I'm sure various fruits and vegetables can be used, for the natural yeasts they pick up on their exterior. But considering where the fruits and vegetables in my local grocery have most likely been, I'm not feeling enthusiastic. And this is not virus related, it's all the chemicals and other germs they might have picked up from farm to table. I usually wash or peel everything. I could perhaps get some organic apples, I do need to make applesauce . . . come to think of it, raisins are processed with sulphites probably to deter yeast, so dried fruit is probably out, particularly since I can't get organic . . .

Once the starter is up and running, very little ever gets discarded. I just refresh or feed the starter the night before I intend to use it, reserving only about a cupful to carry on until its next usage.

My starter is going on 25 years old so I don't remember exactly what I did getting it started but IIRC, it was just flour and water and maybe a small touch of sugar. All the yeast involved was just the natural yeast that exists everywhere.

I have heard of using grapes and in one of my bread books (The Complete Book of Breads by Bernard Clayton) there are several ways of making starters using potatoes, both cooked and raw. There is also a starter using honey but it also calls for one packet of yeast. I have not tried any of them, but would be happy to post the recipes for you. I joined a private group on Facebook called 'Artisan Bread Baking with Wild Yeast and Waters'. I have to admit that the members are really into this subject and seeing the photos of the breads they are making amazes me and scares me a bit as well. Not that I think it's risky; just very involved and time consuming. I finally have a very active starter make with just flour and filtered water.
Took me three times to get it going. I also mostly make my dough at night and store it overnight in the fridge and then bring it to room temp and shape and bake the next day. So far it's worked well for me.

You're overcomplicating this. You only need flour and water. Period. Some of these additives might speed it up, but I doubt it. Maybe what they do is give the organisms something more to fight so culls the herd faster? I wouldn't go there without specific directions from someone who has done this a number of times.

For catching wild yeast--there is only one kind and it's the same all over the world, no matter what some people claim--whole grains are easier than flour, and rye is easiest of all. You can also use grapes. The yeast is in the must. Nancy Silverton does the grapes, I think.

Catching a starter takes a lot of flour. You can use the discard as wet flour and make anything you'd bake with it. If you're short of flour, however, maybe now isn't the best time to start your own.

You can send for Carl's starter. Just an SASE and a donation. The friends of Carl site tells you what their precautions are. http://carlsfriends.net/

You can also make a starter with commercial yeast. It may eventually transition to wild yeast (you can find instructions online for trying to keep it the commercial strain). If you have some yeast, make a dough with water and flour and the yeast, and use the instructions for keeping and feeding starters to keep it going.

Send me a private message if you like for some more options.

Earlier today I was reading how to make sourdough starter on the King Arthur website. They recommend starting with a whole wheat or rye flour and regular yeast. I remember trying to do this many years ago and found I really wasn’t a sourdough fan.

King Arthur’s sourdough starter

The King Arthur method is what I've been considering, but like FOAS says, seems like such a waste of flour for the feedings, which is in short supply. I could use the flour for a poolish or sponge, but then I would have to make bread very often . . . at least for a while. Wondering if it grows slowly, if i can just refresh very week. Making one pizza meal or carby thing per week is more like my rate of eating wheat products.

I can't help with getting your starter going from scratch.

But I don't like having lots of discard either. So I feed 2 oz of starter with 2 oz water and 2 oz flour. Let it sit out for a few hours and then refrigerate. If you want to bake with it, take it out the day before and refresh with a feeding or two. If you calculate things out, you can feed with amounts that yield just enough ripe starter for your recipe with enough left over for your next batch. Just keep the 2:2:2 ratio for your additions. Take your 2 oz starter, feed as before, set out a few hours, then refrigerate again. If I don't bake for over a week, I repeat the 2oz, 2oz, 2oz feeding for the starter. At times I've pushed it to two week in the refrigerator between feedings.

I use the little discard I get for pancakes or waffles. Combine any discards and refrigerate until there is enough for a recipe. I use 6 ounces of discard, 1 egg, 1T sugar, 2 T milk, 1/4 t. salt, 2 T oil or butter, 1/2 t. baking powder, and enough flour to make it pancake batter consistency (less than 1/3 cup for most batches). I am not too concerned with an exact discard measure. A little more or less works fine. I freeze any leftover pancakes or waffles, especially if making a double batch, and pop them in the toaster for a quick snack or breakfast. Spread a little peanut butter on them and it cuts the carbs....well, maybe that is faulty nutrition science, but it tastes great.

Cool house - I know about that. In cold/cool times I put my starter in the oven and turn on the oven light. I'll also proof the loaves in there until it is time to preheat the oven. Then of course the rising loaf comes out for a bit. I tape a big note over the oven control whenever I put something in the oven with just the light on...don't want to cook the wrong stuff...like that has ever happened :0

After the first few days when all kinds of bacteria and fungi are rumbling around, but before your starter is strong enough to be on its own, you can save all your discard in a jar in the fridge and use for anything you'd use flour and water for. Just measure your flour and water carefully, so you know how much of each you're putting into your cakes and all. You can also spread it in a sheet pan and let it dry, and you'll have flour again, which you could use for pie crust.

You cannot catch wild yeast and get it to the point where it'll give you a good rise without using up some flour.

Better to acquire a known strong starter. If not Carl's, try an Amish store. Or message me. Then you can make a dough with it, feed a couple of times, then keep in the fridge, mostly, feeding up just when you use it.

I thought I had brought yeast with me, but it appears that I did not. I was going to order some yeast (since there is none in the market) but it now has an extremely inflated price (400%) and is otherwise unavailable. Therefore I will try again to make my own sourdough starter. I have rye flour, but I'm not sure what else I need. I have spring water and I also have some distilled water, if that is necessary.

I cannot believe the price of yeast these days. I have lots of bread flour, but I won't bake bread if the cost of yeast is more than the cost of four loaves of bread.

I found this article from Cook’s Illustrated. I’m making this starter and it takes a lot less flour than others. I’ve used the “discards” for pizza ( it did call for a small amount of yeast), and some wonderful cranberry orange scones.

https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/2268-make-your-own-mini-sourdough-starter-with-the-quarantinystarter-project?extcode=NSAKC26FB&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=photo&utm_content=starterarticle&utm_campaign=akoarticles&fbclid=IwAR0_Eg8xuTSe0oQJRUb11UV9_K-GS49dsJAgLigwYbhIC52LF2vFeGjeCZA

Pillog taught me everything I know about sourdough!

I never throw the discard away. There are some recipes on KA that use discard (I just made an awesome carrot cake using sourdough discard.)

As for feeding, let's say you have 50g of discard - instead of tossing it, feed it and use it. At the same time, feed the mother starter and put it back in the fridge for next time. Also, you can subsitute starter for flour and water in any of your recipes to add a little sourdough tang (probably not much).

I did sourdough several, several, several years ago. we did not care for the taste. The absolute best way is to get a start, like I did, is from a friend. It will be what they are throwing away. Of course, at that time, I had small kids and was very busy. Also, they only ate certain things and if it looked different, oh no! One would not eat the homemade muscadine jelly and only the purple (Bama) jelly. We also did some kind of fermented fruit stuff, that you could use over cake or ice cream or use to bake a cake. It was good, but we got tired of it.

I had success with the King Arthur Flour sourdough starter recipe and instructions, but it wasn't ready until day 11. I went through a lot of flour with those twice daily feedings! But now it happily lives in my fridge on once a week feedings. I even purchased the cute King Arthur Flour crock to keep it in. I make two loaves a week for my family, we love it toasted and buttered!

I think I may make my country rye bread with a day old ferment, and instead of freezing or discarding the old dough, I will feed that, etc. Wondering if I can freeze the discards and use them like short term ferments for some of those recipes. They call for yeast. I have some yeast, so maybe in 11 days I will have both a starter and a a couple months worth of "old dough" for some other breads or pancakes, etc. in the freezer.

If your starter is strong, yes, you can freeze. If you want it to rise for you, however, you should feed first, and then freeze right after adding the new flour, rather than discarding before you feed. That means using twice as much flour to feed, but it'll keep your discard in good shape. If you just want to extend the life of your flour and water, go ahead. But I keep discard in a big jar of unfed discard in my fridge, and it keeps fine, long term.

Interesting. The instructions say use it within two days, discard it or freeze it. Nothing about keeping it in the fridge. Doesn't it go foul eventually? I manage to grow lots of little beasties in my fridge without even trying!

Keeping starter in the fridge is fine. It can go about a week between feedings in the fridge. As long as you feed it often enough to keep the yeast and good bacteria fed, it won't go foul. I've only had that happen when I really neglected it - we were away on vacation for over a month and then busy catching up on other things so when I finally got around to checking on it, the starter had mold. I should have frozen some.

If you don't want to start a starter from scratch, another source can be a friendly bakery. My son got starter from a bakery that he liked in San Francisco. He gave me some of his so that's my current starter too.

I've been watching Bake with Jack videos on sour dough. He keeps over just a very small amount of starter and doesn't have to discard (once the initial starter is going):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6YpNCUYYQ&list=PL23nszfeBoFncMGN800zJvujGQGrpR-Wk&index=4&t=0s

I keep my starters and discard in proper jars with silicone flanges. I don't know if that makes a difference. If you leave either too long, you'll get grey to black on the surface, and a matching liquid. That's where the surface part has died, and perhaps oxidized, and thrown out "hooch" (it really is alcohol). So for your active starter, you pour off (or like the old grannies, drink) the hooch, stir in the surface if it's a light gray, or use a spoon to gather the ugly bits and throw them out. The starter underneath is just fine. Probably stronger for having been taxed. If it gets to the point of nearly black on top, do a few feedings before you put it back in the fridge to make it feel loved and fed, or it'll go back to dying. It'l never happen like that if you feed weekly, and the colony will still improve.

For discard, also scrap off any gray/dead bits, but don't waste flour feeding it unless you want to revive it. There's live yeast in my most neglected discard jar. Reviving it isn't a worthwhile endeavor, but you could. Once, when I was totally off grain and sad about it, I was mean and barely fed the starters. I neglected the discard entirely. It got a little mold around the rim, where little scrapings had been. So when I did relent and deal with it, I cleaned off the mold, discarded the gray, and the rest of the discard was fine.

YMMV, and maybe a "better" fridge keeps it better, but I doubt it. I'd believe the better canister style seal on the jar than just a screw top on reused jar does more. And maybe keeping them in glass helps.

Mostly, I just think it's the whole fermentation thing. Natural preservatives.

And freezing should be fine, but thawing is more of a hassle.

ETA--the discard will get more sour tasting with time. This is no problem, but you might want to use less at once, or add a bit of sugar. For your starter, remember less starter/longer rise makes sour bread, lots of starter/short rise gives not-sour bread.

I can use any type of flour right? I've got a whole bunch of rice flour left from the one time each year I make shortbread. I wouldn't miss it and if I could feed it to the yeastie beasties so much the better.

While you're developing your starter, yes, you can feed it anything. I cleared out some weird dregs that way. Rice flour will give the yeast the carbs it needs to grow. I would cut it to no more than half and for the rest use a gluten bearing grain (wheat (inc. spelt, emmer, faro, etc., barley or rye), however. You still want the starter dough to have some legs. When it gets within a week (whie it's young) of when you want to use it for baking, you should feed with the flour you want to bake with. Giving it too much of a different kind of flour can shock your starter, and make it go quiet for awhile, but it'll recover. Just give it more time. The best way to transition from one kind of flour to another is to start at 10% of the new flour and increase by 10-15% daily. That's gluten flour. I wouldn't go over half rice flour, ever.

Made my first sourdough discard waffles today. They were good, but not any different than usual waffles. I used a recipe from the King Arthur Flour web site, which was basically a waffle recipe but instead of all flour and milk or water, it called for half starter discard and half flour and buttermilk. My starter didn't give the waffles an "off" taste so that was good. Any "tang" came from the buttermilk and any rise probably from the small amount of baking soda called for in the recipe.

My starter is about a week old, not very impressive as far as bubbles, and smells like beer. In about another week I am going to try some basic country bread with it. I've started feeding it bread flour in preparation.

Oh, yes. You have to work hard at it to make sourdough waffles actually sour. They're supposed to taste like waffles! If you want them to be sour you need ferment time. Remember the rule: More starter/shorter rise isn't sour. Less starter/longer rise is sour. With discard the easiest way to get sour is to just keep it in the fridge unfed for a time, but yours is so young that might not be a good idea. It could go wrong. In a couple of months, that should work.

I'm worried about your bubbles, though the beer smell is okay. It probably means that your starter is hungry. You may need to feed it more often just now. Before you start baking, your newly fed starter should be able to double in size in eight hours and hold that level for at least four hours. Or you can put a quarter tsp of commercial yeast in the bread for reinforcement.

Good luck with it!

My starter is starting to worry me, ;) It bubbles for a while, but then it just deflates and gets a brownish liquid on top. To me that seems to be a sign that it is not very vigorous. I feed it every other day, and it sits on our kitchen countertop in a house that is in the low 60s for temp. I feed it 1/2 cup of flour mixed with 6 TBLSP water when I feed it. I take out 1/2 cup for baking. I've been at it for about a week now. How about I just feed and not discard so much? Seems like it would have to be pretty vigorous for you to just keep a little bit as the base for the next growth cycle. If that base is full of active, healthy yeasts, then fine, yes it will grow more in no time at all. But if not, then you're maintaining a weak system and I don't see how it is going to get stronger . . .

Edited to add that I fed it twice as much today, but that's only going to give me more weakish goo I'm afraid.

Your poor baby is HUNGRY!! It's only a week old! I know you want to conserve flour but that brown liquid is hooch--alcohol--from dying yeast.

General feeding rule, give the starter being fed the same weight in flour and water. Water should be no more than 50% of the weight, but can be as little as 30% if you want a dry starter. Most recipes assume you're using equal weights flour and water. (Using volume measures, EDITED FOR ACCURACY close enough is one measure of water (about half pound per cup) to two measures of flour (about a quarter pound per cup). [Sorry for the gaffe] Use the same amounts every time--it's hard to measure the amount of starter you have because the flour absorbs the water, but do your best.)

In the beginning, you should feed twice a day. Since you have hooch, you've captured a colony. Yes, to strengthen it, you can feed without discard, but you have to feed the same weight as the amount of starter you have, so if you're discarding half, you have to feed double if you don't discard!

You can eke out your flour by adding 15-25% other flour, starch or sugar, so long as your yeast gets fed. This may limit the rising ability of the starter, and make it longer until you can rise a loaf of bread with it, but it'll allow the yeast to grow and develop.

Once your starter, when fed flour can reliably double and hold it's rise, you can go down to feeding once a day, and once it has risen reliably for a couple of weeks, you can feed it, put it in the fridge immediately, and feed it every 5-7 days. Once it's been happy in the fridge for months running, you can let it go longer between feedings.

Yeast is a living thing. You can't stint on feeding it. You just can't or it'll die.

I know the science behind yeast growth. I actually used it as part of my introductory college biology course. The students had to design an experiment using yeast as the subjects. We went over all kinds of information/variables on yeast and its growth, as well as industrial uses. I had one student who did home brewing of beer with her husband. She really got into it and easily got an A+ on her assignment. What I don't have is a lot of first hand knowledge of kitchen management of a yeast colony. Kind of like you can study horticulture in a book, but that's not the same thing as actually working in a greenhouse and having to apply the science under multi-variable, frequently less than ideal or changing conditions.

I know what the brown liquid is, and I know why it is a bad sign. The question is can I improve my yeast stewardship . . .I fed it twice as much today as I took out, and also will start feeding more regularly. I fed it a mix of rice flour, rye flour and bread flour. Half whole grain and half bread flour.

I'm sorry. From your post it sounds like the tone of my previous came off badly and I didn't mean it that way. I apologize. I know you're an intelligent, capable and knowledgeable person, and literate in science, though I didn't know about your course, which sounds great! I wish I'd had instructors as creative as you.

I do have a lot of first hand experience because I was determined to do it the hard way (catching and feeding it from my hard red wheat), and went through all the bad bits (no yeast, mold, death, despair, etc.) rather than jumping right to the baking. :) I was doing a lot of frantic research along the way, and learned a lot. I don't know the science really well, but I know starters. I currently keep three: whole wheat, white, and "French", which is a low hydration, 5%ww. They each need different amounts of attention.

Tip: Once your starter is well established, never give up on it if it's cold and/or dry. Reviving a starter is much easier than catching a new one, and it can often be nursed back to health with a few feedings.

Feeding twice as much as your discard won't hurt, but the yeast may be a little overwhelmed by the largess, and might snooze for awhile before you see a lot of bubbles. If that happens, let it go longer before the next feeding so it has a chance to chomp through it and reproduce. Otherwise, you could dilute the colony. Once you have plenty of bubbles, or 24-36 hours, it's okay to feed again.

I hope the feast makes it happy. :)

Ipink... our house runs about 66. I keep my starter under a stocking cap, next to the computer router lol he seems pretty happy there. Science isn’t my strong suite, but it’s working! I using the Cook’s Illustrated mini starter.I posted the link above. It takes a lot less flour. I’m following directions and so far so good! I think it’s strong enough to leaven bread. He’s passes the float test! Now I just need to summon the courage to bake a loaf!!!

Plllog, I think your got this backwards: "Using volume measures, close enough is one measure of flour to two measures of water."

Flour is lighter than water - I generally figure about 4.2 ounces of flour to a cup though I've seen some sites that say 4.4 ounces. King Arthur says 4.25 ounces. So using volume measures to get approximately equal weights it would be two measures of flour to one measure of water. E.g. 2 cups of flour equals a bit more than 8 ounces and 1 cup of water is 8 ounces.

Pink, 1/2 cup flour to 6 tablespoons of water is about 2.1 ounces of flour to 3 ounces of water so it isn't surprising that your starter is on the soupy side. With it that wet it is hard for the starter to hold the air bubbles in so the behavior isn't surprising. 4 tablespoons (a quarter cup) of water would be closer to equal weights.

I've also found that my starter gets sloppy if I feed too little compared to the amount of old starter. I think what is happening is that the gluten in the old starter has been broken down and there isn't enough being added by the new flour. So now I discard a bit more aggressively so that the new flour weight is between equal and twice as much as the weight of the old starter.

Thanks, Cloud Swift. I wasn't completely awake--I'd thought I'd checked my typing and still didn't notice. I've edited the post and it should be right now. :) Weight is so much easier! But close enough is close enough. :) Agreed about the rest of your post too.

While the general rule is to feed with an equal combined flour and water to the amount of kept starter, until you're increasing to make a preferment for your bread, I like my starter a little tighter. I still do feed the same weight as the starter, but instead of feeding 100g starter with 50g flour and 50g water, for whole wheat I feed 90g starter 50g flour and 40g water (80% hydration). For white, I do 75% hydration. The French starter is for Leader's recipes, and is 45% hydration by design. It's like working with clay. :) It was hard enough to get to the right balance, though, so I keep it handy. It's so dry it rarely needs to be fed.

Oh my. While biology is a sort of "gut" thing for me, math is not my strong suit. I think I have math dyslexia. Plus an aversion to getting out my kitchen scale . . . I know, I am a pip.

I'm almost tempted to try my starter out now on bread, it's a fairly large quantity. Like you said, i could always nudge it along with a little powdered yeast, I still have some . . . I was planning on waiting for the weekend, we have lots of rain coming so I can't work in the garden.

I made sourdough discard scones today, they were not good. I think it was the recipe, not the discard's fault. Too wet. I like the more traditional flour, butter, dab of milk or buttermilk type of recipe, sans eggs or other liquids. This one had an egg, starter, yogurt, cider, orange juice, everything but the kitchen sink. They are kind of like a doughy cake. Not bad, but not my kind of scone.

I was thinking about you while kneading my (commercial yeast) pizza dough tonight. I understand the temptation to try the starter, but I can guarantee it's not ready, and I worry about your baking issues. You can use your discard for bread, for sure, and feed it to make a levain, and all of that, but if you wait for it to rise, it might be very sour, and it might not have the legs to maintain the rise. If you put a whole teaspoon of yeast in it, you can still do a long rise, and let the wild yeast do it's thing as well, but have a better chance at a really good outcome.

Not doing the bread til this weekend. Will test out before I use it. If it doesn't have the strength for a country loaf with a levain, I will use one of my recipes that uses an overnight poolish or spongish thing or whatever the technical term for it is. That recipe uses the sponge for more of a texture and taste element rather than the whole rise, which is done with commercial yeast. I imagine if you mix commercial yeast with your home grown stuff, the commercial yeast will out compete the natural yeast for the nutrients and you won't get much of the rise from your home grown stuff. Luckily I am just wanting to master sourdough bread for the sake of acquiring the skill since I like that style of bread so much and it is expensive to buy in the store and rare to find around where I live. Social isolation gives me the time to do it, I do not need to bake bread for survival thank God . . .

Yes to all of that. :) Good plan.

Just keep in mind that it's a slow process that will progress in its own time, that baking (given the established principles) is art, not science, and you'll be fine.

I look forward to your results!

I made sourdough "discard" pizza crust. https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-pizza-crust-recipe

One of my better pizzas but I attribute that to parbaking the crust, which I should have been doing from the start. It was the thinnest crust i have ever made, but I like thin crust. Good flavor too, but very little rise came from the discard, which I let ferment for a few hours before using it. It is more like a sponge than an active yeast colony. I continue to feed every day, but not much in the way of growth in strength of my yeast community. It's holding at about "meh."

Try feeding twice a day until it doubles reliably in 8 hours and doesn't sink in 12.

Congrats on finding something you like for the discard!

Have you tried reducing the hydration? As I mentioned before, 6 tablespoons is a lot for a half cup of flour. By weight, that's almost 150% hydration. 4 tablespoons water to 1/2 cup flour would be almost 100% hydration.

How much starter are you adding that to? I've had starter act that way when I've retained too much old starter compared to the amount of new I'm feeding it.

Sooo....shortly before this current pandemic quarantine thing started, I started a starter. Just put equal volume of purified water and organic rye flakes and in about 36 hours I had bubbles.....so I began the discard feed routine and soon I had a starter going that doubled in about 8 hours.....but by then flour was very hard to get and I had committed to baking bread every day and giving it away, so I stashed the starter and the current jar of discard int he refrig and forgot about it for easily 3 weeks....likely longer, time flies during this quarantine and one day looks like another.
Last Sunday My grand daughter came over to visit....through the door or outside at a respectable distance and asked if I could spare some starter as she had a friend who wanted to try some. So. I dug out the jar,. and poured some into another fed it, fed what I had left and sent her home with the starter and directions to feed it again before bed and again in the morning and again after work when she would give it to her friend.......and I did the same for my jar and both are up and running. I stirrred the hooch back into the starter along with any dark stuff on top....sites I have read say it's fine and I found it to be so.
I have been using the discard as part of the volume in my "daily bread' and it adds to the flavor profile but I don't even think of asking it to provide leavening all by itself.
but tomorrow morning, I will make myself a mix with just the starter and no yeast and leave it on the counter to rise for about 18 hours and hope it will give me some loft.....then I will bake in my Enamel cast iron Dutch oven. I'll report back.
But what I have learned is that even a young and very neglected starter has live yeast if it doesn't smell rotten.....and if fed it will grow.
And For L Pink the reason you don't just add flour and water to increase the volume is the food in the starter is then very quickly used up.....as there are more yeasty-beasties to eat the carbs. So either increase what you feed your starter or discard and refrigerate the discard and feed what is left.

I have already changed up my variables. I'm feeding it once a day, and I have decreased the "hydration" of what I add to 4 TBLSP water to one half cup flour. And while I have discovered some interesting baking uses for flour and water slurry, or barely there poolish or whatever you want to call it. I'm still not growing a robust yeast colony. At some point I will have used up all my bread flour feeding this weak starter, and still not going well enough for bread. The only other variables left are 1. the water. I'm using Ice Mountain Spring Water which is what we drink. No chlorine but I don't know what else it might have in it that could impede yeast growth. 2. Temperature. Our house isn't above 65 most of the time. 3. The food. Maybe my flours are just not full of yeasts good enough to grow into a great starter. I've been feeding it rye, rice flour and unbleached all purpose plus bread flour. Today I fed it the last of my old white wheat flour, some rye and a smidge of rice flour. Nothing organic though, can't really get that and usually don't want to pay for it.

Spring water should be fine. That's what I use. Unless there's something weird in yours. The coolish temperature could mean longer to grow, but my hardy starter will rise in the fridge when newly fed. You don't need yeast in the flour if there's yeast in the starter. If the starter is bubbling and rising even a little, it's yeast and can grow and get stronger. Organic shouldn't make a difference, though if you have some flour with lingering pesticide, I suppose it's possible to kill it. My white starter has mostly had KA AP. I can't remember if it was organic or not.

I can send you some established starter, or you can send for Carl's.

A good strong starter takes weeks to establish. I think the once a day feeding might be the real problem. I went through a lot of flour establishing mine.

Weeks? Most of the tutorials I have read say two. I am ending 2.5 weeks, (the .5 is the every day feeding period) and I seem to be in stasis. No more "hootch" in the jar due to more frequent feedings, but no more bubbles or growth indicating yeast activity either. Some, but nothing to write home about. The starter does not rise at all, remains basically the same, I've been tracking it with a rubber band on the jar.

When you add the water first, does it bubble? You can add the water and wait a few minutes if it doesn't bubble right away. If it doesn't bubble at all, it's probably dead. Even a few bubbles that aren't from stirring in air are enough to show life. Otherwise, it's dead. But you have been feeding and it should still be alive.

Re timing, if I had to do it again, knowing now all about it, I'm sure I could catch a good colony quickly and be ready to bake in a couple of weeks. You did go through the hungry stage, however, with yours, and you can't really count that time in your weeks. I also went through some bad times my first time, but it came out fine in the end. The issue, I know, is the flour and the budget. That's why I've been suggesting getting a known starter. Once the yeast is well established and strong, you can feed once a day on the counter or once a week in the fridge, but while it's getting there, you really should feed twice a day.

You can go with a smaller starter like Janice. Instead of 100g, for instance, you could go 30g, or even less, to conserve flour. Once it's established, you can build it back up. Or do a search and buy some flour.

It's not dead, it's just not growing all that well. I should probably get some good starter material from somewhere. Maybe some organic vinegar or something like that added. I think my AP flour from the store didn't really have the kind of yeast community that is going to produce much interesting. Plus my sterilized home probably not so much in the air there either.

NO!!! So long as it's alive, don't give it competition!!! Part of what happens in the first week is the yeast fights the other microorganisms for dominance. Feed it more and it'll multiply more. You don't need to add more yeast. You need the yeast you have to make babies. If you think it's too sterile, take it for a walk outside.

I think I've solved the problem with my starter - the type of food it likes. I fed it the last of my graham flour yesterday and it took off! I have two jars, one was fed the graham flour and the other was fed my Gold Medal AP unbleached flour, and the jar with the AP flour just sat there as usual. Now if I can just find more of that graham flour, it was Bob's Red Mill. I don't normally use it in bread baking, just got it for a special recipe and I didn't like the recipe. But I do like the flavor so I might get some more. Right now I can't get one darn thing for baking at the store, no yeast, no flour other than AP.

Congratulations! The graham flour might also have more yeast in it. So good to hear you've got bubbling.