Alastair - glad to hear that, thanks! You can thin it out if you like, but I'm sure the rye is the reason it is thicker than others. It won't matter, and once you switch to all AP, it'll be looser.
“The other main difference is that this version is twice the scale of the original, since there was some evidence that maintaining it on too-small a scale could possibly risk over-diluting the developing culture with each refreshment.” - if I have a mature and healthy tiny starter, is there reason/benefit to scaling up now?
Rebekah: If you are baking with it, you're going to want to have it at a larger scale anyway, so it can't hurt. (Even my recent "loaf" recipe calls for 30g, and most other recipes call for much more, so why not scale up once you are storing it in the fridge?)
Yeah, I've run into all of these problems along the way and have done reasonably well eventually at solving them. Six months in, with a two month break in the fridge in June and July, mine is finally starting to hum along, though I have yet to bake actual bread with it. What's the rationale for 1/2 and 1/2 and weaning off the whole grain? It seems like the only way to keep my culture healthy is to do almost 80% rye flour and allow over 24 hours between refreshes on a 15g/15g/15g (or greater) starter.
Susan - the rationale is that a healthy starter _should_ do just fine on 100% white flour and a 50% inoculation rate, on a 12h feeding schedule, and all of the methods I describe involve just that. If yours takes 24h to triple in volume, it's not 100% mature, I'm sorry to say. I don't know why, unfortunately, especially since you've been at it for so long.
Yes, unfortunately, this is so. Now, we have a low ambient temperature, so my next variable is to see if I can heat up the microwave slightly before lights-out and tuck it in for the night in there (warning the family of course, but I do have some backup in the fridge for contingencies). It actually has been taking 24hr to show bubbles, and 48 hours to double, not triple, so I still have troubleshooting to do.
I started a quarantiny starter 1.0 on 9/15, feeding it 10/10/10. I started feeding it 2x/day about 7 days in. It rises nicely after feeding and seems pretty active. I tried baking with it on 9/28 and it was a colossal failure - the bread was heavy and flat like a giant hockey puck. I haven't tried again. Should I scale up to 20/20/20? I am almost out of the initial jar of "food" I mixed up when I started (50/50 Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat and King Arthur Flour Unbleached Bread Flour).
Val - Yes, I'd scale up to 20/20/20 and give it awhile still. Two weeks is very early to expect to bake bread with a new starter. Hopefully you'll be in better shape within another week or two.
Thanks! I'll scale up with the next feedings. I knew I was rushing it a little with trying that first loaf. As for doing the float test - should that be pre-feeding or at some point when it has increased in volume?
Following the NC State Rob Dunn lab 10/10/10 wild sourdough project I have had several failures using KAF. The latest is an organic rye which has matured over the eight weeks feeding twice a day. It made beautiful fig and walnut sourdough rye foccacia two weeks ago. My problem is after storing in the fridge a 10/20/20, it develops a fruity vinegar smell which is very pungent and doesn't rise. When I refresh at room temperature covered with a paper towel it does fine and recovers. When I use a loose lid, it gets the terrible off smell again. Too much anaerobic lactobacillus? Does the same thing when I try to switch to KAF AP. I tried feeding 10/15/15 and 10/20/20 but the same smell with AP flour.
Margie - I'm not sure what the story is here. I don't keep a rye starter, since I don't bake 100% rye breads often enough to warrant keeping one. I do think that a 100% rye starter will go south fairly quickly in the fridge, as will any whole grain one, because it's too nutritious. For refrigerated starter to survive long, it needs to enter near-dormancy, which is why I think that white flour ones do best there. It does sound like yours recovers once taken out of the fridge, which is good, though I can't quite explain why different lids cause it to behave differently (though I suspect it's just because the pungent gases accumulate—I'd bet they are there even with the paper towel). One thing to try is using less water, which will also slow it down. Try getting it back to health and then storing it using 10 starter / 20 flour / 10 water. Let me know if that works for you.
I had been storing my starter on top of my fridge, during the summer in Chicago too, and it did get really hot here for a while. The bakers hotline at KAF said that’s what they thought was causing the orange mold - the heat that is. But the next two times it was much cooler and I didn’t think temperature should be a problem.
My first starter, it happened at about 3-4 months maturity. My second starter, it happened around 3 weeks. And then my third was from a discard container and it happened within a week.
Maybe I’m not being clean enough? It’s just so annoying to see my starter turn with that thick lid of orange mold. :(
Just wanted to thank you again for your Quarantiny starter project. Not having to discard so much flour at a time gave me courage I needed to try it out, and now I am baking at least a loaf a week, and I just taught my 77-year-old dad how to bake sourdough and sent him home with a nice healthy offspring of my starter.
DeAnna, I'm in the same boat: I tried the Quarantiny starter because I didn't have to "waste" so much flour! Now baking sourdough almost weekly, and since Andrew's sourdough discard English Muffin loaf is one of my favorite things, even the discard is a delight! :)
I have to try that one! I mostly use my discard for making crackers with Trader Joe's Everything But the Bagel seasoning, but they get gobbled up quickly!
Oh! The English Muffin Bread is a revelation! (It uses a LOT of discard.) (I've made crackers too, but not with that topping, what a great suggestion, thank you!!
hello! i have a question.. is it okay to bake with a sourdough starter that already doubles in volume in under 5 hours (it did that on the 7th day), but doesn't smell sour or yeasty? it's on its 8th day today, by the way !! ~
Paulina - It's okay, yes, but you might not have the best results you can get with it this early on. (See my post called "Real Mature" for some details on what to look for.) But you need to test it out at some point. Good luck!
Hello! I created a starter using the method in Ken Forkish's book, which indicates that you have a bake-worthy starter after 5 days, which is clearly much shorter than the method described above. It also calls for a 1x a day feeding with 50g starter, 50g wheat flour, 200g white flour, 200g water, and storage on the counter. I'm way too new at this to understand whether both that and your approach would work or whether I should be modifying my current starter approach! Mine has been alive for about 12 days, being maintained on the aforementioned schedule. I've made a few levain breads, none of which have the coveted large holes but have a pretty good crumb. But I want to make sure that I'm doing the right maintenance for long term consistently good levain breads. Welcome any thoughts!
Hey! If the method worked, it worked! My approach is conservative, because I know that it CAN take a lot longer to get to the point where you can bake a nice loaf. That said, if your levain isn't doubling in <6h or tripling in around 12, then I wouldn't start cold storing it, no matter how well it bakes.
I just started a tiny starter based on your original instructions, and fed it for the first time today. I’d like to scale up to this 2.0 version, how would I do that?
In your original instructions, you say to transfer half the starter to a clean jar before refreshing it. Do you have to transfer to a clean jar before each feeding? Thanks!
Timothy - to scale up, just use the higher amounts with the next feeding, it's no big deal. I don't transfer to a clean jar before each feeding, but I do put it in a clean one _after_ each one.
How close should we follow the time interval for 12-hour feedings? I think I am ready to move to the 12 hour feeding schedule, but that puts me at a 1:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. feeding schedule. Ideally, I prefer to do feedings at 5:00
Looking for advice on the climax stage. With the 50:50 flour mix (all King Arthur products) during maturation, I got to the point of tripling in volume in 5 hours, and passing the float test. First attempt at transitioning to cold storage, I switched to all-purpose flour only and cut the percentage of starter to 50% (20:20:10 refreshment mix). By the third 12-hour refreshment, all activity ceased and I had to reintroduce whole wheat - 5 grams didn’t cut it so I took a step back and went back to 20:20:20 ratio of refreshing with 50:50 flour mix. Got back to tripling in volume in 5 hours and this time I slowly weaned it off whole wheat, decreasing whole wheat by 4 grams each time and increasing all purpose accordingly for 20:20:20 refreshments mixes over the course of a week. I got as low as 2 grams of whole wheat in the 20:20:20 mix with the same strong level of activity (tripling in volume in 5 hours). When I completely eliminated whole wheat and used only all purpose, activity slowed to minimal bubbles and very little rise by the third 12-hour refreshments. Any suggestions to help my little starter thrive on only all purpose for cold storage? I’ve been trying to transition to cold storage unsuccessfully for the last 3 weeks.
Andrew, is it OK to share other recipes when they are on-topic for comments? Sphex and I were mentioning crackers, and I have a recipe I've been enjoying, but I don't want to use your site in a way you didn't intend.
Hi, Mr. Janjigian. You and I talked on Twitter about this, but I wanted to give you an update on my current high-elevation starter attempt. My starter is currently doubling (or more than doubling) and in full deflation mode at or before the 8-hour mark. Should I wait until the 12-hour point and feed it then, so it's being refreshed twice a day, or should I feed it when I notice it's begun deflating (and thus feed it more than twice a day)? It still doesn't pass the float test, so I know it's not ready for baking yet.
Matthew - The answer is I'm not sure. If your starter is deflating at 8 hours, it sounds like it is fermenting pretty fast, float test or not. Which suggests feeding more often than 2x per day or slowing things down instead.
I'd be curious to know what happens when you a) try using 25% starter (4:4:1) instead of 50%, which will slow things down and (in a separate experiment), b) 75% water (4:3:2), which will stiffen the dough up enough to let it retain gases better. It may be that at high elevations a stiffer starter is called for, at least when it comes to gas retention. Maybe try both in parallel and then combine the two (75% water/ 25% starter, or 4:3:1) if both seem to help?
Here is a link to photos of the three versions of the starter 10.5 hours after their first full daily refreshes. (I took regular photos the first day, but because I screwed up and used lesser amounts--but the same ratio--for one of them, I fear that may be less helpful. But I can send you those if they would help.) I took side and top photos, so you could see both how much they grew and what the bubbles looked like after that time. Hopefully these will help you understand what the heck is going on, because I sure don't know. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DQCvb7uoO4WiRzAkv-AzeJRkosyynDLp?usp=sharing
Matthew - They all look reasonably "good" to me, but what I can't really tell is how ready they are for baking. I suspect that because of lower air pressure, they are expanding and collapsing earlier than they normally would. Have you considered trying to bake with one? I really don't know enough about how they should behave at high elevation to tell any other way.
maybe try the 75% hydration/25% levain one I just published (loaf classic). You can adjust the hydration or not, the slight difference won't matter that much. You can also divide everything in half to make a mini-loaf for testing.
Okay, I can start working on this today, and I expect to be able to get back to you tomorrow. I have two questions/comments:
(1) I'm planning to use the 100% (traditional) hydration starter for this, even though (as of last night) it still does not pass the float test. Should I try one of the other starters, too/instead? If so, what alterations do I need to make for the recipe? (Sorry if this should be obvious, but this is as deep in the sourdough weeds as I've ever gotten.)
(2) At my elevation (about 4,300 feet), I typically find that I need to slightly increase the liquid in most baking recipes to keep the final texture acceptably moist. Should I not do that here at all, and instead just follow the recipe as written? Again: I don't understand the ins and outs of sourdough science enough to know how this will affect things.
Thanks, and I will let you know what (if anything) happens.
In short: I got a loaf out of it! (I made half a recipe, which is why it looks so small.) I wasn't sure I would, though. The dough was extremely slack almost the whole time; as you can see in the pre-baking photo, it's almost a disc, and never held the ball shape for long. Even putting it in the oven, it was pretty flat. But it rose quite a bit and blossomed into an actual, edible loaf of bread. Which is, obviously, a huge plus. This is as far as I've ever gotten with sourdough. I guess the third time really is the charm.
That said, I'm guessing the bread isn't quite all it could be. As you can hopefully see in the cross-section photo, the loaf is a little dense and gummy, which I'm guessing isn't quite right. And its sourdough flavor is on the faint side; to be honest, I think the Jim Lahey no-knead bread recipe (which I'm able to make at higher elevations with almost no changes whatsoever) comes out tasting more sour.
If you have any further comments or suggestions based on this, I would love to hear them. This, by the way, was made using your regular 1:1:1 starter recipe, not the 4:4:1 or 4:3:2 recipes you also suggested. I am still maintaining those starters for now, but am hoping at some point very soon, it won't be necessary.
Thanks for any additional help or insight you can provide.
How Andrew, you mentioned a smaller scale on your video wiith WBUR, that you said was available on Amazon. Can you please send me a link to it. I am going to try your starter recipe.
I am on day 4 of the final step (Climax). After reducing the amount of starter and using KA AP flour I am not seeing a lot of rise in the jar, not doubled anyway. You mentioned amending with a WW which I did on day 3 but haven't noticed much improvement. Are you saying to add 2 tsp. WW in addition to the 20 gr AP or to replace 2 tsp AP with the WW?
I still have starter in the Maturation stage (as a backup) and it has no problem doubling in 12 hours.
yes, just add it, no need to adjust anything else. I don't know what else to recommend other than to keep at it. And maybe make sure that you are setting it somewhere in the 75-80F range, which will definitely give the best results.
Alastair - glad to hear that, thanks! You can thin it out if you like, but I'm sure the rye is the reason it is thicker than others. It won't matter, and once you switch to all AP, it'll be looser.
Thanks mate, appreciate the response!
“The other main difference is that this version is twice the scale of the original, since there was some evidence that maintaining it on too-small a scale could possibly risk over-diluting the developing culture with each refreshment.” - if I have a mature and healthy tiny starter, is there reason/benefit to scaling up now?
Rebekah: If you are baking with it, you're going to want to have it at a larger scale anyway, so it can't hurt. (Even my recent "loaf" recipe calls for 30g, and most other recipes call for much more, so why not scale up once you are storing it in the fridge?)
Thanks!
Yeah, I've run into all of these problems along the way and have done reasonably well eventually at solving them. Six months in, with a two month break in the fridge in June and July, mine is finally starting to hum along, though I have yet to bake actual bread with it. What's the rationale for 1/2 and 1/2 and weaning off the whole grain? It seems like the only way to keep my culture healthy is to do almost 80% rye flour and allow over 24 hours between refreshes on a 15g/15g/15g (or greater) starter.
Susan - the rationale is that a healthy starter _should_ do just fine on 100% white flour and a 50% inoculation rate, on a 12h feeding schedule, and all of the methods I describe involve just that. If yours takes 24h to triple in volume, it's not 100% mature, I'm sorry to say. I don't know why, unfortunately, especially since you've been at it for so long.
Yes, unfortunately, this is so. Now, we have a low ambient temperature, so my next variable is to see if I can heat up the microwave slightly before lights-out and tuck it in for the night in there (warning the family of course, but I do have some backup in the fridge for contingencies). It actually has been taking 24hr to show bubbles, and 48 hours to double, not triple, so I still have troubleshooting to do.
Susan - Really sorry it is taking you so long. Let me know how it goes, hopefully we can sort out why.
I started a quarantiny starter 1.0 on 9/15, feeding it 10/10/10. I started feeding it 2x/day about 7 days in. It rises nicely after feeding and seems pretty active. I tried baking with it on 9/28 and it was a colossal failure - the bread was heavy and flat like a giant hockey puck. I haven't tried again. Should I scale up to 20/20/20? I am almost out of the initial jar of "food" I mixed up when I started (50/50 Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat and King Arthur Flour Unbleached Bread Flour).
Val - Yes, I'd scale up to 20/20/20 and give it awhile still. Two weeks is very early to expect to bake bread with a new starter. Hopefully you'll be in better shape within another week or two.
Thanks! I'll scale up with the next feedings. I knew I was rushing it a little with trying that first loaf. As for doing the float test - should that be pre-feeding or at some point when it has increased in volume?
always when it's at maximum volume, it's the gasses that allow it to float.
That makes perfect sense, but I find this whole process slightly mystifying! Thanks again!
Following the NC State Rob Dunn lab 10/10/10 wild sourdough project I have had several failures using KAF. The latest is an organic rye which has matured over the eight weeks feeding twice a day. It made beautiful fig and walnut sourdough rye foccacia two weeks ago. My problem is after storing in the fridge a 10/20/20, it develops a fruity vinegar smell which is very pungent and doesn't rise. When I refresh at room temperature covered with a paper towel it does fine and recovers. When I use a loose lid, it gets the terrible off smell again. Too much anaerobic lactobacillus? Does the same thing when I try to switch to KAF AP. I tried feeding 10/15/15 and 10/20/20 but the same smell with AP flour.
Margie - I'm not sure what the story is here. I don't keep a rye starter, since I don't bake 100% rye breads often enough to warrant keeping one. I do think that a 100% rye starter will go south fairly quickly in the fridge, as will any whole grain one, because it's too nutritious. For refrigerated starter to survive long, it needs to enter near-dormancy, which is why I think that white flour ones do best there. It does sound like yours recovers once taken out of the fridge, which is good, though I can't quite explain why different lids cause it to behave differently (though I suspect it's just because the pungent gases accumulate—I'd bet they are there even with the paper towel). One thing to try is using less water, which will also slow it down. Try getting it back to health and then storing it using 10 starter / 20 flour / 10 water. Let me know if that works for you.
I keep getting orange mold on top of my starter- any idea where it’s coming from or what I’m doing wrong?
Teresa - No idea! Where and when is it happening?
I had been storing my starter on top of my fridge, during the summer in Chicago too, and it did get really hot here for a while. The bakers hotline at KAF said that’s what they thought was causing the orange mold - the heat that is. But the next two times it was much cooler and I didn’t think temperature should be a problem.
My first starter, it happened at about 3-4 months maturity. My second starter, it happened around 3 weeks. And then my third was from a discard container and it happened within a week.
Maybe I’m not being clean enough? It’s just so annoying to see my starter turn with that thick lid of orange mold. :(
Just wanted to thank you again for your Quarantiny starter project. Not having to discard so much flour at a time gave me courage I needed to try it out, and now I am baking at least a loaf a week, and I just taught my 77-year-old dad how to bake sourdough and sent him home with a nice healthy offspring of my starter.
DeAnna, I'm in the same boat: I tried the Quarantiny starter because I didn't have to "waste" so much flour! Now baking sourdough almost weekly, and since Andrew's sourdough discard English Muffin loaf is one of my favorite things, even the discard is a delight! :)
I have to try that one! I mostly use my discard for making crackers with Trader Joe's Everything But the Bagel seasoning, but they get gobbled up quickly!
Oh! The English Muffin Bread is a revelation! (It uses a LOT of discard.) (I've made crackers too, but not with that topping, what a great suggestion, thank you!!
hello! i have a question.. is it okay to bake with a sourdough starter that already doubles in volume in under 5 hours (it did that on the 7th day), but doesn't smell sour or yeasty? it's on its 8th day today, by the way !! ~
i used this method by the way !! but only with unbleached bread flour because that's the only flour we have where i'm from ..
Paulina - It's okay, yes, but you might not have the best results you can get with it this early on. (See my post called "Real Mature" for some details on what to look for.) But you need to test it out at some point. Good luck!
Hello! I created a starter using the method in Ken Forkish's book, which indicates that you have a bake-worthy starter after 5 days, which is clearly much shorter than the method described above. It also calls for a 1x a day feeding with 50g starter, 50g wheat flour, 200g white flour, 200g water, and storage on the counter. I'm way too new at this to understand whether both that and your approach would work or whether I should be modifying my current starter approach! Mine has been alive for about 12 days, being maintained on the aforementioned schedule. I've made a few levain breads, none of which have the coveted large holes but have a pretty good crumb. But I want to make sure that I'm doing the right maintenance for long term consistently good levain breads. Welcome any thoughts!
Hey! If the method worked, it worked! My approach is conservative, because I know that it CAN take a lot longer to get to the point where you can bake a nice loaf. That said, if your levain isn't doubling in <6h or tripling in around 12, then I wouldn't start cold storing it, no matter how well it bakes.
Hi Andrew,
I just started a tiny starter based on your original instructions, and fed it for the first time today. I’d like to scale up to this 2.0 version, how would I do that?
In your original instructions, you say to transfer half the starter to a clean jar before refreshing it. Do you have to transfer to a clean jar before each feeding? Thanks!
Timothy - to scale up, just use the higher amounts with the next feeding, it's no big deal. I don't transfer to a clean jar before each feeding, but I do put it in a clean one _after_ each one.
Thank you for the quick reply Andrew! Really appreciate it.
How close should we follow the time interval for 12-hour feedings? I think I am ready to move to the 12 hour feeding schedule, but that puts me at a 1:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. feeding schedule. Ideally, I prefer to do feedings at 5:00
You can always shift to whatever 12/12 schedule want by holding off a refreshment to get you there.
Looking for advice on the climax stage. With the 50:50 flour mix (all King Arthur products) during maturation, I got to the point of tripling in volume in 5 hours, and passing the float test. First attempt at transitioning to cold storage, I switched to all-purpose flour only and cut the percentage of starter to 50% (20:20:10 refreshment mix). By the third 12-hour refreshment, all activity ceased and I had to reintroduce whole wheat - 5 grams didn’t cut it so I took a step back and went back to 20:20:20 ratio of refreshing with 50:50 flour mix. Got back to tripling in volume in 5 hours and this time I slowly weaned it off whole wheat, decreasing whole wheat by 4 grams each time and increasing all purpose accordingly for 20:20:20 refreshments mixes over the course of a week. I got as low as 2 grams of whole wheat in the 20:20:20 mix with the same strong level of activity (tripling in volume in 5 hours). When I completely eliminated whole wheat and used only all purpose, activity slowed to minimal bubbles and very little rise by the third 12-hour refreshments. Any suggestions to help my little starter thrive on only all purpose for cold storage? I’ve been trying to transition to cold storage unsuccessfully for the last 3 weeks.
Andrew, is it OK to share other recipes when they are on-topic for comments? Sphex and I were mentioning crackers, and I have a recipe I've been enjoying, but I don't want to use your site in a way you didn't intend.
sure, I don't mind at all. This isn't a closed universe!
Hi, Mr. Janjigian. You and I talked on Twitter about this, but I wanted to give you an update on my current high-elevation starter attempt. My starter is currently doubling (or more than doubling) and in full deflation mode at or before the 8-hour mark. Should I wait until the 12-hour point and feed it then, so it's being refreshed twice a day, or should I feed it when I notice it's begun deflating (and thus feed it more than twice a day)? It still doesn't pass the float test, so I know it's not ready for baking yet.
Matthew - The answer is I'm not sure. If your starter is deflating at 8 hours, it sounds like it is fermenting pretty fast, float test or not. Which suggests feeding more often than 2x per day or slowing things down instead.
I'd be curious to know what happens when you a) try using 25% starter (4:4:1) instead of 50%, which will slow things down and (in a separate experiment), b) 75% water (4:3:2), which will stiffen the dough up enough to let it retain gases better. It may be that at high elevations a stiffer starter is called for, at least when it comes to gas retention. Maybe try both in parallel and then combine the two (75% water/ 25% starter, or 4:3:1) if both seem to help?
Okay, I will try that. It will take me a couple of days, but I will do it and get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks!
Here is a link to photos of the three versions of the starter 10.5 hours after their first full daily refreshes. (I took regular photos the first day, but because I screwed up and used lesser amounts--but the same ratio--for one of them, I fear that may be less helpful. But I can send you those if they would help.) I took side and top photos, so you could see both how much they grew and what the bubbles looked like after that time. Hopefully these will help you understand what the heck is going on, because I sure don't know. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DQCvb7uoO4WiRzAkv-AzeJRkosyynDLp?usp=sharing
Matthew - They all look reasonably "good" to me, but what I can't really tell is how ready they are for baking. I suspect that because of lower air pressure, they are expanding and collapsing earlier than they normally would. Have you considered trying to bake with one? I really don't know enough about how they should behave at high elevation to tell any other way.
I haven't yet, no. I can... Do you have any suggestions as far as that's concerned? Especially for the starters with 25% starter and 75% water?
maybe try the 75% hydration/25% levain one I just published (loaf classic). You can adjust the hydration or not, the slight difference won't matter that much. You can also divide everything in half to make a mini-loaf for testing.
Okay, I can start working on this today, and I expect to be able to get back to you tomorrow. I have two questions/comments:
(1) I'm planning to use the 100% (traditional) hydration starter for this, even though (as of last night) it still does not pass the float test. Should I try one of the other starters, too/instead? If so, what alterations do I need to make for the recipe? (Sorry if this should be obvious, but this is as deep in the sourdough weeds as I've ever gotten.)
(2) At my elevation (about 4,300 feet), I typically find that I need to slightly increase the liquid in most baking recipes to keep the final texture acceptably moist. Should I not do that here at all, and instead just follow the recipe as written? Again: I don't understand the ins and outs of sourdough science enough to know how this will affect things.
Thanks, and I will let you know what (if anything) happens.
So I tried the Loaf Classic. Here are photos of the results: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tmFPLidedfh3ojqd6vXeyk0QdnQ-3aa0?usp=sharing
In short: I got a loaf out of it! (I made half a recipe, which is why it looks so small.) I wasn't sure I would, though. The dough was extremely slack almost the whole time; as you can see in the pre-baking photo, it's almost a disc, and never held the ball shape for long. Even putting it in the oven, it was pretty flat. But it rose quite a bit and blossomed into an actual, edible loaf of bread. Which is, obviously, a huge plus. This is as far as I've ever gotten with sourdough. I guess the third time really is the charm.
That said, I'm guessing the bread isn't quite all it could be. As you can hopefully see in the cross-section photo, the loaf is a little dense and gummy, which I'm guessing isn't quite right. And its sourdough flavor is on the faint side; to be honest, I think the Jim Lahey no-knead bread recipe (which I'm able to make at higher elevations with almost no changes whatsoever) comes out tasting more sour.
If you have any further comments or suggestions based on this, I would love to hear them. This, by the way, was made using your regular 1:1:1 starter recipe, not the 4:4:1 or 4:3:2 recipes you also suggested. I am still maintaining those starters for now, but am hoping at some point very soon, it won't be necessary.
Thanks for any additional help or insight you can provide.
How Andrew, you mentioned a smaller scale on your video wiith WBUR, that you said was available on Amazon. Can you please send me a link to it. I am going to try your starter recipe.
Jakki - please see this equipment list, it's on there: https://wordloaf.substack.com/p/equipmentguide
I am on day 4 of the final step (Climax). After reducing the amount of starter and using KA AP flour I am not seeing a lot of rise in the jar, not doubled anyway. You mentioned amending with a WW which I did on day 3 but haven't noticed much improvement. Are you saying to add 2 tsp. WW in addition to the 20 gr AP or to replace 2 tsp AP with the WW?
I still have starter in the Maturation stage (as a backup) and it has no problem doubling in 12 hours.
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
yes, just add it, no need to adjust anything else. I don't know what else to recommend other than to keep at it. And maybe make sure that you are setting it somewhere in the 75-80F range, which will definitely give the best results.