My friend shared her starter with me and l've been trying to make bread with it. I keep failing miserably even though I follow the recipe and it takes me the entire day. Ironically I think my first loaf (second picture) was better than my last. I used 500g of flour, 150g of starter, 20g of salt and 380g of water.
Refreshed my starter 3 hours before, Did the autolyse, added the starter, let it rise, did the stretch and fold then cooked it a few hours later. Somehow the dough doesn't seem to rise at all in the oven.
Could it be because my starter is kept in the fridge ?
Thank you for your feedback or moral support
by boueda
5 Comments
**Hello boueda,**
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Don’t give up… I can help u if u want. Can I see your starter? How u feed it?
When you fed your starter, did you put it back into the fridge or leave it on the counter until you used it? Did your starter double in size before you used it? How many hours did you let the dough rise in total after adding the starter to the autolyse ingredients? Do you know the temp of your house during this time?
We need more details to help!
How active and strong is your starter? Regardless, that’s a lot of salt. I do 450g of flour and 8g of salt.
From what I can tell you need some more time at every step. When I get my starter ready to bake, sometimes it takes 12 hours to get active enough. Then after the first mix I let it proof for an hour. Then after 3 stretch and folds over 1.5 hours it gets another 2.5 hours, then 12 hours in the fridge overnight. I start the whole process the morning before I want to bake.
You didn’t specify flour types, I feed my starter with rye and make the loaves with bread flour.
I also use a pretty similar proportion of salt so I’d personally be surprised if that’s the issue. I call it 2 tsp because my scale doesn’t always register salt very well.
I hope this helps! If you want to make it work you will!