My mother had a jug of sourdough starter that probably dated back to the Alaska gold rush of 1898. She made pancakes and bread from it, which was lovely. After leaving home, the only sourdough I had was purchased from a bakery or in a restaurant.
Fast forward 50 years and I’m browsing through the King Arthur catalog and saw their jug-and-starter kit for a reasonable price, so thought what the hell. It arrived about four days ago, so I started feeding the starter and went through several iterations to get it to ‘ripen’, although I’m not sure how you tell if it is or isn’t ‘ripe’. Since you have to keep getting rid of most of it prior to feeding it again, I kept a jarful of the discard for pancake fixin’s. The rest of the starter is now in its jug in the fridge, and I’ll continue to feed it weekly.
First thing was to make some pancakes with the discard, so I followed the directions, making a sponge the night before with buttermilk and such, and letting it sit on the counter to ferment a bit. This morning, I added an egg and butter, a bit of salt and some baking soda, and noting that the recipe didn’t call for any sugar. The cakes were fine, but I didn’t get any overwhelmingly great flavor from them, considering the long process to get to the eating. The ones I normally make from scratch are as good, if not better. So now I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong, as these were not as good as I remembered Mom’s being.
I’ve been trying to get a sourdough starter going at home and it just isn’t working. The first one I tried worked best. It got fairly bubbly and smelled right by day four, but the recipe said to give it a few more days (feeding and stirring it each day), and after that it just fell flat and lost its bubbles and smell. Then I tried another time and it never did get a single bubble for almost a week. So I dumped it and started over. I thought maybe my kitchen was too cold, so I put boiling water in a pan and put it in the oven and left my starter in the oven overnight to get some warmth and humidity. The next day I found a mouse had eaten through the paper towel and got into the jar of starter, so I had to dump that batch too (don’t worry, my wife bathed the mouse and we let him go outside – he wasn’t harmed from his adventure, only my sourdough starter was). Now I’m on batch four, I think, and it’s only the second day, but no bubbles or sour odor yet. I’ll give it a few more days, but my next step might just be to buy a starter from King Arthur.
I don’t know. I’ve tried a couple different kinds of flour, once I tried pineapple juice to get the acidity going and add some sugar for the yeast to eat, I’ve tried big batches, smaller batches, whatever various websites have told me to do, but it just isn’t going anywhere. I thought it was supposed to be as easy as flour + water + time, but that doesn’t seem to be the case so far.
I have a starter I began from rye flour. Rye has lots of native yeasts that are amenable to domestication. I followed the instructions in Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking. It results in a Euro-style starter, stiffer and dryer than the usual batter starter more often seen in the US. I prefer it, because it’s very easy to tell if it’s active enough to bake with. How do you tell? Well, if the newly-refreshed starter quadruples within 8 hours, it’s ready to go. If not, keep refreshing it, feeding it at a higher rate (just flour and water) than the usual refreshment meal.
A note: always bake by weight. Volumetric measurements just aren’t accurate enough, and can vary a lot.
Chefguy, do the instructions that came with your kit say it’ll be ready to use in four days? Anything else about how to tell if it’s ready? My guess is that you just haven’t had enough time to get good yeast activity, which is what leads to the delicious flavour.
Is the problem with your starter or the pancakes themselves? As long as you have bubbles and the starter doubles (or more) in volume over night, it should be fine. If you are keeping it in the fridge the whole time, maybe it isn’t ripening enough.
I’ve been following this recipe for sourdough waffles, and they are absolutely delicious. Fluffy inside with a nice crisp outside. I maybe add a little more brown sugar, like 1.5T, because I have a sweet tooth. I’ve tried the same recipe for pancakes, and they weren’t quite as impressive. Maybe try waffles instead of your pancake recipe.
The times this recipe doesn’t work for me is if the starter isn’t active enough because I went too long between feedings or didn’t let it warm up. Take it out of the fridge in morning, feed it, then keep 9oz out and put the rest back. That evening, the part you kept out should be going strong. Make the batter with that and it should be perfect in the morning.
The KA starter is a pretty stout strain. It took over a week for it to get here, and it still took off pretty quickly. They tell you to feed it within 24 hours of receipt.
