Sourdough Experience

[TWP]

About one a week, I bake the equivalent of two commercial loaves of bread.  I do keep a pot of sourdough starter "perking" on a kitchen shelf.

I feed my starter daily with about 1-2 tablespoons of flour, and therein lies this tail...

My flour comes from 20-25 pound bags AND I usually buy UNBLEACHED flour....

This time I didn't read the label and just grabbed the bag and went through checkout...

So now my sourdough starter will not "perk",  there is no yeast action going on, no bubbling etc.

So the cure, which worked, was to peal a small, UNWASHED potato (size of an egg) and stir the peals into my starter jar. 

Within one day (24 hours), the starter batch was back in action, bubbling nicely and smelling like good sourdough ought to smell.

I removed the potato peals at that point.  I suppose I could have simply added them to the next batch of bread dough, but I didn't think about that until I'd thrown them into my herb bed as compost.

Hope this helps someone else who can't get sourdough to "start".   I do believe (without actual rigourous testing) that the bleached flour does not have the necessary yeast.  I will be more observant the next time I buy flour.

[WolfBrother]

WB edited to specific:

I do believe (without actual rigourous testing) that the bleached flour does not have the necessary yeast.  I will be more observant the next time I buy flour.

I can not provide the documentary backup to this.

I remember years (20+) ago reading in Mother Earth News an article about Sour Dough.  One thing the author noted was that ALL of the types of bleached flour she tried would not get a start on their own.  She said ALL of the unbleached flour she tried would.

I can't provide evidence but your episode backs up what I remember reading. 

She said she took the peelings off of about a dozen grape, mashed them with a spoon, and put it in the bleached flour stuff and it worked.
She said the powder looking stuff on the outsides of grapes were molds and would work.

[TWP]

WB, Thanks for the feedback.

I've read that many "wild" fruits have a usable yeast on their skins.  I've not tried any but the potato.

Blackberries, cherries, grapes (as you noted) are all mentioned in online sourdough discussions.  Also the leaves of plants such as blackberries have the yeast.

I may experiment with some other yeast sources.  Whether successful or not, I'll report back here.... I could be a while.

[230gr]

Blackberries, cherries, grapes (as you noted) are all mentioned in online sourdough discussions.

I think you will find that almost any sweet fruit will have wild yeast. The mountain men often used juniper berries and chokecherries. If you make bread from scratch often, you very likely have yeast in the air of your bakery that you can catch with a starter prep.

[TWP]

...
If you make bread from scratch often, you very likely have yeast in the air of your bakery that you can catch with a starter prep.

I can't rule out that my starter mix did get a restart from yeast in the kitchen air.  For that matter, the potato was from an open mesh bag hanging near my counter top, so it could have picked up a yeast culture.

[230gr]

The interesting thing about sourdough is  that the strain of yeast and bacteria that you catch each time can be different and yield different tasting breads. You can save the ones you like best!

[TWP]

Hmmm, I going to err on the side of caution and only keep one batch going at a time...  Domestic bliss requires that I not make a mess in the kitchen...

230gr, I note your thread on wild yeast cultures:  http://nnpg.net/NNPG_Forum/index.php?topic=1068.0

[230gr]

Domestic bliss requires that I not make a mess in the kitchen..

I feel your pain! I was banned from the kitchen for several months after my Jerusalem Artichoke syrup experiment ran out of water and ruined a slow cooker.

[TWP]

If I may recommend... our slow cooker came from the Goodwill store.  It ain't pretty, but it does work.

It also makes a decent loaf of sourdough and on the low heat setting, it matches the slower yeast action of my starter culture.

The only "problem" is that it does not brown the loaf top, but 5 minutes in the oven under the broiler fixed that.

[230gr]

We tried the same thing with a crock pot and it worked too. No browning but the texture and taste were quite good. Would like to try it with a homemade solar oven which should work similarly.