It would appear I have so far successfully attracted wild yeasts to my flour and water mixture, and that I have, in fact, created a sourdough starter. I was skeptical. I thought for certain I would end up with a jar full of wretched, stinky, nasty non-yeast microbial life living high on the hog on my daily additions of fresh flour and water. I haven’t even been as methodical as I usually am with things of this nature. I feed it when I remember, about once every 24 hours, I don’t always remove and replace the same amounts of flour/water and starter, depending on how painful it feels at that particular moment to pour more somewhat nice flour into what might end up being a blackhole of waste. I may have even forgotten to feed it once. I can’t remember. I’ve been busy (and tired). Yet, tonight, when I remembered I should feed it –or at least check to see if it needed to be tossed– I was greeted with the very sour yet yeasty scent of sourdough.
It doesn’t smell foul at all. There’s no mold or nastiness to be seen. It looks like photos of other starters (exactly like them, in fact). It smells the way everyone says it should smell (not repulsive at all). I wouldn’t say it smells edible, because boy is it sour smelling. I mean it really, really smells sour like a lemon with a bit of beer. It’s excessively bubbly. So … seems like a sourdough starter to me!
I’m still terrified of the thing, of course. I don’t want to bake the bread that kills us or makes us grievously ill. I’m going to give it another day or two to develop, as I switch it from the whole wheat flour I used to start it (supposedly better for starting a starter) to regular unbleached bread flour. Then, I suppose, I will try baking some bread with it. If that bread turns out, I am going to immediately dry some of the starter for storage†, and the rest gets fed one more time before going into the fridge, where daily, expensive flour feedings won’t be necessary. Or the bread may fail, which will lead me to throwing the whole thing out and going back to making bread the way I always do.
I’m finding myself pretty excited about this experiment. Most people say it takes a couple of days to attract wild yeasts and get to a stage where there is any bubbling at all. I had bubbling the next day, and by the second day there was a lot of bubbling and a good strong sour smell. Central Texas yeasts must be hard core! I can’t wait to make bread with it!
Footnotes- † I may even dry a lot of it for storage (and sharing). My thinking is how easy would it be to take out some dried starter, mix it with some water and flour the day before I want it ready, and press on. Easier than maintaining the damn starter, I would think. [↩]