How do I start a sourdough starter?

Hello Permies Who Bake,

Tereza was so kind to suggest I'd post my sourdough starter problems here and ask for the help of you, kind, helpful people.

I'd like to get into sourdough baking, but haven't had any luck with the starter.

I've tried to make a starter a couple of times, and once I got a starter from someone, but it didn't do anything at all, even though I fed it (and obviously tried to rise bread dough with it).

So here's what I've done previously - it's almost two years ago (I gave up), so I'll try to remember and describe as well as I can.

I have Sandor Katz's "The Art of Fermentation" and followed the recipe there:
"The simplest way of starting a sourdough from scratch is to mix a small amount of flour and water in a bocl, a little more flour than water, and stir unil smooth. Add a little more water or flour as necessary to obtain a batter that is liquid and pourable, yet thick enough to cling to the spoon." Etc.

At the time I thought the trouble for the starting never starting was the flour, which was regular wheat flour from the supermarket, or perhaps that the temperature dropped to 17degrees Celsius at night in the kitchen. As I re-read the recipe now I see he's making a point of making sure that the water one uses is un- or dechlorinated. Aha! I used regular tapwater at the time, perhaps that was the trouble.

Any advice or tips are greatly appreciated, I'd like to get baking sourdough bread !
Thank you in advance.

Nina!
I see you are in zone 8-- I am in 9, and I notice my sourdoughs vary a lot depending on the season/climate. Right now I am in summer (Brazil) and my sourdough lives in the refrigerator, if not I have to feed it 5 times a day (or more). I don't think 17°C is too low (and I use city water, which does not lack additives, unfortunately). I also find when it's hot I need to make my sourdough MUUUUUCH thicker than Sandor Katz suggests (mine is almost hard to mix with a spoon), otherwise it rots immediately. In cooler weather, I can have a more runny sourdough (that lives on the counter).

Are you starting with white flour, or using some additive like raisins or fruit? Some people add a bit of rye to start, or use the soaking water from raisins (the one batch of sourdough I did with that was the best I've ever had).
I think the key is really just to keep trying. Mix up your starter, leave it til it bubbles, feed again, and that's really it.

I had my first try at starting a sourdough and utilized the information from the How to create a Sourdough starter thread.

It eventually stalled out due to losing track of it on my end but I'm going to be giving it another attempt.

I've never lived somewhere warm and I've never had any trouble starting or maintaining a starter, so my guess is that that part of Tereza's advice is the key. Right now, I use hand-ground whole wheat or rye (or a mix) flour and well water, but I have used grocery store wheat and white flours and high-choramine tap water and never had a problem. I have also kept starters that were as runny as cream and as thick as dough and both work fine for me in my conditions.

Tereza Okava wrote:Nina!
I see you are in zone 8-- I am in 9, and I notice my sourdoughs vary a lot depending on the season/climate. Right now I am in summer (Brazil) and my sourdough lives in the refrigerator, if not I have to feed it 5 times a day (or more). I don't think 17°C is too low (and I use city water, which does not lack additives, unfortunately). I also find when it's hot I need to make my sourdough MUUUUUCH thicker than Sandor Katz suggests (mine is almost hard to mix with a spoon), otherwise it rots immediately. In cooler weather, I can have a more runny sourdough (that lives on the counter).

Are you starting with white flour, or using some additive like raisins or fruit? Some people add a bit of rye to start, or use the soaking water from raisins (the one batch of sourdough I did with that was the best I've ever had).
I think the key is really just to keep trying. Mix up your starter, leave it til it bubbles, feed again, and that's really it.

Tereza, that's it, my starter attempts rotted every time.
I kept it on the counter top. I can't remember anymore if I attempted to make it in the winter or summer, perhaps freaking out about 17 degrees C at night had to do with another fermenty adventure alltogether?
But instead of a bubbly batch of goodness I got a stinky pot of runny, , dark brown, horrible goo, no matter what.

So I'll try making it thicker - and I'll try making it now, it's winter, so "too hot" isn't a problem.

At that time I tried to make it with biological whole grain flour, I imagined the little bubbly beasties would like that most. I didn't use any additives.
At the moment I don't have any raisins nor rye flour, but I did manage to find locally milled 'artisan' flour for baking, so I'll be using that.
I'm also experimenting with making yoghurt (and eventually cheese) from raw milk since a couple of days.
I'll make two starter batches, one with water, one with yoghurty fermenty liquid. Let's see how it goes...

Thank you for your helpful comments!

Timothy Norton wrote:I had my first try at starting a sourdough and utilized the information from the How to create a Sourdough starter thread.

Hello there Timothy,
Ah! Thank you for that link! I'll go over there to study.