I recently decided that it was time to start maintaining a starter to make breads. (Full disclosure: I am not a great bread maker but trying to get better). In the past, I have always just used commercial yeast and didn’t really consider natural leavening. As my wife knows, I don’t like doing anything the easy way, so enough with the little packets of yeast. Overall, there were some ups and downs over the past two weeks, but I think I finally managed to get a healthy and strong culture going.

My flour mixture started as a 50/50 whole wheat/all-purpose blend, which initially took off. See photo to the right two days after starting. However, my wife was not a fan of the smell. She barely tolerates my various messes in the kitchen as is and I got a little worried that this might put her over the edge.

After this easy start, the activity really seemed to die down and the mixture was mostly just like pancake batter. Although the weather had turned colder (my kitchen was at around 65F most of the time), I decided the problem may have been chlorine in the water. I kept a couple tablespoons of the old half-dead starter and boiled some water to get rid of any chlorine.

I created a little system to boil water and keep adding it to this old half-gallon jug that I bought years ago and until now had never found a use for.

Based on some reading online, I also switched to a 50/50 all-purpose / rye flour blend. Not a great idea to change two different variables at the same time, but it worked. The starter really took off after another 2 days, two feeding cycles. The culture seemed strong enough and decided it was time to try to make some actual bread. (For another post).

My culture after 2 weeks (with a couple days of serious neglect here and there). I fed the culture about 3 hours before this photo. The starter had roughly doubled in volume and obtained a fairly gentle sweet smell. My wife hasn’t complained about the smell in days!