Loaf of bread: dwarf bread. It has currently been sawn into thin planks and is at a low temp in the toaster oven in an attempt to dry it out enough for breadcrumbs. If that doesn't work, oh well. Either I didn't knead it enough, the starter wasn't active enough, or both. Probably both.

I also did one of the bread machine sourdough loaf recipes I found, where the starter is used more for flavor than leavening. It rose nicely, but collapsed, leaving a dense-ish brick. Haven't sawn into it yet as it's still warm. I think the problem with this one was that there was too much liquid. Oh well! As myrialux says, it's a learning process.

I've also harvested 1/2 cup of the white flour starter #2 and 1.5 cups of the buckwheat starter #3 so as to have enough for banana bread making--we have 3 bananas at pretty much the peak point for banana bread right now--and for buckwheat pancakes this weekend. We shall see what happens with those, although I expect they'll be fine. The banana bread is a quick bread that uses baking powder and baking soda for leavening, and the pancakes use baking soda.

I am also not incredibly optimistic about the pizza dough, but it has been THOROUGHLY kneaded and is in its 2-day resting/fermenting phase, so we'll see. The dwarf bread/curling stone had some holes in it, indicating there was at least some yeast giving it the old college try. (We have a backup plan if the pizza dough fails to dough.)

Bread dough made (via stand mixer and dough hook) and placed into fridge. I'm opting for the 24-hour rise in the fridge given the slight lessening of gluten in the dough thanks to a bit of buckwheat in the starter and I've heard that fresh starters don't have as much flavor as mature ones, so slow rises bring out more flav--

---Oh, who am I kidding, I have no idea. I'm just feeling my way here, and guessed that the longer rise would be better. No idea if I even kneaded it the correct amount of time. We'll see! If it ends up flat, we'll have breadcrumbs! XD The dough tasted pretty plain, with just a wee hint of tang, which also went into my calculations.

( cut for starter pics from this morning )

....THAT I HAVE ACHIEVED SOURDOUGH STARTER

But not by using the Wild Sourdough Project’s recipe. More later—I’m on my phone and headachy right now.

11th and 12th feedings, May 10 and 11

Much the same: no activity indicating yeast, sour-bad smells. I have now concluded that I have two carefully nurtured bacterial colonies. I shall report that to the project in 2 days, after the 14th feeding, then I shall toss them.

But what would cause them to fail? After some more research, I found out that our city’s water systems doesn’t use chlorine, but chloramine to treat the water. That’s a combo of chlorine and ammonia and, more importantly, it does not outgas from water if you let it sit overnight.

We have a whole-house water filter that the builders installed, and we somewhat recently had it serviced, so it should be working. I am not sure exactly which filter it is and the company’s website says that some filter out chloramine, and others don’t.

So I started two more, using the Serious Eats method (link in a prior entry), one with tap water straight from the tap, and one with bottled water, which should technically tell me if the water is the problem. If those both fail, I’ll get some different bottled water and try using a starter with some yeast put in it. I want to know why they all fail!

So SE#1, started last night, smelled like flour and a little bit of sourness today. It also had either a lot of hooch on top, or it had separated, so I went ahead and fed it. SE#2, started this morning when I realized I could try the bottled water, smelled like flour and water. I went ahead and fed it anyway, just to get them both on the same schedule.

SCIENCE! Of a sort.

7th-9th feedings, May 6-8

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I’ve got my dates and feedings off somehow. I know it’s the 5th feeding and May 4th, although for some reason I thought it was May 4th yesterday. I’ll go back and attempt to re-date, but don’t guarantee consistency.

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Just gave them the second feeding.

2nd feeding, May 1st
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Project for Wild Sourdough, a citizen-science enterprise. Disclaimer: while I welcome your comments and observations, I won't be following any suggestions until after the 2 weeks (or 14 feedings, whichever comes first) because I need to follow the protocol that the project calls for.

Feeding 5
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edit: D.Va ninja'ed up onto the counter--there's 2 levels to the counter, and she was on the higher part that faces the living room, not the food-prep surface--so I let her smell the spoon I used to stir the funky white flour starter. She sniffed it curiously, but was way more interested in the drain in the sink as I rinsed starter off the spoon. She's fascinated by drains.

I've participated in a couple of home science experiments/data-gathering projects for the Public Science Projects outfit. (Your Wild Life and Showerhead Microbiome, if you're curious.)

Last week they sent out a new one, Wild Sourdough, where you make a sourdough starter following their instructions and after two weeks you take some measurements, make some observations, and report back to them.

They're interested in what different starters in different areas of the country (and maybe world?) do, as the strains of yeast in the air are different everywhere. They're also interested in data from starters made with different flours, and starters placed inside and outside the house. I chose not to put any outside the house because I don't want tomcats spraying the jars (there's no good place I can keep cats away and also leave it exposed to the air), but we do have white and whole wheat flour, so I did that.

Note that while I'm sure lots of you are experienced with sourdough starters and I welcome your comments and observations, I won't be following any suggestions until after the 2 weeks (or 14 feedings, whichever comes first) because I need to follow the protocol that the project calls for. They want data, even if it fails.

( cut for observations so far )

The most important question of all: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO NAME THE STARTERS IF THEY SURVIVE? Keeping in mind that I will never beat the one dude on Metafilter who named his Mikey D the Yeastie Boy.