Sour dough from last week.
Using this no-kneed recipe and a dutch oven.
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My starter, two hours after feeding. I notice that it seems mealy and coarse compared to other’s bubble-goo. Maybe whole wheat needs more water?
When I took mine out of the fridge, I let it sit overnight before feeding it. Then it took 4 hours after feeding to get all effervescent again.
More on ferments, including sourdough: https://cals.ncsu.edu/applied-ecology/news/fermentology-mini-seminars/
Paul is drying nicely:
One more day should do it. Spreading thin is key. Once dry, it peels off the parchment in nice big flakes.
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You may want a tad more water. ½ cup of WW and ¼ cup of water is pretty dry. Esp with old WW. I find it takes a few more Tablespoons of water when I bake with it.
Also, it is possible that over time the good yeast in your flour were vastly outnumbered by useless for your purposes yeast. Do you have any fresh-ish AP or bread flour?
I know folks say Whole Wheat is great or Rye – but I find the pure energy of white flour to work well for starter and never feed it with anything but.
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I know I mentioned the combo cooker above, but I personally use this:
My local sur la table had a black one some years back that they sold to me for cheap. I don’t proof the loaf in it-I heat the cloche on top of a pizza stone for an hour at about 550 then I bake for 12 minutes covered at 500 and 13-15 uncovered at 450. I use coarse cornmeal to prevent sticking to the cloche. It’s about a 2 pound loaf.
This is from a week or two back.
100% whole wheat, fresh milled (well fresh milled and kept in the freezer), about 70% hydration. Overnight autolyse, the whole nine.
The number one tip I can give in this world for baking higher hydration hearth loaves is RICE FLOUR. On the loaf when proofing it. Say goodbye to dough stuck to bannetons…!
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This is my starter and some rolls that I made today with it. I fed it about two hours ago and it is going now back into the fridge until I need it again. I started it two weeks ago with a few raisins, all-purpose flour, and warm filtered water (~115ºF). The first few days I fed it every day with more flour and warm water, and eventually I moved it to the fridge. By now it doubles in a couple of hours after I warm the jar in a bath of warm water and I feed it. This is the first bread that I have made with it. It looks more liquid than yours, and very bubbly.
ETA: For full disclosure, I had been baking with store-bought dry yeast in this kitchen for the last few weeks, so perhaps some of that yeast was in the air when I made the starter and helped to get it going. The reason why I moved to using the starter is because I couldn’t find yeast at the stores anymore, and I was afraid that I would run out of it.
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Getting into bread, but haven’t jumped to sourdough yet. We use a no-knead wet dough that sits in the fridge for up to two weeks and by the end has definitely developed some of the sourdough notes you expect. Been using a baking stone, going to make the hop to dutch oven for the rest of this batch. The nice thing about this method (https://artisanbreadinfive.com/) is that you end up with a ton of dough and can bake up just a bit at a time, instead of huge loaves that go stale quickly without bread softeners/etc.
For folks in the Seattle area - Cairn Springs is a mill in Burlington that sells directly to the public right now, in 50 pound increments at basically a buck a pound. About an hour or so drive from Seattle, but they’ll load it into your car for you, so fairly low risk for pandemic stuff. I guess they make some of the flour for Macrina bakery? Got an order to pick up and distribute to friends and family on Friday.
Been to the grocers 4 times since this all started, and I’ve never seen a single bag of wheat flour available, so happy to see these folks still running.
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Your starter likely needs a little more moisture, and some more patience. Don’t overwhelm the yeast – let it eat what you’ve fed it and let it grow a bit. The general idea is to let the good yeasts take over so there’s not enough medium for molds to get established.
When we started Paul, I think it took about 3 or 4 warm days of doing nothing after the initial mix of ingredients. He sat in a jar with a coffee filter rubber-banded over the top unattended until we saw bubbling and foaming.
I think I’ve got a sense here…
Are you adding only? At this point, you seem to have an astonishingly large amount of starter (based on the spoon as reference point).
You want to take 5 or 10 grams of the starter and put it in a clean container and add equal weights of flour and water (maybe 30 grams each). You can use the old starter to make crackers or crumpets, things like that. You don’t actually have to throw it out.
But you want your little yeasties to have new yummy food, and if they’ve got to travel through a bucketful of old flour/water to find the new particles of flour, it’s much harder for them.
Do that a couple of times, and you’ll end up with a smaller but much stronger starter which you can then take 5-10 grams from to start a loaf and keep the rest in the fridge for next time.
I have been tossing a lot with each feeding. Keep 1/2 cup, add 1 cup flour, 1/2 water.
This morning I added 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup water after tossing old stuff.
Man, if I used up all my tossed starter I’d be more carb than man.
Per @jlw I’m going to switch to white flour tonight. Maybe harvest for a loaf tomorrow.
I don’t think my starter is failed, maybe just a bit stiff. I’ll be adding more water.
I may be adding it to bread dough at the wrong time, not getting my “rise” right, etc.
I suggested adding something like 30 grams each of flour and water. You’re adding about 65 grams of flour (1/2 cup dry measure) and just under 120 grams of water (1/2 cup wet measure). That’s too much…what a waste!
And if you’re going to change up your flour tonight, maybe try half white and half rye. See how that works for you. You’ll get the advantages of both flours.
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Thx, I did end up (mostly) following that recipe. The dough was too amorphous and I couldn’t arrange it into a ball the way he did. I proofed it right in the parchment paper (which I crumpled up first – thx to whoever suggested that). Also used newer whole wheat than I’d been using. The result:
I’d say it’s my best result yet, although I think the first two (pancaked) loaves were more sour than this one.
Also, something happened to it overnight. I put the whole loaf out to cool before bed, and when I woke up to check it looked like this:
Placing the cookie sheet under the Dutch oven did indeed help reduce browning on the bottom.
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Do you live with other people? If not, then cue the Twilight Zone theme, but if you do, there’s a perfectly cromulent explanation for that!
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I find shaping and building tension to be the absolute hardest part of baking hearth loaves, especially higher hydration and whole wheat. It’s practice and feel… and then more practice. If you can, stick to the same recipe, like the exact same, and just bake that for at least a few months. It’ll get better, you’ll have a better feel for the dough, and what you learn from doing that will translate to any recipe you move to in the future.
Looks great anyway!
One other technique I use has to do with the fact that I like really high quality flour. But I don’t like to waste it feeding my starter. So, if I’m baking once or twice a week, I build enough starter the night before for my loaf plus a little extra. So if I’m putting 6.8 oz of starter in my loaf, I’ll build about 9.5 or 10 oz of starter. Then I reserve the leftovers in the fridge and just use an ounce or so from that (depending on how fast I need my build to be ready) when making my next build. This works if you’re baking frequently, and once the starter is established. And if you go more than a week, you can always feed your starter once or twice before starting the next build. Saves a heck of a lot of flour.
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The recipe I used to start my starter specified 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup water per feeding! Of course, the recipe came from King Arthur Flour, which kind of makes sense if you’re in the business of selling lots of flour!
I could easily go down to a big spoonfull of flour and another of water for regular feedings, just adding a bit more when I want to harvest starter for a loaf.
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