding to let it multiply more before you discard. The opposite might help, too, which is feeding without discarding once or twice. It's important to get a feel for the starter and learn what it needs.

I had my greatest success when I started cooing to it and calling it "Wubby". Every time I went in the kitchen, it was, "How you doin', Wubby?" in some kind of obnoxious dog-lady tone from the movies. :) It seemed to work. I was telling everyone that I had a new pet. Pet yeast. :)

I've been through all of this, including the stinky. Both of my starters (wheat and rye) were made from freshly milled grain. That usually has more microorganisms that need to die than commercially milled flour. It might be that your daughter's flour also has more than Ann's or Cloud_Swift's, or that they both had a lot of free yeast in their kitchens to help out.

As far as I can tell, your daughter is doing fine. Just stick with it and nurse it along.

I'm with Ann. The starter seems to be showing no sign of yeasty activity. Even in a pretty cold house there should be some by this time.

Is that pink color due to a tint in the container or just from the photo? My starter has never had a color like that - it should be ivory to darker tan (the color of whole wheat dough).

I agree with Ann's suggestion to over. Use spring water or filtered water. Keeping it in a bit warmer location may help get it started too.

There's activity! It's a quarter inch above the tape! And it looks lit it was a little bit higher (maybe 1/8", not the slosh line) and is on its way back down. I think the pink is screen diversion. When it's at the top of my screen, it looks pink. When I scroll the photo to the bottom of my screen it looks the right milky tan color for half whole wheat.

If she does a do-over, it might be worth starting with just whole rye flour, which is easier to catch with, and then transitioning the feed to the white/wheat mix. Since my first two attempts with my home milled whole wheat went moldy before they got started, I tend to want to nurse the one that has life, rather than pulling the plug. :)

Cathy in PA posted a link to a site, Sourdough Home, that has great instructions for what's going wrong when your starter isn't right. I didn't share it before because it's sort of ad hoc. You have to read through each page to find the nuggets. Click all the links, not just the one that sounds best. It's also not as helpful on the baking side. Another great site, for those with scales, is Virtuous Bread, from Great Britain. There are some different starter instructions, lessons (I haven't read those, not wanting to confuse myself any worse) and great recipes. And, of course, there's Fresh Loaf, which also has lessons as well as message boards.

And I would advise not to use her hands this time. Unless her home is full of healthly yeast spores from baking with yeast on a regular basis I think there is a downside to using hands at least when just starting the process of creating a starter. A greater possibility of introducing the wrong kind of bacteria.

Taken from Amy's Bread......."Use organic flour and spring water to start, to ensure that the yeast and bacteria you are trying to cultivate haven't been damaged by pesticides and fungicides and that they won't be inhibited by the chemicals and/or fluoride in your tap water. Once you get your culture going, you can go back to non-organic flour and tap water to maintain it if you prefer."

I still feed my rye starter with organic rye and spring water. But my spinoff white starter is fed, with spring water and my regular hight protein bread flour.

~Ann

Thanks, all. I've passed the comments along to DD. She is wavering between trying to see if she can revive the starter she has and starting anew.

If it is pink, the starter has gone bad. It should be a nice creamy color -- like wet flour. My starter is over 20 years old now, so I don't truly remember the smells at the very beginning, but anything green, black (maybe fuzzy) or pink or truly unpleasant smelling would seem to indicate it is time to start over.

Thanks, lascatx. I think the pinkish tint is from the lighting, not the starter, but I'll remind DD to check it out for pink.

She looked for organic rye flour yesterday, briefly. She could not find rye flour - regular or organic - but she didn't put a lot of effort into it.

So I sent a text to DD and asked if the starter were pink or if it were just the lighting. She has thrown away the starter, not because of the color but because of the inactivity. She is starting over but I don't think she is going to start until she can find rye flour. Surely a store in her vicinity carries Bob's Red Mill.

Here is a the link I used in 2009 to start my starter...it works perfectly. Do not vary any parts of it. You will not see doubling at all until you have yeasts reliably growing. What you will see initially are bubbles. The doubling comes later. c

Here is a link that might be useful: starter 101

Here we go again (and I do appreciate your patience):

Message from DD:

I finally got the THIRD try at a starter to work. (there was literal jumping up and down). I trained it: It rose and sank and rose and sank for a couple of days after each feeding. I made bread with the starter today. 1C starter to 4C AP flour and 2C water (using this recipe: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/3715/sourdough-sandwich-bread)

It rose some, but not as much as I want it to. I have rectangular loaves of bread. I let it proof all day.

So here's my question: I melted the butter in a cup and without thinking poured it onto the flour and starter. Do you think I killed the yeast with the hot butter?

Like many others I make, this is a brick. Good taste, bad rise.

I used up all of my starter, so I have to start more tomorrow.

What do you think? Did the hot butter kill or damage the starter?

Does it sound odd to use all of the starter in one recipe?

OMG, she wants to make croissants next! And she wants to do it at my house instead of hers. I may not survive. I cannot get through to her that it is ok to leave peas out of the stew if you don't like them, but you can't leave X out of bread if you don't like it. She is going to balk at the amount of butter used in croissants.

She makes great pie crust, but last Thanksgiving she decided that the apples were sweet enough without any additional sugar. Her MIL and her aunt are still talking about how awful the apple pie was. Of course, no one has hurt her feelings and told her the pie was atrocious. I had to leave before dessert. Apparently it was a blessing in disguise!

Maybe you should e-mail her pictures of the big block of butter phase of making croissants. Grainlady might have some kind of magic coconut way of making them without butter, but normal vegan croissants are made with a big block of vegetable shortening, which is even more gross than the big block of butter. Plus, they don't have the light laciness of really great croissants.

If you don't want to eat a big block of fat, don't eat fudge, NY cheesecake or croissants! Though, croissants probably have the most other ingredients. :)

Hint for the apple pie next time--I never use the amount of sugar that normal recipes do. A dusting of sugar is plenty. Just enough to encourage the apples to stay sweet. Otherwise, the sourness that's there in the true apple taste beyond the sugar of ripeness becomes too pronounced. Even just a little sugar can be good, though. Do you think she ate the pie and knows it was sour? Maybe someone should tell her so she won't make the mistake again? It's no kindness for the family to spare her feelings and talk behind her back!

Re the bread, yes, you're not supposed to use all the starter. You're supposed to feed it until it's big enough for your project plus keep a standard portion for the next one. Or divide it in half, and feed one half to the recipe and one to keep for a day or two.

So I looked up the recipe. It's pretty weird in its method--needlessly complicated--though pretty straightforward otherwise. Did she save her extra levain? If I have the right recipe it says, Save your leftover leaven; it is now the beginning of a new starter. To keep it alive to make future loaves, continue to feed it as described... Considering that the instructions for making the starter have it growing while it's catching, it makes sense to use it all and keep the levain. When I make Leader's pain au levain, I use the drier levains I've kept from previous loaves rather than my regular starter, and I feed them occasionally when they don't get used.

Where did she get the idea of adding melted butter from?

Oh, crap. I just figured out that she changed recipes! I'm not going to delete the above which pertains to Tartine Sourdough, in case there's something useful in it.

The recipe she used calls for one cup of starter after feeding time. This means dividing it off and keeping a part.

The exact wording of this recipe calls for adding the melted butter to the levain. Yes, it's possible it was too hot and killed the yeast, butter will also retard the rise, but it also sounds like the yeast wasn't strong enough to begin with. Given a warmish location, the starter should double within about 4-8 hours of feeding and should maintain its maximum height for several hours. If it doesn't it's not strong enough yet, and could easily collapse during baking.

Leaving them to rise all day also means that the starter might have been played out. That one is hard to know. The recipe doesn't call for doubling. It has a timed rise, shaping and then another hour "or until light and risen nicely". At a certain point you have to bake it and hope for the best.

I've been learning to muck about with yeast dough recipes, and it's very freeing, but I started doing it with decades of baking bread behind me.

Did she perchance use all whole wheat? Or AP instead of the high protein KAF that the author used?

Whatever the issue, a couple of doorstops is normal when starting a new bread baking method. If you can get her to keep trying a recipe until she gets it right, she'll have a lot more success than bouncing from one to the next.

plllog, trust me, we don't viciously talk behind DD's back. We all find her kitchen shenanigans amusing and endearing. She is totally loved by her mother, her aunt, and her MIL. A time will be found to gently urge her to add a tad bit of sugar to the pie next time. In fact, I may use your wisdom that a dusting of sugar brings out the natural sweetness in the apples.

There is an artisan baker close to her who gives bread baking lessons one Saturday each month. The lessons last most of the day. I'm considering giving DD a day of lessons for Christmas.

I sent DD ann_t's blog post about making croissants and warned her that croissants are very buttery. We'll see how that one works out.

I forwarded your response to her. She sends her heartfelt thanks. If your patience and the patience of the other GW bakers hold out, she may turn into a good baker yet!

Here is a link that might be useful: ann_t makes croissants

BBstx, I think it must depend on the starter and the recipe.

I've never used a full cup of starter to make sourdough bread.

I only use two ounces of starter,(two ounces of the discard when feeding starters once a week) added to some flour and water, to make a preferment that then gets added to a full batch of bread dough. (1000g ).

If your daughter doesn't have success with the starter she is using , you might recommend that she give Amy's Bread starter a try.

And thanks Bbstx, for the reminder. I haven't baked croissants in a while. Not much better than a warm , buttery, flaky croissant.

~Ann

Thanks, ann. I've passed your comments along to DD. I can't wait until she tries your croissants.

There are loose starters that are used by the cup, and tight starters that are used by the knob. The standard half and half starter is somewhere in between. I've also heard of recipes calling for feeding up a 100% hydration starter to use a cup or more as a way of skipping the pre-ferment, if I understand correctly, and having a sweeter loaf.

If you use a lot of starter, it will rise more quickly and won't have the sour acidity that a standard sourdough bread has. I don't know if you also lose the amelioration of the anti-nutrients in whole wheat if you do that, or if you lose the wards against mold and staling.

"wards against mold and staling" Does that mean that sourdough bread has a longer shelf life than regular bread?

Yes.

My home baked sourdoughs don't get moldy, and stay reasonably fresh for a really long time.

From Wikipedia:
Bakers often make loaves with fermented dough from a previous batch (which they call "mother dough", "chef", or "seed sour") rather than making a new starter every time they bake. The original starter culture may be many years old. Because of their pH level and the presence of antibacterial agents, such cultures are stable and able to prevent colonization by unwanted yeasts and bacteria. For this reason, sourdough products keep fresh for a long time and are good at resisting spoilage and mold.

My starter isn't much more than half a year old, but this shows a good reason to raise up a good starter and keep it happy. :) My more acidic recipes keep the best.

I had no idea that sourdough would keep longer than regular bread. That makes it ideal for DD and DSIL. It is just the two of them. They don't go through bread very fast.

Bbstx, You might also tell your daughter that she can make smaller loaves, rounds or baguette shapes.

Because it is just the two of us, I like to make the smaller loaves just big enough for one meal. I freeze the other loaves as soon as they have cooled completely. Wrap in papertowels, into a freezer bag and into the freezer. I pull one out everyday for breakfast.

I find that even if the sourdough bread doesn't spoil or mold, it still doesn't taste the same as fresh baked after a day or two.

~Ann

Perhaps your daughter would like to try Daniel Leader's pain au levain from his book Local Breads (the book has a lot of errata, but the recipes are great. Not a good book for beginners, though this recipe should be fine). I haven't checked this blog post against the book, but it looks right. This is my favorite sourdough recipe. I'm still getting it right for 100% whole wheat, but exactly as written (book version) is delicious.

You keep the levain as your continuing starter, and it's much easier to keep than some starters.

If your daughter wants to try this, I can e-mail the recipe for the stiff levain starter, or if she gets a 1:1 (equal weights flour and water) starter going and keeps it going, I can tell her how to divide it and make a stiff levain starter from it.

This kind of recipe might be good for her because it produces two small loaves, rather than a full on batch of bread.

P.S., Up topic, I didn't mean I thought you and the aunties were being nasty about her. Just that if you don't tell her she won't improve, unless, like me, she's hypercritical of her own results and knows all about what went wrong already.

Just to share.. I get whole rye flour in the bulk bins at whole foods. Very likely it is organic too but I didn't write that down. 1.19 per lb. and my starter bubbles like a science experiment gone mad.

I use the starter from Eric's favorite rye from the Fresh Loaf. It was the best rye bread we have ever eaten. Actually used the recipe as well as his starter.

Starter ...equal parts by weight of rye flour and tap water, about a cup. Eric thinks that one cup of water equals about one and three quarters cup of flour. Add 1/4 or1/2 t of yeast and 2 Tablespoons of vinegar. Bubbled over the container.

Westsider, is this a sourdough starter that you maintain by feeding regularly and using a portion of it to make the rye bread? Or is it a starter that you make each time you bake rye bread?

~Ann

Here is the link to Eric's rye. It is one of the best rye breads you will ever make. You use your starter....then follow the rest of the directions. Eric passed away 2 yrs ago but his contributions to TFL live on. c

Here is a link that might be useful: Fave rye

Visited DD earlier this week. Her sourdough "brick" (referenced above) was tasty but the texture was awful. Very very dense. The top of the loaf was really strange looking. It almost looked like it has been frosted - it was totally smooth, as if a glaze had been poured on it. Obviously, it had not been glazed.

Her new batch of starter is bubbling along nicely. She showed it to me before I left. It had doubled overnight. I think she's getting there!

Thanks for the link Trailrunner. That loaf of rye looks perfect. Will have to try it with my rye starter.

~Ann

Eric's Fav Rye calls for 788g First Clear flour. What is First Clear flour? Is that a brand of flour or a type of flour?

Do you use just any starter that you have hanging around the house or must it be starter made with rye flour?

bb...you can use any starter to make the bread. All starters can also be converted to whatever flour you would like by simply taking out a few grams...say 50grams and feeding it over the course of 3 feedings with the new flour...voila...rye or spelt etc.

Here is a link to the most complete listing of what flour is what and how it is derived . It is a wonderful article and WAY more than you probably wanted to know :) You can use regular AP or bread flour instead....I have never purchases First Clear but it is available if you Google it.

Ann I hope you enjoy the bread. The reference to the vinegar etc was a "short" cut that Eric suggested to those that posted later in the thread and said they didn't have any starter...remember the original post was from 2007 and there weren't as many folks on TFL using starters at that time. It would definitely be best with a regular starter.

bb...you might make sure that your DD understands that the starter needs to be at least a week old before she tries to raise bread with it. Also I doubt the amount of butter in her previous loaf was a) hot enough b) enough volume to kill the starter. I looked at the formula and there was no reason that it shouldn't have worked but there are a lot of better and simpler formulas that she would probably have more success with. Also making the exact same tried and true recipe using weights and minimal ingredients till she gets it perfect would be a great idea. I can point her to Susan's blog...Wild Yeast where she will find very explicit directions and photos to help achieve success.

Here is a link that might be useful: First Clear

I don't know if DD is learning anything from all of this, but I am. I'm still iffy on most of this, but my new words for the thread are "hydration," "levain," and "biga." I'm still trying to learn to use them properly in context.

Wild Yeast is very interesting!

Primer:

Pre-ferment is a method by which a small dough is made of yeast, flour and water, to develop the activity and flavor of the yeast, usually overnight. "Ferment" refers to the yeast activity in the final bread dough.

Biga (Italian) and levain (French) are pre-ferments. Usually, however not exclusively, bigas are made with commercial yeast, and levains are made with sourdough starter or saved levain starter. Those distinctions refer to the origins of the words. Many bakers use the words interchangeably. If you're not sure, just say "pre-ferment" and you're covered.

Similarly, banneton, a woven basket, usually lined with cloth (French) and brotform, a coiled basket, less often lined with cloth (German) are used interchangeably for both types. In English, you can say "bread form" or "dough basket". Many people say "proofing basket", but I don't care for the word "proof" as a synonym for "rise". I'm not old, but I remember proving cake yeast before dry yeast was stable, but fresh yeast could have died. The yeast was proven (i.e., "proofed"), when the biga rose. The rises of the main dough were a given unless something really bad happened. Nowadays, people just toss in dried yeast and expect it to rise, and it does, so they proof in the baskets. This is a persnickety quibble that has no real meaning to anyone but me. :)

Hydration refers to the weight of water in the dough based on the amount of flour, and is usually expressed as a percentage. The flour is always 100%. If there are different flours in the dough, then they have partial percentages, e.g., 95% unbleached white flour and 5% whole wheat (a substitute for European style bread flour). Add them up and they equal 100% because the flour is always 100%. This allows one to discuss, clearly, the amount of water in the dough, which can be more useful than adjectives such as loose, wet, sticky, tight, tacky, etc.

If you have 1000g total of flour in your dough, and your recipe calls for 68% hydration, you would use 680g of water. If you have 650g of white flour, 120g of whole wheat, and 30g of rye flour, for a total of 800g flour, 68% hydration would mean 544g of water.

These percentages really only apply to what's in the bowl. When you do your stretch and folds on additional flour, you're changing the percentage. When you wet your hands to do them, you're also changing the percentage. So they make it easier to talk about baking, but every baker is still going to have slightly different results. Factor in environment--flour absorbs humidity from the air, and also releases it and dries out. It also has a fat component, though much less with white flour, especially bleached. (Put your white flour in a half full, air tight container for a year (i.e., trapping in some air so oxidation will take place), and even the bleached stuff will smell rancid when you open it up (personal experience talking).) If you oil your surfaces, hands, etc., a trace of oil can also be added, mostly negligible, but sometimes a few drops can make a big difference. With all of those factors, as well, the percentages refer to the basic recipe, and the rest is whatever works for you. Like S&P to taste.

Experience is king. Repetition is important. Getting a feel for it is crucial.

Earlier this week, DD purchased Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I think she is serious about mastering this subject. Many many thanks to all of you who so patiently answered her questions and gave her guidance as she began to explore sourdough making and baking.

Today's loaf of bread
{{gwi:2070950}}

DD is pleased and says it tastes great. Mission accomplished. Thanks again all.

Please send my congratulations to your daughter. Both for baking that beautiful loaf of bread and for persevering. Well done.

~Ann

Thank you, ann. I'll pass along your praise. She also made challah, but didn't send a picture of it.