Amazing! What recipe did you use for your starter? I tried during covid and failed miserably.
Apologies to the crowd, I love this stuff & could go on forever. Lengthy sourdough post incoming .....
I'll admit, I cheated this time -- a trio of brothers in my church run a highly successful business baking/selling sourdough bread (30-50 loaves per week). So I asked them for a small portion of their starter, keep it small (only ~50 grams most days), and just feed it regularly. If ever it starts to get less active, switch it up by feeding it for a day or two with whole wheat or rye flour. That's basically how the brothers told me they developed their starter -- over time, the "yeastie beasties" get stronger & more resilient. Remember that the yeasts are constantly multiplying, adapting to the environment & what you feed it, etc. So an older starter is always going to work better.
Honestly, that's generally the best way to make great sourdough -- get a bit from someone else's well-established starter & make it your own. The yeasts will have already matured & they're ready to go from the start. You can certainly grow a healthy starter from scratch (the brothers did that, and I did it when I first started up in Alaska) ... it just takes time, and you have to be patient. Mine took nearly 3 months to get to the point of baking viability. The bread brothers grew theirs & experimented for about 6 months before they started selling their bread (until then, they mostly just gave it away to build interest & do trial runs to get their bulk processes down). But most folks (especially in AK) simply walk into a bakery/restaurant that bakes their own sourdough & ask for a cup of their starter. The staff literally just pulls out the pot/jar that it lives in, scoop it out, and hands it over.... gratis, most of the time (after all, it's just 10 cents' worth of flour & water).
Simple & effective process from scratch: 25g
unbleached AP flour, 25g filtered water into a 1 pint mason jar... leave it alone for 4-5 days. Dump 50-75% of it (the discard isn't very good until the starter really becomes active). Feed it again (25g/25g), leave it alone for 2-3 days. Dump again, then repeat the feed/discard process every 1-2 days until you see bee-bee sized bubbles all throughout & it starts to double (or more) in bulk after 10-12 hours. As I mentioned above, you can mix in 1-2 days of whole wheat or rye flour every so often to bring in different yeast strains. At this point (probably 2-4 weeks in), it'll start to smell pretty strongly (varies, but often like acetone, vinegar, or sweaty shoes), and the discard should become viable for whatever you'd like -- our favorites are pancakes & waffles, but awesome discard recipes abound. You can try baking a loaf of bread around 4 weeks in, but it may not turn out quite well yet. Give it 2-3 months, and you should be good to go. Until then, experiment with the discard, and read up (or watch youtube) about forming/baking technique.
A few key notes:
1) ALWAYS use
unbleached AP flour. It's just as cheap as the bleached stuff, but has more (variety & quantity) of the natural yeasts that your starter will need. WW or rye are more expensive, but don't need to be used nearly as often (though I prefer to bake loaves with 50/50 AP/WW).
2) It's easy to end up with way more discard than you want/need/can use. That's why I keep it very small day to day (just 50-100 grams), which produces enough discard to cook 1-2 discard recipes per week. That said, if you WANT lots of discard, go up to 200-300 grams & you'll have plenty. When you're getting ready to bake, figure out what your recipe will need, and double or triple the quantity you feed it to develop enough starter.
3) If you see the starter start to form a layer of brown liquid (a form of alcohol, "hooch" in the parlance), it means you're starving the starter. Either feed it more frequently, or discard a larger portion of the starter at each feeding.
4) Temperature & humidity matter -- colder = low activity & rises take forever ... too warm = highly active with low flavor. More humid = better oven rise while baking.
5) Relax, have fun, give your starter a punny name ("Bread Pitt", "Doughlene", or mine is simply the "Yeastie Beasties"), and just let it be. Patience is essential.
