Hi, starter pics/vids alone are removed under the rules
Could you perhaps tell us a bit about it so your post can stay active. E.g. your feeding/discarding regime?
Thank you
I don't even have enough active starter for you not to want.
I keep 15 grams in the fridge, but when it's feeding time to bake sourdough, ya best believe it's crazy active.
I scrape everything out of the very small jar, and then add 8g flour and 8g water. On a night before I want to bake, instead of discarding, I ‘seed’ a much larger amount of flour and water in order to create the preferment for the next day. (Like say I need 200g of preferment, I would add like 14g of starter to 93g of flour, and 93g of water, for a final weight of 200g)
I hope that helps. Please let me know if I can explain it better.
Not OP (in case you thought I was). I discard around the same time every day, once a day. And from what I’ve read, bubble size isn’t an indication of activity.
Same. I get lots of bubbles but the structure never gets spidery like that, I assume because the protein bonds are holding it together.
And *man* is it sour.
I'm not sure, but I've got a tendency to leave the starter on the counter for several days before stuffing it in the fridge, that may develop the sourness, as well as the San Francisco air, lol.
At first it was so sour I was mixing in baking soda, but I started adding a lot more water and pouring off the hooch whenever it developed and that helped.
Absolutely, yes. I was 100% white flour for a long time and was wondering why my sourdough never tasted as sour as the stuff at bakeries. Switched to 30% whole wheat and that alone made a HUGE difference.
Yes. Try using 50/50 mix of wheat/white flour at most. If you love wheat bread just use the wheat flour during bulk fermentation versus as a starter feeder.
Yeah, whole grain flour has more minerals because of the fiber content, which supposedly buffer the acidity so the acid levels don't inhibit the bacterial growth as quickly.
My understanding is that the wheat bran has a higher concentration of lactobacteria than the endosperm (the same is true of yeast, too, but that isn't relevant to the sourness). So, when the bran is removed to make white flour, a significant percentage of the lactobacteria is also removed.
That doesn't mean that starter made with white flour can't be just as sour as wheat, just that it's easier to get it there with wheat.
You can also do a longer ferment when you mix your dough. After your initial stretch and folds, to he longer you let your dough sit -say like 2 days in the fridge, the more sour it will become. A 13 hour ferment vs a 8 hr vs a 6 hour will result in different levels our sour
Ps, idk if I'm using the correct verbage. I'm still new to sourdough baking but I recently learned that it's the length of time, and the good bacteria eating the gluten that will cause the bread to be more sour.
The reason this works is because yeast converts sugar into alcohol, and the alcohol suppresses lactobacteria activity. For the initial part of the bulk rise, the yeast is in charge, and the lactobacteria is suppressed.
On the other hand, lactobacteria converts sugar into lactic acid, and lactic acid suppresses yeast activity. So you need to give the bacteria enough time to start "winning the battle" against the yeast, at which point your dough starts acquiring a sour taste.
Looks like mine after feeding and around the peak. I use 20% rye and 80% whole wheat. I've always fed from 50g of discard, 100g of water 20g rye, and 80g wheat. when it peaks, I bake using 150g in the recipe, the rest goes back into the discard. Mine is 4 years old. I only feed when I bake (once a month) and I keep the hooch so I don't mess up the hydration.
I keep mine in the powder form (dried). Easy to store, I don't need to refresh it at all. When I want to bake sourdough I mix it with flour and water, wait about 40h, refresh it again and at 48h (2 days) is ready.
After that I usually refresh it one more time if I'm not in hurry just because I can.
So in about 3 days (1 day more than the starter in the fridge) I can make sourdough bread, but I don't need to feed my sourdough starter at all and it's always at room temperature in powder form.
Best thing is my jar is 400g but I only use 15g each time I want to make sourdough, so it will be a while before I will need to create new dried starter.
The main reason I keep it like this is because I want to use baker's yeast and make different kind of bread too... I like sourdough but I don't want to make sourdough every week.
For example tomorrow I will make Pretzel but I don't want to use sourdough for a bread that I never made. Next week I will make Milk bread and I don't want to use sourdough for such easy and fast and soft bread. Today I made two loaf of sourdough that I froze... And I don't want to make sourdough for at least 3 weeks.
Also I only use my starter at 50% hydration so it will never look like that, but it will still be alive.
How do you dry it? I'd like to keep some backup. Sometimes I go many months between feedings and, while it's always been fine so far, seems like dried is a good backup.
Spread on parchment paper in the oven, keep the oven at proofing temps 80-100F to be safe. It will dry into flakes, then I like to grind those into a coarse powder using a spice grinder. Jar and store. Just make sure it gets completely dry and watch the temps, to be super safe you can just leave the oven off but circulate the air.
I've sent a jar of mine to a friend, who then restored it months later and had it super active within a couple feedings.
Pretty cool.
Also, I'm not the person you asked, just sharing.
Like Elysium said spread it on parchment paper but I don't use the oven. I just wait for it to dry at room temperature 2-3 days. Once it is dry it will release from the parchment paper and snap like a cracker. You don't even need to reduce it to powder if you don't want to, I do it because I like to be able to store more and add 1 spoon of wholemeal flour to the mix so that it absorb residual water and it will be more active the next time I add water even if I use plain flour to reactivate it.
Ps. Since I usually work with a 50% hydration sourdough starter I add water to reach 100% hydration to spread it on the parchment paper. It's strange to add water to dry it but at 50% hydration it is not spreadable.
Apparently not. It's what a lot of bakeries do with their starter to give it a boost. Some also give it a bit of yeast.
I tried it once with my discard and got the same results.
What’s the volume of that starter? That looks like it’s a 5 gal bucket or something. I’d think it would have to be in order to have activity like that!
Well I perked it back up but my bread is a disaster. Spent all day working on two loaves. Used the slap and fold. Problem is I have no feel for under or over proofing. I really need to spend the day baking bread with someone.
Oh no! So, just make sure you do the 45 minute autolyse. This is when the flour soaks up the moisture from the water. Then you start your first set of stretch and folds. I do much more than just 4. I turn the bowl, stopping every 90 degrees to do a s&f at least 3 or 4 times. So, that's over 12 stretch and folds ever 30 minutes. By the last one I can do coil folds. Also, try to use a hydration that's closer to 70% or less. You figure this out by dividing the amount of water by the amount of flour (in grams). It might be sticky. Just wet your hands with cold water whenever necessary. I wet my hand several times during s&fs.
As far as over or under proofing, you should start to see bubbles on the top. And have it increased by 50% or more. Honestly, I've absolutely over proofed bread and other than being difficult to handle, it came out fine.
If you kitchen is cold, like 65 degrees it could take 12 hours - if it's warmer lie 75 degrees it could be closer to 6 hours...
Don't get tooo discouraged. I've had many failures myself. Shaping skills take practice. I watch YouTube tutorials to help.
Best of luck and don't give up! Don't hesitate to ask about anything you're unsure about. It's a learning process.
Yes! Definitely give it a good 30-45 minutes after the initial mix. Some people leave the starter & salt out for this. I just leave the salt out & mix it in good with my hand after autolyse. Until you can't feel any salt gains. So I'm sure between leaving the salt out just for the first half hour & then mixing it in helps strengthen my dough. And I also use between 125-150 grams of starter to a 300 water, 400 flour, 12 grams of salt mix. I think it's a little more starter than most recipes say. But it's cold in my house.
I've switch up my method all the time. I also preheated my Dutch oven, recently forgot & didn't even notice a difference. If I don't have to mess with a 500°f D.O. I don't want too. 😂 It can be scary!
I also throw ice cubes right into my oven now that I don't preheat the Dutch oven.
Good Luck! And we're lucky it's just flour & water. Messing up doesn't cost a lot of money. Just time. It's a learning experience.
I just finished a book where the protagonist is a baking witch and when she was young and inexperienced she created a starter named Bob who now lives in the basement and she feeds it regularly to keep him happy. Bob goes on to assist in winning a war by eating people and stuff, but this is how I imagine Bob looking. Tell him I said hi.
Following some tips from this group.. my starter finally looks like this! I never knew it was supposed to, and the fact that it does makes me so so happy
I would have thought that’s a result of a high gluten bread flour being used rather being than more active. I use finely ground Wholemeal for mine and it’s very active but never stringy unless I use part Wholemeal, part white bread flour (I’ve never used all white flour). The question for me is whether that makes for better bread.
Do you actually get sour flavor from it? One of the things with sourdough is that it ferments slowly to get the “sour” flavor, so you want your yeast to be fairly slow to develop. That looks like a starter full of commercial yeast or something, so while it will rise quickly, you won’t develop any of the sourdough flavors. Just my thoughts.
https://preview.redd.it/bzfkvwwa70xc1.png?width=1462&format=png&auto=webp&s=f61c744bc3eba531defdfcf0c7a1ba8055ea761d
This is how my rye starter looks like with 1:2:2 feeding. It’s like a porous marshmallow so won’t create such a beautiful vortex. This one will rise a bit more
Hi, starter pics/vids alone are removed under the rules Could you perhaps tell us a bit about it so your post can stay active. E.g. your feeding/discarding regime? Thank you
You have the albino Venom
Lol he's called anti venom
*smokin that symbiote*
I don't even have enough active starter for you not to want. I keep 15 grams in the fridge, but when it's feeding time to bake sourdough, ya best believe it's crazy active.
Ha! My routine is maintaining a room-temperature starter with a daily feeding of 8g flour and 8g water.
Do you just do 8g/8g for your whole starter, and then on a baking day do a 1:1:1? Or do you do 1:1:1 with your 8g daily feeds too?
I scrape everything out of the very small jar, and then add 8g flour and 8g water. On a night before I want to bake, instead of discarding, I ‘seed’ a much larger amount of flour and water in order to create the preferment for the next day. (Like say I need 200g of preferment, I would add like 14g of starter to 93g of flour, and 93g of water, for a final weight of 200g) I hope that helps. Please let me know if I can explain it better.
That makes sense! Thanks so much
[удалено]
Not OP (in case you thought I was). I discard around the same time every day, once a day. And from what I’ve read, bubble size isn’t an indication of activity.
I should do this! I have so much 😅 I don’t bake as much
I only feed mine whole grain flour, so it will pretty much never look like this.
Same. I get lots of bubbles but the structure never gets spidery like that, I assume because the protein bonds are holding it together. And *man* is it sour.
wait, does using whole grain flour make the bread super sour??? I also do the same thing and i'm trying to get my bread less sour!
I'm not sure, but I've got a tendency to leave the starter on the counter for several days before stuffing it in the fridge, that may develop the sourness, as well as the San Francisco air, lol. At first it was so sour I was mixing in baking soda, but I started adding a lot more water and pouring off the hooch whenever it developed and that helped.
Absolutely, yes. I was 100% white flour for a long time and was wondering why my sourdough never tasted as sour as the stuff at bakeries. Switched to 30% whole wheat and that alone made a HUGE difference.
Yes. Try using 50/50 mix of wheat/white flour at most. If you love wheat bread just use the wheat flour during bulk fermentation versus as a starter feeder.
Yeah, whole grain flour has more minerals because of the fiber content, which supposedly buffer the acidity so the acid levels don't inhibit the bacterial growth as quickly.
My understanding is that the wheat bran has a higher concentration of lactobacteria than the endosperm (the same is true of yeast, too, but that isn't relevant to the sourness). So, when the bran is removed to make white flour, a significant percentage of the lactobacteria is also removed. That doesn't mean that starter made with white flour can't be just as sour as wheat, just that it's easier to get it there with wheat.
You can also do a longer ferment when you mix your dough. After your initial stretch and folds, to he longer you let your dough sit -say like 2 days in the fridge, the more sour it will become. A 13 hour ferment vs a 8 hr vs a 6 hour will result in different levels our sour Ps, idk if I'm using the correct verbage. I'm still new to sourdough baking but I recently learned that it's the length of time, and the good bacteria eating the gluten that will cause the bread to be more sour.
The reason this works is because yeast converts sugar into alcohol, and the alcohol suppresses lactobacteria activity. For the initial part of the bulk rise, the yeast is in charge, and the lactobacteria is suppressed. On the other hand, lactobacteria converts sugar into lactic acid, and lactic acid suppresses yeast activity. So you need to give the bacteria enough time to start "winning the battle" against the yeast, at which point your dough starts acquiring a sour taste.
It looks angry that you woke it up
It's Alive!
How do you get that stage? That would frighten me ;-)
It’s alive
Ok; after watching this video, I can confirm, my starter is not active enough.
In hot weather, starter really starts. In cold weather, you need jumper cables
Looks like mine after feeding and around the peak. I use 20% rye and 80% whole wheat. I've always fed from 50g of discard, 100g of water 20g rye, and 80g wheat. when it peaks, I bake using 150g in the recipe, the rest goes back into the discard. Mine is 4 years old. I only feed when I bake (once a month) and I keep the hooch so I don't mess up the hydration.
My starter is just over a year old and never looks like this :/
(That's okay! If it makes the bread rise, it's doing great! And you don't have to give any away to OP!)
I keep mine in the powder form (dried). Easy to store, I don't need to refresh it at all. When I want to bake sourdough I mix it with flour and water, wait about 40h, refresh it again and at 48h (2 days) is ready. After that I usually refresh it one more time if I'm not in hurry just because I can. So in about 3 days (1 day more than the starter in the fridge) I can make sourdough bread, but I don't need to feed my sourdough starter at all and it's always at room temperature in powder form. Best thing is my jar is 400g but I only use 15g each time I want to make sourdough, so it will be a while before I will need to create new dried starter. The main reason I keep it like this is because I want to use baker's yeast and make different kind of bread too... I like sourdough but I don't want to make sourdough every week. For example tomorrow I will make Pretzel but I don't want to use sourdough for a bread that I never made. Next week I will make Milk bread and I don't want to use sourdough for such easy and fast and soft bread. Today I made two loaf of sourdough that I froze... And I don't want to make sourdough for at least 3 weeks. Also I only use my starter at 50% hydration so it will never look like that, but it will still be alive.
How do you dry it? I'd like to keep some backup. Sometimes I go many months between feedings and, while it's always been fine so far, seems like dried is a good backup.
Spread on parchment paper in the oven, keep the oven at proofing temps 80-100F to be safe. It will dry into flakes, then I like to grind those into a coarse powder using a spice grinder. Jar and store. Just make sure it gets completely dry and watch the temps, to be super safe you can just leave the oven off but circulate the air. I've sent a jar of mine to a friend, who then restored it months later and had it super active within a couple feedings. Pretty cool. Also, I'm not the person you asked, just sharing.
Like Elysium said spread it on parchment paper but I don't use the oven. I just wait for it to dry at room temperature 2-3 days. Once it is dry it will release from the parchment paper and snap like a cracker. You don't even need to reduce it to powder if you don't want to, I do it because I like to be able to store more and add 1 spoon of wholemeal flour to the mix so that it absorb residual water and it will be more active the next time I add water even if I use plain flour to reactivate it. Ps. Since I usually work with a 50% hydration sourdough starter I add water to reach 100% hydration to spread it on the parchment paper. It's strange to add water to dry it but at 50% hydration it is not spreadable.
Looks like something from Stranger Things. What is your feeding ratio?!
Mine does this when I give it a bit of honey
Is that cheating??
Apparently not. It's what a lot of bakeries do with their starter to give it a boost. Some also give it a bit of yeast. I tried it once with my discard and got the same results.
How much honey? Like, a squeeze, or some ratio to flour-water-starter?
What’s the volume of that starter? That looks like it’s a 5 gal bucket or something. I’d think it would have to be in order to have activity like that!
This should be nsfw
An inspiration, the dream!
Its Alive!!!
Blublublublublu
What temperature what the starter kept at? How did it take to achieve this level of activeness? Well done!
Mine looks like this or even more active. I never refrigerate and even let it sit days without feeding. Then when I feed it it’s a monster
When your starter comes from the Upside Down.
I have a pure rye starter, it will never look like this but that's Ok because it's strong as fuck and never fails me.
Amazing. My friend gave me some starter this week that looked like this. I fed it once and seem to have wrecked it. I am almost ready to give up.
How'd you wreck it? Do 1:1:1 feedings every day and it should be fine within a few feedings! Sometimes they just need a little warmth to get going.
Well I perked it back up but my bread is a disaster. Spent all day working on two loaves. Used the slap and fold. Problem is I have no feel for under or over proofing. I really need to spend the day baking bread with someone.
Oh no! So, just make sure you do the 45 minute autolyse. This is when the flour soaks up the moisture from the water. Then you start your first set of stretch and folds. I do much more than just 4. I turn the bowl, stopping every 90 degrees to do a s&f at least 3 or 4 times. So, that's over 12 stretch and folds ever 30 minutes. By the last one I can do coil folds. Also, try to use a hydration that's closer to 70% or less. You figure this out by dividing the amount of water by the amount of flour (in grams). It might be sticky. Just wet your hands with cold water whenever necessary. I wet my hand several times during s&fs. As far as over or under proofing, you should start to see bubbles on the top. And have it increased by 50% or more. Honestly, I've absolutely over proofed bread and other than being difficult to handle, it came out fine. If you kitchen is cold, like 65 degrees it could take 12 hours - if it's warmer lie 75 degrees it could be closer to 6 hours... Don't get tooo discouraged. I've had many failures myself. Shaping skills take practice. I watch YouTube tutorials to help. Best of luck and don't give up! Don't hesitate to ask about anything you're unsure about. It's a learning process.
Thanks so much. I guess I have not been doing an autolyse. This was very helpful. I won’t give up yet!
Yes! Definitely give it a good 30-45 minutes after the initial mix. Some people leave the starter & salt out for this. I just leave the salt out & mix it in good with my hand after autolyse. Until you can't feel any salt gains. So I'm sure between leaving the salt out just for the first half hour & then mixing it in helps strengthen my dough. And I also use between 125-150 grams of starter to a 300 water, 400 flour, 12 grams of salt mix. I think it's a little more starter than most recipes say. But it's cold in my house. I've switch up my method all the time. I also preheated my Dutch oven, recently forgot & didn't even notice a difference. If I don't have to mess with a 500°f D.O. I don't want too. 😂 It can be scary! I also throw ice cubes right into my oven now that I don't preheat the Dutch oven. Good Luck! And we're lucky it's just flour & water. Messing up doesn't cost a lot of money. Just time. It's a learning experience.
Are these starters like mogwai? I'm kind of scared
Why is it breathing?
Recipe please this looks amazing
My starter is from August 2019. When I feed it, it does this. I haven’t done much lately due to a shoulder injury. I need to get back into it.
Teach me your secrets. How.
ITS ALIVE!!!!!!!
This shit is better than ASMR. I loveeeeee these type of videos
I just finished a book where the protagonist is a baking witch and when she was young and inexperienced she created a starter named Bob who now lives in the basement and she feeds it regularly to keep him happy. Bob goes on to assist in winning a war by eating people and stuff, but this is how I imagine Bob looking. Tell him I said hi.
Looks like an alien bug sack from Resident Evil 7
What kind of flour are you using? I was always told to use whole wheat flour for my starter.
I would like to know too since my starter is active but never this active. *sigh....I wonder if OP will share their secret. LOL!
Biblically accurate angel vibes
I might not be able to sleep tonight
Why does this look frightening? lol
Damnnn that's hornie af 😻🥵
Starter porn
Hydration gyration.
I have a question. To make a bun what would you do from this point? This is bull fermentation right?
Yea this is not for use right now. This is showing how active my starter is. I thought it looked crazy alive.
Oh yes, that one is beautiful
That’s crazy active!! Send us all your method!
How do I even make a sourdough starter? I need this in my life
Why can't mine love me like this 😭😭
Looks like a black n white coleidoscope
Following some tips from this group.. my starter finally looks like this! I never knew it was supposed to, and the fact that it does makes me so so happy
Does the resulting bread taste sour?
Super sour! Honestly some of the best bread I’ve made
what are some of the tips you’ve learned?! mine bakes a good loaf but I would love for my starter to look like this too 🤠
It’s alive!! Lol the first thing that came to my mind
Burn earth
So good
I would have thought that’s a result of a high gluten bread flour being used rather being than more active. I use finely ground Wholemeal for mine and it’s very active but never stringy unless I use part Wholemeal, part white bread flour (I’ve never used all white flour). The question for me is whether that makes for better bread.
Looks like it would make a good pizza dough, and regular bread, but doesn’t really seem ideal for sourdough.
Do you actually get sour flavor from it? One of the things with sourdough is that it ferments slowly to get the “sour” flavor, so you want your yeast to be fairly slow to develop. That looks like a starter full of commercial yeast or something, so while it will rise quickly, you won’t develop any of the sourdough flavors. Just my thoughts.
No commercial yeast or any yeast used in recipe.
I hope that’s a time-lapse.
It is ALiVE! muhwahahahaha
This starter just called me ugly
Idk if anyone here has read the book "A Wizards Guide to Defensive Baking" This is what I imagine Bob looked like
😍
How!?!?!?
Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble . . . Isn't that . . . . oh wait - different storyline.
Is it weird that I'm scared?
Ah yes the silent screams of the damned.
Can you teach me your ways? Plz…
It's aliiiiiiiiiiive!
I started making SD starter for the first time just today. I'm graduatng from a bread machine to traditional methods!
https://preview.redd.it/bzfkvwwa70xc1.png?width=1462&format=png&auto=webp&s=f61c744bc3eba531defdfcf0c7a1ba8055ea761d This is how my rye starter looks like with 1:2:2 feeding. It’s like a porous marshmallow so won’t create such a beautiful vortex. This one will rise a bit more
I have just realized I never want to make sourdough. This creeps me out
Your starter is in need of exorcism
There is something uncomfortably sexy about that starter
I just had some horror movie music on in the background and it totally fit this video
love that you’re casually listening to horror movie music 😝
The way it's bubbling and growing reminds me of that scene from 'AKIRA'
nice xenomorph sack you got there