Took me five tries to realize my starter was feeding the wrong flour

I've been baking sourdough for about a year now and could not figure out why every loaf came out flat and gummy. Last Saturday I got a little jar of rye flour from a neighbor's mill and swapped it into my morning feed on a whim. The next day my starter doubled in under four hours and smelled totally different, like apples instead of acetone. That's when it hit me that my all-purpose flour had been way too weak for the starter to thrive all this time. I checked the protein content on the bag and it was only 9%, no wonder it never bubbled right. Anyone else had a similar lightbulb moment with their starter or have a flour brand they swear by for sourdough?

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margaretw4123d ago

Rye's a game changer, that protein kick does it. Give bread flour a shot.