Sourdough Starter

I've finally succeeded in starting my very own sourdough starter from scratch. It is all "wild" caught yeasts, no commercial yeast booster. I used this recipe, because my previous attempts were plagued by the fast growing, gassy bacteria.

I had a few little problems on this attempt.

On day three my jar started to grow some mold. I just scraped it off and transferred the remaining starter (the mold was only on the jar at the top of the starter) to a clean jar. Every time I fed it after that I moved it to a clean jar and I didn't have any more problems with mold.

Since we've been having such warm weather (the house was consistently above 75 during this experiment) my starter thrived on being fed every 12 hours rather than every 24. There were a couple of times when it looked like the yeasts were dying, but I added a bit of rye flour and started feeding it more frequently and it took off again.

I was waiting for my starter to raise nicely, but after reading this page, I decided it sounded ready after all and decided to go ahead and try baking a loaf of bread. I used this recipe and produced the loaf pictured above! Incidentally, I proofed the starter for the bread, then kept some out for the mother and fed it again while I was making the bread, and the mother did raise beautifully in the jar.