FAO Sourdough-ists

[Swervin_Mervin]

Just looking for a bit od advice. I've been baking my own bread for some time now, but am fairly new to using starters. In fact, I've only ever made a couple a few days in advance.

My wife got me the Larouuse Book of Bread earlier this year and I thought I'd start his liquid sourdough starter. Trouble is, I'm 4 days in and nowt appears to be happening! He uses a rye/water and honey mix for a couple of days, before then just feeding with more rye and water, and by now it should apparently be bubbling away nicely.

I'm wondering whether maybe my rye flour is the issue - it's getting on a bit. Still makes nice loafs when I've used it with dried yeast, but could the age have put paid to any wild cultures it might have contained? It's a decent brand of organic light rye.

[ZedLeg]

My missus has a pet sourdough starter but I can't remember how she got it going in the first place. I'll ask her when I get home.

[NordicCrankShaft]

Where do you keep it?

Sounds like it could not being kept at room temperature.

[Swervin_Mervin]

It's just int he kitchen at the moment. Ambient temps are obviously better than normal at the moment as well!

[C0ffin D0dger]

Done sours twice from the beginning but each time realised I didn't have enough time spare to keep it going. When I'm older / retired maybe.

Second time I followed this guide and was very successful with it: http://sourdough.com/blog/sourdom/beginners-blog-s...

Patience required though. Some of the other tutorials on there regarding shaping, proving etc. were also very useful.

[grumbledoak]

The flour being old won't matter. Assuming there is any, the natural yeast will be hibernating not dead. It will wake up.

More water, a bit warmer, or more time is all I can think of.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Cheers. It looked like it had started to get going this evening so have added the final quota of water and flour. I'll give it a day or two longer before using it though.

[NormalWisdom]

There's already a thread somewhere on here, started a couple of years back. I followed and had some excellent results.

[JRM]

Keeping the original thread going would be good:

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=4&a...