Thursday, June 4, 2009

Sourdough Starter II

Well it's been well over a week since I embarked on trying to grow my own SD starter and it only showed life one time, it smelled terrible, and was very watery. I decided after reading several articles written by 'Mike', to toss my dead starter and try his method. His method differed from the previous one in two ways: first, he used whole wheat flour and secondly he suggested feeding the starter every 12 hours, which leads me to believe that maybe my starter 'starved to death' ! :-( yikes!

Oh, I also changed the type of container I was using, decided to use a ceramic bowl, it was easier to stir the starter and pour in the feeding.
So, I grabbed my bowl, added 1/4 cup of warm spring water and 1/4 cup plus 2 tblsp of whole wheat flour, mixed, and covered with plastic wrap for about 12 hours. When I checked it it had a few bubbles on top so I waited a few more hours, still just a few bubbles. I fed it 1/4 cup of warm spring water and 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp of whole wheat flour, covered it, and let it sit for 12 hours. When I checked on it, wow, it was alive! It had doubled in size and was bubbly!
Yeah! So, per Mike's instructions I discarded 1/2 of the starter and then fed it again.
That was last night at 10:30. I'm getting ready to feed it again in about an hour and a half.

I checked on it, it's bubbly and is starting to have a beer like smell...this is good, it means its growing good things! I'm so excited about this! I highly recommend the 'Sourdough Home' website for those of us who are new to this.

Remember my first starter....it looks like there could
bubbles forming but no I had just fed it so
there was air bubbles from the stirring

And this is a picture of what a living sd starter looks like...
beautiful isn't it :-D

the picture is kind of dark, I'll try to replace it latter when I have time.

2 comments:

  1. That looks like a good recipe.
    I wanted to let you know I gave you "link love" by adding you to my "Secrets of the Head-Covering Sisterhood" blog carnival. If you have anything written on the subject that you'd like to add, drop your link in my comments and I'll add it.
    Also if you know of anyone else who has written a moving post on the subject of head-covering, feel free to nominate her for the carnival as well.
    Even though your posts that I linked don't really discuss or describe your choice to cover your hair, I thought the little girls are a very sweet example of age-appropriate head-coverings for children.
    Thank you.

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  2. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out! I threw mine out before Unleavened Bread last year and never grew a new one - I'd like to this fall when I feel like baking again. :-)

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