Thanks for your wonderfully informative introduction to the world of making a starter. I’m very keen to get stuck into this but I have a question about climate conditions. I live in the south of New Zealand, in a pretty chilly apartment, which never gets above 18 degrees Celsius. I guess that the average temperature would be around 10 degrees as we only heat the living room in the evening. It’s not much fun, but we survive. How do you think a starter would fare? We have gas-heated hot water too, so no chance of keeping it in the hot water cupboard unfortunately.

Thanks for your help.

Nico

Thank you for the post.

Ms. Wink explained the processes very clearly. I was most surprized that the Sanfransisco bacillus is widely available and is mostly controlled by culture process rather than location.

As for sourness in bread, I feel that sourness has its place in artisan bread and I would like to produce it at will. Sour bread is great for some things and not reccomended for others.

Thank you for a great site.

Moniker

Fabulous site. I have been making sourdough bread for a couple years now and have used your process to make up some starter.

My bread comes out looking great with a nice crust and great crumb. But my bread is never very sour tasting. Sometimes there is a hint of sour and most often not even that.

Can you suggest a method of consistently getting sourdough bread to taste sour and at the same time be able to control the level of sourness?

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Moniker

Thanks for this guide. I am now the proud papa of millions of micro-organisms. I used the rye, but past experience informs me to use as much practically whole grain as possible, so I put in some durum-atta flour (nearly whole durum flour) for the entire first few days (interesting character, and I may use that alternately with the AP for feedings).

No leuconostoc to report this time around, though I had it when I mixed AP flour with rye in my first attempt (using just the Peter Reinhart formula–using OJ as well in that). I especially appreciate your guidance about keeping chlorinated water away from the culture. Close second to that was the use of few ingredients. Just a couple of heaping tablespoons each pass: Great economy.

What wasn’t economical: keeping the formula in the oven, wrapped in a cloth to hinder the greenhouse-effect, while the oven light was on. But I won’t need that for the duration anyway. This kept the culture at 29 C.

Again: Thanks!

I must echo the comments congratulating you on the composition of the site. I too find myself venturing forth with the Reinhart method, though I had to quit my last effort — presumably it was too cool. I want to try (Poilâne) miche as soon as possible.

I last made sourdough with the method mentioned by Mark Bittman. He uses a dash of active dry yeast or instant yeast and he sets it out (lightly covered) for 72 hours with stirring. Leaving aside the fact that at that time I did not truly know anything about building the loaves, I did have limited success with the formula. My real issue with that was that I did not know what was going on in the starter. This starter was not wild yeast was it?