Sourdough Collapse

I use a AP flour starter. A bit sweeter and I feel I can tweak times a bit more than with rye. Rye can go fast especially with the warm weather. Next time you feed your starter, you can take the discarded and start making it into an AP flour starter. Feed 1:2:2 or even 1:3:3. You will have 2 starters, but you can experiment. :-).

You can do this! I agree with Abe’s advice - use less starter in your recipe.

I also place a rubber band at the height of my starter right after I feed it so I can easily see how much it has risen.

OK, here’s my latest attempt with less starter. I stuck with rye, fed it with Abe’s 1:2:2 formula after taking it out of the fridge, got a nice bubble and peak within 24 hours. Cut the starter amount in the Best Bread Machine Sourdough recipe from 225g to 80g, kept the same amounts of warm water 170g, bread flour 360g, 3tbs oil, 2tsp salt, 1tbs active dry yeast, 4-hour basic cycle with medium crus and large loaf (halfway between small and xlarge). Got a rise but uneven, one side higher than the other. Nice and light, crumb OK, tastes fine as far as bread goes but not very sourdoughy and rather small. Any ideas?

With that much yeast and very little starter most of the rise will have come from the yeast before the starter had any chance to do anything. Hence the not very sourdough taste. I would have stuck to the plan of getting the starter nice and strong (24 hours to get a rise from a 1:2:2 feed is very slow) and used more if it but missed out the yeast.

OK, so no yeast and stronger starter. If 24 hours with a 1:2:2 feed is not strong enough, how strong over how many days should I make it. And since I cut the starter down from 225g to 80g and you said not enough starter, how much is enough?

A 1:2:2 feed should take about 6 hours to mature (give or take) but can be left for 8-10 hours. Depending if you want a young sweet starter or a more mature tangy starter. If you’re looking at 24 hours then it’s far too slow.

I think so we can see what you’re talking about how about you feed your starter one morning like so…

  • 20g starter
  • 40g water
  • 40g bread flour

You can do this as an off-shoot starter. Out a rubber band around the jar marking the level of the starter. Then take photos at the 4, 6, 8 and 10 hour mark. Post them here so we can see how your starter is behaving.

My idea was once your starter is behaving well and is strong then you repeat the recipe as it is using one cup starter but miss out any added yeast. But cross that bridge when you come to it. First things first - your starter!

Thanks for the advice Abe and I’ll work on it. But life’s too short to devote to bi-hourly photo shoots of starter. I’ll keep tweeking.