Day 11 starter bubbles, never rises, no luck so far!

Keep going. Looking good!

@Otis @Abe friends! Look what I have this morning! I can’t thank you enough for the help getting my starter up and running! :blush:

I am about to do my final feeding from the guidance listed above, and then I’d like to try a practice loaf this weekend.

Question: can you guys recommend a recipe for my first sourdough and also a sample schedule of events from feeding her through baking? Meaning, if I currently feed my starter every 24 hours around 9 am, when should I feed her and expect her to peak relative to starting the dough? Today is Friday morning at 8:30 am Pacific and I’d like to bake Saturday or Sunday.

Asking because I’ve watched so many YouTube videos at this point and read so many blogs that I can’t get a clear picture - there is so much variation.

I can head to another forum here as well since Penny is graduating, but this is definitely my next question.

Thank you all again so very much for your kindness and guidance!


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Congratulation on Penny’s arrival. :slight_smile: Your starter looks fantastic! Your starter is ‘there’. I think after playing with it for 11 days, you already had everything in place, it just needed the opportunity to grow the colony more. The last feeding will make it stiffer.

If you wanted to, you can leave a stiff starter on the counter and feed it every 2 or 3 or 4 days, peeling off some to make bread and some for the next generation starter. With each feeding it will become a little more robust. When the weather changes you can toss it into the fridge between feedings.

I suggest moving Penny to a vessel with straight walls. The jar in the picture is mushroomed at the bottom, likely to be a little hard to get the starter out of there.

You can use Penny to make other starters. Peel off a little starter and do a regular feeding except change the flour, say, use dark rye flour. After a few feedings Penny’s original flour is lost to the rye flour. Now you have a rye starter going forward.

I suggest asking Melissa for a recommendation for a first loaf.

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Thank you, Otis! Forgive me - what would be a “regular feeding” for a second whole wheat starter be going forward?

Edit: I did move Penny to a Pyrex bowl for now!

@Fermentada i would gladly welcome any insight on my question above :blush: Thank you!

Sorry, I was not clear. I meant the feeding used to maintain a stiff starter: 60g starter, 120 water, 170g flour. Too create a new or different starter, take 60g of existing starter (Penny), mix with 120ml water, then add 170g of whatever flour you want the new starter to be.

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Thanks, Abe! Am I reading this Ling Arthur recipe correctly that it only takes 1 tablespoon of my starter? Every other recipe I read requires a ton of starter?!

That’s right! You’re making an off-shoot starter called a levain. It is a preferment and only needs a small amount of starter. Sort of like a sourdough version of a poolish. Or more correctly… a poolish is a yeasted version of a levain.

P.s. Spend a few more days strengthening your starter, it’s only just matured, and when trialling it’s best to make one loaf at a time. So split the recipe in half. Always remember the rule “Watch the Dough, Not the Clock”! Timing in recipes are guidelines only. You wait until your levain is ready and your dough looks puffy.

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Thank you @Abe! I’m not going to be home tomorrow anyway so I will wait until Sunday to start and I’m fine making a practice run since I’ve never made anything other than focaccia before with instant yeast. I will just feed her again in the morning as usual and go from there. It’s been 12 hours now, actually, and my starter hasn’t doubled or anything so far. I think she still needs a full 24 hours at this point. Will hopefully share something soon!

Sorry one (hopefully final) question - do I not need to feed this starter every 12 or 24 hours? Asking to clarify your guidance here but also because I did the first maintenance feed today and Penny is not a showing much activity at all compared to the previous few days? Thanks, Otis!

If your starter is taking 24 hours to mature then it’ll need a bit more time before you can bake with it. It’ll be worth giving it a few extra days of feeding.

If you can feed your starter a 1:2:2 ratio and it doubles within 6-8 hours at 75F then it’ll be good to try your first bake.

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Thanks, Abe. Darn. Even now she looks pretty inactive except for a few bubbles on top. It’s at the 24-hour mark here so I will leave her alone and check on her when I get back. I thought I had it! :slightly_frowning_face:

Edit, yesterday I fed her the final feeding above: 120g starter, 30g water, 60g flour --not the maintenance feeding…I think…:weary:

Penny is fine. The starter has everything in place with the last pictures you posted. All of those bubbles of different sizes is the proof. (Pun intended.) :smiley:

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No, but that is exactly what small bakeries do, they never refrigerate the starter and they feed it daily and bake with it daily.

For the next several generations your starter will slowly become more robust. The colonies are growing, the stronger microbes are prevailing over the weaker ones. This is what is going on when Abe suggests giving it a few more feedings. (Abe gives good advice on this forum.)

When creating a new starter, I do not feed it daily. I leave it on the counter and I won’t feed it until it stops expanding. New starters do not necessarily double in size, initially. If it takes a day or two to stop expanding, ok, I’ll feed it in a day or two. The time for the starter to max out the expansion should noticeably shorten with successive feeds.

When your starter is stiff enough to knead, it may take a little longer to initially start expanding, and may not expand as much as doubling. But over time it will become more robust and more responsive.

ETA: if you every wonder if your starter has enough oomph to lift dough for a proper rise, you can test your starter. Carefully spoon off a quarter-size** piece of starter without popping bubbles, and place it in a glass of water. If it floats, it will lift the dough for a proper loaf of bread. This test can fail if you pop a lot of bubbles but that is not likely with a stiff starter.

** for those across the pond that go to bed way to early, a “quarter” is a coin 2.5 cm diameter.

Thanks, Otis. I ended up feeding Penny last night at 11pm l, so about 36 hours after her last feed. She reeked like nail polish remover and was flat with no bubbles that I could see. It’s 9 am now and she’s looking much more active though not doubled. I’ll keep an eye on things through the day! I know of the float test and will definitely try it now that she’s further along. So much to keep track of but I can appreciate already that this more of a subjective “feel and see” exercise than any strict guidelines. Stay tuned! :smile:

What feed are you doing at the moment and how much starter do you have?

Hi Abe. I am (as of now) feeding the “maintenance feed” that Otis suggested of 60g starter 120g water and 170g AP flour.

Edit: I have a lot of starter.

Find yourself a small jar. Transfer 50g starter and feed it 25g water + 25g flour.

Then every 12 hours do the same feed. So you discard 50g and feed the remaining 50g with 25g water + 25g flour. On a 12 hourly schedule but you need to keep it warm.

See what happens.

I can do that! I wanted to go buy a few new jars today anyway. I think I can hide the starter in the cabinet above my oven and it’s probably warmer there.

…and you aren’t maintaining hundreds of grams. Very simple feeding schedule and building no more than 100g at a time. Once in the morning and once in the evening.

If you kind a place that’s 75-78F and keep this up then there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. If it doesn’t then we’ll need to look into other ideas of what’s causing this. If all goes well then we’ll slowly increase the feed ratio.

Do this alongside what you’ve been doing already.