First loaf suggestions, if you please....
by Bread Or Alive · More by this author { 2010 February 9 }Hello!
After a woefully slow to start starter, it now seems to be doubling in size nicely over 12 hours (or less), so I reckon I'm now ready to roll (ahem). It smells a bit like paint stripper, but I'm simply hoping this is very normal (if it isn't, then advice on rectifying this too would be marvellous).
So any suggestions for a good first ever sourdough loaf recipe? There are so many to choose from here that I'm a little baffled. I've made plenty of normal loaves in my time, so I'm hoping (doubtless naively) that this first sourdough will be a genuine revelation. Suggestions that take this into account would be appreciated.
FYI, my starter is the one suggested right here, so 70% white and 30% rye, 100% hydration.
Results, however lame or triumphant, shall be posted.
Thanks in advance.
Hey there Bread or Alive -
by karniecoops · More by this author { 2010 February 9 }Hey there Bread or Alive - I'd try Shiao-ping's pain a l'ancienne or Ross's pain de campagne (both on this website) a whirl. They are both great bread makers and have provided great recipes. One of my all time favourites when I started out was Susan's Norwich sourdough on www.wildyeastblog.com. It's a cracker as well.
Your starter shouldn't smell like paint stripper, but if it bubbles up nicely after being fed then you know you are on the right track. My first loaf would have made a better building material than food, but heck its been fun getting better at it! :o)
Karen
Happiness is making bread!
Pain au Levain
by dimitry1 · More by this author { 2010 February 9 }I made a version of Pain au Levain on my secod bake and it was so wanderfull that I make it every time.
Greetings, Bread Or Alive (luv your nickname!)
by rossnroller · More by this author { 2010 February 9 }I second Karen's suggestion re Susan's Norwich sourdough. That was one of my first, and I've made it many times since. Easy to work at that hydration, and the finished loaf is gorgeous in crust, crumb and flavour.
By the way, thanks indeed, Karen, for mentioning me in the same sentence as Shiao-Ping, but I fear I am undeserving of such elite company! Waaay too kind! And let me say, from what I've seen of your breads you're right up there yourself!
All the best with your debut bread, Bread Or Alive. You realise you're on a path to addiction, I trust?
Thanks...
by Bread Or Alive · More by this author { 2010 February 9 }Thanks for the tips. Norwich it is, I reckon.
This smell of my starter is a mild concern, however. I see somewhere else here that someone has mentioned their's smells like acetone. I'm not sure what that is, let alone what it smells like, but it sounds like it could be a spirit-like smell. Put it this way, if I inhaled the smell of my starter for any length of time, I would probably go a little light headed. It's not alcohol, and not quite spirit, but somewhere in that region. Any clues as to what might be going awry (a-rye, ahem)? I started it with white flour alone, then after a while of bubbles but no increased volume, I started adding rye, and now I am getting the growth. But this smell too...
BoA
Acetone is essentially nail
by karniecoops · More by this author { 2010 February 9 }Acetone is essentially nail polish remover! haven't really got my chemical head on so can't think if the alcohols produced could morph into something else. If your starter has been sitting inactive for a while it will kind of separate with a liquid "boozey" layer on the top, but that is quite fine. Just mix it in, feed it up and off you go@!
And Ross is right, now that you've started making SD bread, its pretty damned hard to stop! Kinda like playing golf, you hit one or two good shots and you think, hey, I can do that again! Make one good loaf, get one great looking gringe and there's no turning back! You'll just love it!
:o)
ok, just had a thought
by karniecoops · More by this author { 2010 February 9 }ok, just had a thought .......... and its 20 mins past midnight! Amazing! Maybe you're smelling a bit of excess acetic acid. Maybe you need to feed it more often as your bugs and yeast have run out of grub! Are you keeping it in the fridge when not in use? Feed, make bread, save some, stick it in the fridge till next time, then Feed, make bread, save some, stick it in the fridge till next time etc etc.
If it bubbles up and goes crazy after feeding then its ok :o)
Hmmmm....
by Bread Or Alive · More by this author { 2010 February 9 }Well, I haven't made a loaf yet, still waiting for the starter to be properly active after an intial false start. So it's not in use at all yet. Now it seems to be working (it's doubling in size), but now there's this spirit-eqsue smell to it, so not sure whether I should start using it or not. Seen elsewhere that it could be to do with the amount of feeding I'm doing, so will try feeding twice a day perhaps.
Mind you, I'd have thought that if anything, it would be slower eating everything I'm feeding it, as it's being kept in a cold-ish room in London (not the fridge, but probably not a million miles away from being that cold anyway - small kitchen, with no radiator). I could keep it somewhere warmer perhaps?
I would try storing it a bit
by davo · More by this author { 2010 February 10 }I would try storing it a bit warmer. My starter went a bit acetone-smelling for a while, when stored in the fridge and not fed so much. Cure seemed to be to bring it out and feed at normal room temp - like 20 deg C. It has stopped since then (many months ago), even with more recent periods of fridge storage and low feeding, so I can't be certain what brings it on. ALso, when you feed, I hope the ratio is a little retained starter to a fair bit of new food, rather than the other way around. That is, keep the retained bit relatively small by discarding most (or storing separately in a bowl to incorprate into pancakes or whatever), and then feeding. I suspect that if it's a combination of hungry and cold - you might have more chance of getting that acetone smell - only as that's (roughly) what happened to me.
It should smell more like a slightly yeasty/beery pleasant smell, rather than sharp/acrid.
Good luck.
Nail Polish Remover (ethyl
by LeadDog · More by this author { 2010 February 10 }Nail Polish Remover (ethyl acetate) is a wine flaw that I am very familiar with. Normally this odor is made because the wine is exposed to oxygen. I just a quick search on the web and there are two other ways that that ethyl acetate is made in wine. One seems to apply here to the smell in sourdough starters. Ethyl acetate can be made by yeast under stress which I think is the case in sourdough starters that are under fed. The yeast are running out of food and this puts them into a stressful state. In the other two ways that ethyl acetate is made in wine is it is made by alcohol combining with acetic acid. That also makes sense for sourdough since both of them are made during fermentation. Take your pick but I would say feed the starter more often like twice to three times a day.
Hungry starter then....
by Bread Or Alive · More by this author { 2010 February 10 }I followed some Dan Lepard advice on his site on this subject, and added a tablespoon or so of live yoghurt when I last fed it, but now it's barely risen at all. And still has the acetone smell to it. Bugger. I'm loathe to start again, having poured so much nice flour into it. But maybe the feeding is the issue, and I need to be doing it more than once a day.
I'll give it a couple more days and see if that sorts it out. As soon as I ditch most of it and refresh, the smell goes (obviously), so maybe refreshing it when I start to smell it might be an idea? From start to now has been nearly a month now, so like I say, I'm loathe to start again after coming this far.
thanks so much for all your help.
Why don't you just take a
by bethesdabakers · More by this author { 2010 February 11 }Why don't you just take a deep breath and bake a loaf of bread?
The purpose of a starter is to raise dough, so how are you going to know is it works or not if you don't put it to the test? You'll wonder what all the fuss was about.
A couple of years back I tested half a dozen methods for making a starter and all bar one (and it was clear that that one was not active) were raising loaves within seven days. Nothing clever about it.
Final word of advice: don't tinker. Use one method and stick to it until you are successfully making bread. Then you can start to adapt.
Good luck
Mick
www.bethesdabakers.com
http://thepartisanbaker.wordpress.com
Well...
by Bread Or Alive · More by this author { 2010 February 15 }the main reason I'm not baking a loaf with it is because it smells like nail varnish remover, which in turn will surely give the results an off taste. It works fine. There's no doubting that, it's doubling in volume in 8 hours or so and looks great.
currently, I refresh (upon which it smells fine), and then in a few hours, it's back with the spirit smell. I had read somewhere that if this particualr strain of yeast (the one making the acetone smell) is dominant, then that's that, and no amount of feeding will sort it. I think I might just start again.
Well, it's entirely up to you
by bethesdabakers · More by this author { 2010 February 15 }Well, it's entirely up to you what you do. But's what's the big deal about making a loaf and seeing if the starter smell affects the bread?
Mick
www.bethesdabakers.com
http://thepartisanbaker.wordpress.com
I agree with Mick - go on
by karniecoops · More by this author { 2010 February 16 }I agree with Mick - go on give it a crack! you might be surprised at the results :o)
What's the worse thing that can happen?
the worst?
by Bread Or Alive · More by this author { 2010 February 16 }convulsions followed by slow, agonising death. or perhaps at best, the 'ballroom blitz'. or possibly the outside chance of a good loaf.
encouragement has been appreciated, but I canned it this morning. it just wasn't right, and I want to start as I mean to go on, and I now have a 100% rye one going, so give me another week and I'll be posting some pictures of my first efforts.