You are reading a single comment by @Arducius and its replies. Click here to read the full conversation.
  • How active is the starter, I'd be feeding it every day for 3-4 days (chuck 2/3's away, add 100g strong flour, 100g tepid water) then the night before take 1tbsp of starter and 200g of flour 200g water and it should be nice and sweet in the morning to start baking. Tartine book has a pretty solid method that has rarely failed to rise.
    Also what %'s for the loaf?

  • In my extremely limited experience, I'd say it's not very active. I've been feeding it with rye flour and adding dechlorinated water at room temp but only to replace what I've been taking out.

    The recipe I'm using for the bread is from Bread Matters - 250g wholemeal flour, starter, water, salt. He does suggest an overnight prove in a room at about 20 degrees should be sufficient but my house is has been colder than that at night recently. In my latest batch I've tried 50g spelt flour with 200g wholemeal to see if that speeds up the prove a little. I'm not going to be able to check on it now until later this eve so we'll see what happens...

    I did think about starting off another starter following the Andrew Whitley method to compare (he uses rye flour for sourdough starter) if I don't have any success.

  • I know we've been taught white flour/bread is evil but starters need it imho. Rye, spelt etc are really hard for the yeasts to metabolise, I have two starters, one fed on 100% strong white for pizza doughs, baguettes etc, and one fed on 50% white/wholemeal mix which I use for most all other breads.
    Those sourdough loaves with great rise are at least 75% white flour.

    In fact the ones I posted in the last page although looking and tasting wholemeal are mostly strong white.

About

Avatar for Arducius @Arducius started