I got my first starter from King Arthur Flour in January 2020 and used it in a bread machine. Then the pandemic shutdown happened and our Grand Canyon vacation was cancelled and I decided since I was going to be stuck at home, I would try to make my own starter using whole wheat flour and pineapple juice. I have managed to keep both starters alive; they hang out in the fridge and I feed them once a week. Apparently having jars of live cultures in the refrigerator is addicting because I decided to make one more; I wanted this one to be created here, with the atmospheric bacteria from my own home!
The recipe is super-simple. In addition to water, there are only two other cast members.
The recipe calls for bread flour. I weighed it out.
Then I started grating the apple. At first I started off with a pretty fine grater but after a few minutes and very little progress, I decided that if Paul had wanted a pureed apple, he would have said so and I could have got out the food processor.
The larger grater worked about a thousand times better. I got as close to the seeds as I dared.
Not a very pretty mixture.
The finished compound was heavy and thick.
I poured the starter into a clear container and marked the level with tape.
Now, in the recipe, Paul said bubbles would probably start to form after three days or so. Except Paul lives in England. By the next day I had serious bubbling action. Not just any bubbles either; the kind that you could see forming and popping and moving. I took a video and sent it to my sister and her boyfriend. So I would have witnesses if this thing escaped the container.
By the end of the day, I could see some liquor or "hooch" forming at the bottom. This means the starter is actually overly active and starting to get hungry. I left it for the night.
On the morning of the second day, I gave it a stir and got a nice froth.
By the morning of the third day, the mixture was definitely hungry.
I poured it out into a bowl. Now this was after 3 days--Paul said on the 3rd day it would smell "slightly sweet...like cider." This smelled exactly the way it looks--like putrefying apple sludge. It was nasty...it was nauseating. It was exactly what I wanted!
I gave the greedy thing a feeding of flour.
Then added enough water to return it to a loose dough consistency.
The creature was grateful and started bubbling in appreciation.
Day 4--the bubbles had quieted down but it was still nice and combined.
I thought I might get it prepped in order to do a loaf the next day so I fed it. The smell was already much better; instead of rotting apple it smelled sort of musty. Not like mildewy musty. More like the refrigerator wasn't opened for several days and some of the food is getting questionable musty. The consistency was very smooth; I found only a couple of very small apple fragments.
Unlike the previous times, it did not start bubbling right away and I thought, great, I overfed it and now it's just going to lie there like the sated beast it is.
I shouldn't have worried. By the next day (AKA day 6), it was bubbling away happily.
It was so happy, in fact, that it had doubled in size. I followed the recipe I made previously (
see King Arthur Flour naturally leavened sourdough) and everything was going smashingly. The dough, at each stage, was much more reactive than my previous loaf. It went so well that it was ready to bake by late afternoon.
Unfortunately when I turned the loaf onto the parchment and started to remove the cheesecloth, the cloth got stuck and as I carefully peeled it away, the loaf began to collapse. It collapsed so much and so quickly that the half-hearted slashes I made barely showed. I shoved it onto the pizza stone, threw boiling water (not literally but you get the picture) into the cast iron pan and slammed the door shut.
The bread did not rise as much as I would have liked but the crumb structure was wonderfully airy, the texture was chewy with a crisp exterior and it was definitely tangy. I still have about half of the starter on the counter. I shall feed the monster and introduce it to its two counterparts in the fridge. Hope they aren't intimidated.
Here is the promised link:
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