Day two of the Whole Wheat starter. Did not see a lot of activate after 24 hours, but also realized the kitchen is to cool, specially at night when we turn the heat way down. The youtube video I am going by says his kitchen is about 71°. So I turned the light on in the oven and that holds pretty steady at 70°, so hope to have a little more activity over the net few days.
For some of you this is info you have known for years, for those like me, maybe interesting. Just so you have an idea of this starter, start off with 50g of water and flour. Today I added another 50g of both water and flour. Tomorrow I will have 200g of starter I will add 100g of both water and flour. Day 4 is where it gets interesting for me and I have questions for you guys that are old hat at this starter stuff.
So it appears when I get to day 4 I will have 400g of starter and I will start "discarding" starter (the King Arthur recipe is making more sense now). I will take 150g of starter and add 150 g of water and flour and discard the rest of the starter. 1st question, will there be anyway to tell if the discard at day 4 would be viable to use in a loaf, or am I best this early in the process to put it down the drain for the microbes in the septic? 2nd question, do you all average in that 150g range on what you use as feed?
He goes on to do the 150g of starter, water and flour, for the next 3 days. He says it can be used by day 8, but you probably need to go another 7 days before you have a strong starter.
A couple of final questions, in say an 800g dough loaf, about how many grams of starter will you use? The answer to this next question will have significance on the previous questions I guess. How often do you all feed your starter if you are only baking say a couple of loafs a week?
Have not seen much activity in 1st 24 hours, but I am going to attribute that to room temperature, will see if we have some bubbles tomorrow after 24 hours at 70°.