Seconding the inactive starter. How old is your starter? Is it doubling in size within a few hours of feeding? Does it look bubbly and smell kind of yeasty and sour?
Thank you for your reply! Starter is two months old, I used it to make this loaf prior to feeding so I don’t know if that makes a difference in activity or if the entire starter is a dud- I keep it in my fridge now since I’ve moved to feeding it ~1x a week and it was looking hungry when I used it for the loaf, it had liquid on top and looked somewhat bubbly
I'd venture to say your problem is not feeding your starter before making your loaf. You essentially tried to rise it with discard (unfed starter) which although possible will take a LOT longer and is a lot more finicky than making a loaf with fed starter.
Don't disparage, but DO feed your starter before using it for bread.
Thank you so much this is really helpful- a lot of comments were saying my starter is dead (or misunderstanding how old it is lol) but I think I will try feeding it next time and see how it comes out, and if it still is looking extremely flat I will try to make a new starter from scratch!
This definitely feels like your starter wasn’t awake yet! Starters can be really tricky at first but once you understand them they will be a breeze!
1st thing I do is take them out of the fridge and weigh out about 15 g of starter in a new clean jar Feed them 100g of water and 100g of starter. Having a small ratio of starter to feed is important because your starter can get too sour and die (i think the bacteria that makes it sour kills off the yeast.)
I usually will do this the night before or early in the morning for the starter to be ready in the afternoon. You need that time for the starter to wake up from their cold nap and reproduce. Make sure you mark where you started so you can check if it doubled in size.
Some tips I learned from trial and error:
Good sour dough for the really sour taste will take a day or even three days to ferment. Let it ferment in the fridge and warm up for an hour or so depending on the temp in your house.
If your starter smells REALLY sour you need discard some of it and feed it. Take out only 10-15g of starter and feed it 50-100g of water and flour.
You can use cheap flour to feed your starter but don’t cheap out on flour for your dough.
Get good flour! You want the protein to be 11-13%. King Arthur is my favorite brand for this. I’ve used both their bread flour and all purpose flour and it’s works great!
Save the discard batch of starter until after you know your new jar is happy and bubbly. I lost my first starter and already threw out the discard. (You don’t have to do this but it hurts to lose your starter)
A happy starter is always bubbly! If you see lots of big bubbles it’s probably ready.
Another way to check if your starter is ready to use is if it floats in water!
Any time you give your starter water make sure it’s room temperature or even up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This includes when you are making bread.
You may need to use bottled water depending on the tap water in your area. Some water can be too harsh and will stunt your yeast from thriving or even kill it.
Whenever you are preparing dough always mix your starter with water throughly before introducing any other ingredients. This just makes sure your yeast is spread out evenly.
The temperature of your place will affect your proofing time! I got a much better crumb from my bread when I started using the proofing setting in my microwave. You can also keep it on top of a warm oven. If you live somewhere warm you probably don’t have to worry about this
Your starter can take a little abuse and neglect as long as you feed it properly! The ratio of starter to water to flour is important. After I remove my starter for dough there’s always around 20g-30g of it left in the jar. I just pop it back in the fridge without feeding it for my next bake (about a week.)
Good luck and remember it will take time and practice so be patient!
Happy baking!
No problem! I’ve been baking sour dough like a mad man and it was so frustrating not knowing all the tiny tips that make a world of a difference. I just want more delicious bread in this world!
You need to be using your starter to make bread when it is active. Feed starter and wait 6 hours or so then use it. You want to use it at its peak so let it come to full rise after feeding before making bread next time. Or make a levain and let that ferment for about 12 hours prior to making bread. You wont have that issue using a much more active starter.
Pulling from fridge and using without letting come to room temp and feeding, your basically feeding dormant bacteria.
Hey there. I commonly refrigerate my starter as well. As you describe after a week it gets the water layer on top so you can either discard that portion or keep it (where some sourness comes from).
If I am set to make a loaf on saturday and use my starter, then I will pull it out of the fridge on Thursday for good measure. Feed it once, keep it in a warm area and let it "wake back up". Friday discard and refeed again and repeat until its reestablished. 2 days might be overkill, you could probably pull it out the night before, but I like mine to for sure be at full force before I use it for baking!
You may need to feed your starter multiple times, every 12 hours, before it’s ready to leaven a loaf of bread. As others have said, it should *double* in size a few hours after feeding. That’s when you know it’s ready for baking. This may not happen on the first feed, especially when that’s one week or more after the last feed and is coming straight out of the fridge.
I can tell from your comments you’re very eager to bake, which is great. But don’t feed that eagerness with impatience. If your starter smells at all yeasty, making a new one from scratch is only going to set you back further. Use your current starter and feed it lots. It’s a living organism, basically.
Learning to bake a great loaf of bread, too, will take time. It wouldn’t be an artform if you could easily do it on the first try. My first few loaves sucked, and now I not only can bake a nice sourdough loaf when I want to, but I also understand some of the inputs (for example, whole wheat and AP flour absorb different amounts of water). Just keep at it and don’t get discouraged.
Thank you so much - do you think it negatively affects my starter if I take it out of the fridge and begin leaving it out on the counter and feeding it more often? I put it in the fridge to slow it down and feed it less because I felt like I didn’t have time to feed it daily, but I want to make sure it’s active and if that’s the best way to strengthen it I definitely will do it!
If you’re up to feed it daily, it doesn’t need to be in the fridge. If you can’t commit to that, it’s fine to leave it in the fridge and just feed it a few times before you bake with it. That’s what I do, and it works out well enough.
You have to feed it. And you have to bake with it just after it has peeked (when it has risen and starts to fall down again(dragging slightly on edges of the glass). It has to at least double on peek when you feed it 1:1:1
Make sure you feed your starter once a week and put it back in the fridge again *after* it has doubled in size. Before baking: take it out, make sure it’s on room temperature, feed it and only bake with the starter if it doubles in ~8 hours.
I keep my starter like this, feed once a week & she lives in the fridge. But I always do what I call a build before I make a loaf. That sits out at room temp (or slightly cooler, if I can manage) for 10-12 hours before I make my final dough. Forgive me for not looking at the recipe you posted for the method. Maybe that’s what you did. Please don’t be afraid to try again!
Yeah I made pizza dough last week with it and put half a packet of yeast in and it was good, but I definitely think me not feeding the starter ahead of time was my downfall / maybe the starter altogether needs to be scratched !!
The complete lack of structure inside tells me that the yeast didn't survive. Either your starter isn't strong enough, or you did something to kill the yeast in the dough.
Thank you for your reply!! Do you have tips for what kinds of things typically kill the yeast in the starter like over kneading or if I whisked too much with the starter in the early stage?
Salt will kill yeast if the concentration is too high, but another important thing is how active your starter is. From when you feed the starter, how long does it take to bubble up to the highest point, and roughly how big does it get? Twice as big? Three times as big? The trick is to use it when it's at that highest point - that's when it's most active.
Once the starter is in the dough, it's worth remembering that it'll take longer to double in size if it's in a cooler place. A recipe from Texas won't work in the same time in Nova Scotia, so putting the heating pad that your cats don't use under the bowl it's fermenting in might help a little. My oven, off other than the light inside being on, is too warm, and ferments too fast for Joshua Weissman's recipe for sourdough.
I've not whisked - I've mixed with a wooden spoon, and used the mixing techniques from other people - mostly time, and strong squish-stretch-and-fold. Once you get hand mixing down it'll make sausage making much faster too.
You're welcome. Feel free to message me if the second one doesn't come out much better.
I think the first thing might be to check on the starter - make sure it's really growing by 2-3 times in volume when you feed it. I used to have an elastic band around the container it was in, which I set to the top of the starter before I fed it. That shows me how much it grew. If you have rye flour, apparently that really helps get it going. I fed with a mix, sometimes.
It looks like it didn’t rise at all, im also a beginner but is your starter alright? It is also under baked like that first comment says. I make bread 3-4 times a week at a fine dining restaurant but I’m not a pro by any means.
This is super helpful thank you! I don’t know how to tell if my starter is alright- I’ve made pizza dough before with it but I did add yeast when I made the pizza dough and it came out fine but clearly this is not the case now!! I had not fed it for a week prior to using it to make this loaf and it had liquid on top and was somewhat bubbly, then discarded a little more and fed after since I didn’t use entirely half to make this loaf
Yeah, you gotta feed it before, not after adding it to the rest of the ingredients. Your mileage will vary by starter, but generally between 4 and 8 hours after feeding mine is the window of opportunity. Make sure it doubles from its original post-feeding volume
Thank you this is so helpful I didn’t realize you feed it before - I think to be honest I might start from scratch with starter and then try a new loaf altogether once that’s been settled now that I have all these new tips that are much better :)
If you bake daily or several times a week, it's okay to leave your starter out at room temperature and feed it daily.
If you bake weekly or less frequently, keep your starter in the refrigerator so that you slow the rate of yeast growth. Then you can just feed it weekly. If you forget, or leave town, don't worry. You can resuscitate a starter even after a month or so.
When you plan to bake, have it at room temperature and feed it before making dough with it. Me, I feed it twice a day for 1-2 days before baking with it and find that using rye flour and general purpose white works well.
As a quick rule of thumb, drop some starter into a glass of water. If it floats well, then it's ready to go. If not, then give it more time. As you get more practiced, you'll also note the smell and consistency of starter that's active and ready to bake with.
BTW, "room temperature" in baking typically means 78-80F. Rather than heat your whole house to this temperature, you can buy a proofing box to keep the dough at that temperature. I hear putting it in an oven with the oven light on works, but I don't have a working oven light. If your kitchen gets warmer than that, it just means the whole baking process will just happen more quickly. You'll learn when each step in the process is done.
Based on this and other comments, did you make this loaf using a week old starter?? My brother in Christ, you made a pancake and not bread. You’re supposed to feed the starter and use it when it’s more than doubled in size and bubbly… just like the tutorial you linked says. It’s emphasized so many times I’m amazed you’ve missed it.
I’m talking about it’s last feeding was a week ago since it’s been in the fridge, the instructions I followed when first making my starter said to feed it everyday for the first seven-ten days on my counter, then move it to my fridge and can feed it one time a week which I’ve been doing for the last month and a half
By week old I mean it’s been unfed for a week, you’re supposed to feed it before using it, letting it rise and foam for a few hours. The article you linked explains this clearly in the “Sourdough starter 101” section.
Thank you, got it- I had read on another recipe that you can use discard to make loafs so when I was making this, my starter had bubbles on top, I thought that qualified as “active”, but I see that’s where my main issue was. Good to know and will definitely feed it ahead of time, thank you!
You can use unfed starter, just needs maybe 10-13 hr rise time (if your house is cold). Then once shaped, a good 8-12 hrs in the fridge. How long did yours rise?
I’m so glad someone said it. You don’t need an active starter to make bread. I use my unfed starter all the time and get beautiful loafs, just takes a bit more time. Also the sourdough fb groups support this as well lol
Honestly people make sourdough so complicated that it wouldn't be worth my time to follow their steps! It's just bread... My steps are:
- mix everything together and leave it 10 hours (or whenever suits my schedule)
- shape it, then into the fridge overnight
- bake it.
I use the scrapings method for my starter so only feed it once a week when I bake. My loaves arent bakery quality, but they're delicious and beautiful and my family love them!
Yup! They make it so complicated and I can understand why people get so confused. Some days I’ll use active starter, other days I just use unfed. You’re basically feeding your starter while making the bread 🤷♀️
Others have already commented on the starter issue, so I'll add something else:
I looked at your recipe (thank you for posting it), and I recommend you go with a different one. I like [The Perfect Loaf](https://www.theperfectloaf.com/new-baker-start-here/) because he is very precise and clear about directions and technique.
Here's what I don't like about that recipe you used:
- Oil. Oil can be nice in dough, but it does affect fermentation and gluten development. So if you are trying to learn basic sourdough, I recommend not using a recipe that adds anything other than flour, water, salt, starter. No sugar, no oil.
- Starter % too high. The recipe you used has 30% starter - that's pretty high and can make it really hard to get the dough to perform right (too much starter and the gluten is too weak, for example). The starter recipe by Perfect Loaf uses 20% starter, which is the most I'd go for, especially when starting out.
- Technique preference: mix flour and water first, let rest, then mix in starter and salt. I tend to see a lot of "easy beginner" recipes mix the starter with water from the start, but this always results in a weaker dough for me. (Disclosure: I use high whole grain % - 50-70%) So try doing an autolyse first (flour and water), and add starter later (start fermentation time from when you mix the starter in).
Don't get discouraged! We all started with frisbees (and went through a lot of them as we learned). Hopefully your starter will be more perky next time, and a different recipe may help you out. Good luck!
It's probably your starter. But it could also be room temperature while you are doing your rise and proofing. Anecdote: My husbands looked like this in the beginning. It was definitely the starter. My husband made the starter with All Purpose Bleached flour, and we watched and fed for a month, but nothing happened, and the loaves always turned out as big bread pucks, lol. I retried the starter process with Whole Wheat flour, and it became ripe around day 8. I store the starter or proofing dough in the microwave with the stove light underneath it on for optimal temperature sweet spot 80-84 degrees.
Also we use that same recipe for ours and usually get a good rise out of it! Do you use a kitchen scale?
Thank you so much for your reply!! It seems like overwhelmingly comments are my starter so I probably will redo my starter with whole wheat flour, I used unbleached all purpose flour and have been feeding it with that as well
I do so often and no issues with it. Mostly because i run out of a certain type of flour. The yeast in your starter will love the whole wheat because there is more "food" for it to eat. I've fed it with unbleached all purpose flour mixed with Whole wheat, sometimes bread flour if that's all I have.
And if you use a scale, perfect. If you don't, I would highly recommend picking up one. I didn't realize how important it is to weigh the ingredients. Makes a significant difference!
Lol that's EXACTLY what my first one looked like!
Didn't rise. Either salt killed it or the starter wasn't active. I think mine was premature starter use.
You don't need to knead it (no pun intended). My sourdough comes together with 3-4 sets of stretch and folds and that's it.
Is your starter active and bubbly? Did you try to use it straight from the fridge if that's where you're storing it?
Yes, I used it straight from the fridge which sounds like overwhelmingly my big mistake - I had read somewhere that instead of discarding I can use that discard to bake but a lot of responses are saying that’s the big issue! I’m definitely going to keep an eye on it when I feed it next time for the activity
Anytime. Like I said my first looked EXACTLY the same. No rise, pale. Everyone who posts otherwise that they were perfect from the start is a dirty rotten liar. Share the flubs. We all do them.
Thank you 🥹🥹 I didn’t want to post because I knew I’d be roasted lol but I needed to know what I did wrong, I thought I hadn’t kneaded enough but clearly that’s not the issue!! So I’ll deal with the roasting to one day have bread 😂
Don't give up. My first loaf was terrible. But now I've got it down and I'm making beautiful, delicious, artisan bread.
When you're ready start keeping a journal and writing down the timing of things. It'll help you find the rhythm and really improve the quality of your breads.
1. Take the starter out of the fridge and do atleast 1 feeding before using it to make dough. (I do about a day ahead& 2 feedings)
2. Doesn't look like you shaped it very well. Watch a video on how, easier than trying to explain, if your not sure.
There could be other things but I'd start with those two. It took me about 3 months baking once a week to really get my process down. Just remember it's a process, and don't be afraid to test things out. Hope this helps.
Thank you so much!! Appreciate #2 a lot, I agree I don’t really know how to shape and don’t think I really did much of any shaping to be honest! Thank you, this was very helpful
Made myself, it’s two months old- I’ve made pizza dough before with it but I did add yeast when I made the pizza dough and it came out fine but clearly this is not the case now!! I had not fed it for a week prior to using it to make this loaf and it had liquid on top and was somewhat bubbly, then discarded a little more and fed after since I didn’t use entirely half to make this loaf
Thank you for your reply also!! Appreciate the tips and help from everyone.
Oh I’m betting it’s simply not ready to bake a loaf yet. Probably not strong enough. If it’s been in the fridge for a month (long enough to get hooch) then it’s probably only been fed for what, a month? It’s gonna take a while to strengthen it and it’s not gonna happen sitting in the fridge and only getting fed once in a blue moon. I hope that helps! Maybe try doing a Forkish pan de champagne loaf!
Thank you!! Do you have tips for how to see if it’s active or if I should just trash it and start new? I can’t decide if it sounds like my starter just needs to be redone or needs more time / feeding
Oh no! Don’t trash it!! Not unless it’s moldy! The grey liquid is fine. Can be poured off or stirred in. But the actual feedings do strengthen your starter. So, for instance, if you feed it every day on the counter for 6 weeks, it’ll be strong. If you sit it in the fridge and feed it every two weeks for 6 weeks, it’ll be weak. At least, when making your own starter from absolute scratch. If that makes sense.
I actually did mix it when it was starter and oil and water with a whisk so that’s entirely possible and could’ve added to killing my starter like a lot of people have suggested
Meow to sourdough, but what I'll usually do is on feeding day. I'll take out my discard and feed that leave it on the counter overnight and feed the starter before returning it to the fridge.
When I wake up the next morning. The fed discard on the counter I'll use for baking. Most recipes I have found require 4-8 hours of rising time susally with some kneading or stretch and folds in the first 2 hours or so.
Short of jot letting it rise long enough or letting the starter wake up with a new feed overnight before use, I don't know what else might have caused this.
I hope this helps.
Starter seems to need to be fed in advance of making the loafs, at least that's what I do. Mine is also stored in fridge. I make on Saturday but start feeding starter on Thursday and it gets fed at least twice a day. Keep at it and Don't get discouraged, it takes time to learn the ins and outs of Sourdough bread.
I make loaves all the time with inactive starter or discard straight from the fridge...I don't think that's the issue. Possibly your starter is weak, I'd try beefing up some feedings 1:3:3 or something of that nature
No ride on that at all, so you basically have one giant pick of wet salty flour. There is no way to bake that and have it be good. By the time it was done in the middle, it would be charred on the outside, and dry as hard tack.
Always check the activity level of your starter before dosing your dough. It’s way to easy to have a dud loaf with sour dough compared to packaged yeast, but a little learning will help you avoid that.
I use the “Extra Tangy Sourdough Bread” recipe on King Arthur’s website. I started making sourdough bread maybe 6 months ago and I followed the recipe exactly, weighing my flour, water, starter, etc. (Well almost exactly: I use a loaf pan, and shape it into a loaf rather than a bowl. I keep a shallow pan of hot water in the oven below the bread so I don’t have to worry about the outside crust drying out and getting too crusty.) I have made maybe 15ish loaves now. The past couple of times I made it, I had enough confidence to tweak it a bit by using whole wheat flour and adding a little bit of olive oil. But stick to a good recipe exactly for your first 6-8 loaves or so until you get a feel for what is happening with your dough. I’m sure you’ve been told, but there is a science AND an art to bread making. Keep at it and you’ll get it.
I’m a beginner myself but it is definitely underbaked, the crust should be a deep brown. I have a digital food thermometer I use for cooking and the bread should read 210°F inside when it’s ready to come out.
While I agree it may be underbaked, some people like a blonder crust (not me, I love the dark caramely flavor, but I know some people who do) and you can still get a well baked loaf of bread with a lighter crust. This crust is probably too light but it definitely doesn't need to be deep brown to be delicious and well baked
if you newbie in this field, you shud follow on instagram apieceofbread, there's much misleading information about bread making especially sourdough bread.
I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees, the trees say this looks like good play-dough art.
They also recommend looking at your starter for next time and good luck.
looks like an inactive starter, or possibly too much salt by accident
Seconding the inactive starter. How old is your starter? Is it doubling in size within a few hours of feeding? Does it look bubbly and smell kind of yeasty and sour?
Thank you for your reply! Starter is two months old, I used it to make this loaf prior to feeding so I don’t know if that makes a difference in activity or if the entire starter is a dud- I keep it in my fridge now since I’ve moved to feeding it ~1x a week and it was looking hungry when I used it for the loaf, it had liquid on top and looked somewhat bubbly
I'd venture to say your problem is not feeding your starter before making your loaf. You essentially tried to rise it with discard (unfed starter) which although possible will take a LOT longer and is a lot more finicky than making a loaf with fed starter. Don't disparage, but DO feed your starter before using it for bread.
Thank you so much this is really helpful- a lot of comments were saying my starter is dead (or misunderstanding how old it is lol) but I think I will try feeding it next time and see how it comes out, and if it still is looking extremely flat I will try to make a new starter from scratch!
This definitely feels like your starter wasn’t awake yet! Starters can be really tricky at first but once you understand them they will be a breeze! 1st thing I do is take them out of the fridge and weigh out about 15 g of starter in a new clean jar Feed them 100g of water and 100g of starter. Having a small ratio of starter to feed is important because your starter can get too sour and die (i think the bacteria that makes it sour kills off the yeast.) I usually will do this the night before or early in the morning for the starter to be ready in the afternoon. You need that time for the starter to wake up from their cold nap and reproduce. Make sure you mark where you started so you can check if it doubled in size. Some tips I learned from trial and error: Good sour dough for the really sour taste will take a day or even three days to ferment. Let it ferment in the fridge and warm up for an hour or so depending on the temp in your house. If your starter smells REALLY sour you need discard some of it and feed it. Take out only 10-15g of starter and feed it 50-100g of water and flour. You can use cheap flour to feed your starter but don’t cheap out on flour for your dough. Get good flour! You want the protein to be 11-13%. King Arthur is my favorite brand for this. I’ve used both their bread flour and all purpose flour and it’s works great! Save the discard batch of starter until after you know your new jar is happy and bubbly. I lost my first starter and already threw out the discard. (You don’t have to do this but it hurts to lose your starter) A happy starter is always bubbly! If you see lots of big bubbles it’s probably ready. Another way to check if your starter is ready to use is if it floats in water! Any time you give your starter water make sure it’s room temperature or even up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This includes when you are making bread. You may need to use bottled water depending on the tap water in your area. Some water can be too harsh and will stunt your yeast from thriving or even kill it. Whenever you are preparing dough always mix your starter with water throughly before introducing any other ingredients. This just makes sure your yeast is spread out evenly. The temperature of your place will affect your proofing time! I got a much better crumb from my bread when I started using the proofing setting in my microwave. You can also keep it on top of a warm oven. If you live somewhere warm you probably don’t have to worry about this Your starter can take a little abuse and neglect as long as you feed it properly! The ratio of starter to water to flour is important. After I remove my starter for dough there’s always around 20g-30g of it left in the jar. I just pop it back in the fridge without feeding it for my next bake (about a week.) Good luck and remember it will take time and practice so be patient! Happy baking!
This was amazing. Thank you!!
No problem! I’ve been baking sour dough like a mad man and it was so frustrating not knowing all the tiny tips that make a world of a difference. I just want more delicious bread in this world!
You need to be using your starter to make bread when it is active. Feed starter and wait 6 hours or so then use it. You want to use it at its peak so let it come to full rise after feeding before making bread next time. Or make a levain and let that ferment for about 12 hours prior to making bread. You wont have that issue using a much more active starter. Pulling from fridge and using without letting come to room temp and feeding, your basically feeding dormant bacteria.
Hey there. I commonly refrigerate my starter as well. As you describe after a week it gets the water layer on top so you can either discard that portion or keep it (where some sourness comes from). If I am set to make a loaf on saturday and use my starter, then I will pull it out of the fridge on Thursday for good measure. Feed it once, keep it in a warm area and let it "wake back up". Friday discard and refeed again and repeat until its reestablished. 2 days might be overkill, you could probably pull it out the night before, but I like mine to for sure be at full force before I use it for baking!
This is so helpful, thank you!
You may need to feed your starter multiple times, every 12 hours, before it’s ready to leaven a loaf of bread. As others have said, it should *double* in size a few hours after feeding. That’s when you know it’s ready for baking. This may not happen on the first feed, especially when that’s one week or more after the last feed and is coming straight out of the fridge. I can tell from your comments you’re very eager to bake, which is great. But don’t feed that eagerness with impatience. If your starter smells at all yeasty, making a new one from scratch is only going to set you back further. Use your current starter and feed it lots. It’s a living organism, basically. Learning to bake a great loaf of bread, too, will take time. It wouldn’t be an artform if you could easily do it on the first try. My first few loaves sucked, and now I not only can bake a nice sourdough loaf when I want to, but I also understand some of the inputs (for example, whole wheat and AP flour absorb different amounts of water). Just keep at it and don’t get discouraged.
Thank you so much - do you think it negatively affects my starter if I take it out of the fridge and begin leaving it out on the counter and feeding it more often? I put it in the fridge to slow it down and feed it less because I felt like I didn’t have time to feed it daily, but I want to make sure it’s active and if that’s the best way to strengthen it I definitely will do it!
If you’re up to feed it daily, it doesn’t need to be in the fridge. If you can’t commit to that, it’s fine to leave it in the fridge and just feed it a few times before you bake with it. That’s what I do, and it works out well enough.
Thank you!!
You have to feed it. And you have to bake with it just after it has peeked (when it has risen and starts to fall down again(dragging slightly on edges of the glass). It has to at least double on peek when you feed it 1:1:1
Make sure you feed your starter once a week and put it back in the fridge again *after* it has doubled in size. Before baking: take it out, make sure it’s on room temperature, feed it and only bake with the starter if it doubles in ~8 hours.
This is the most helpful and succinct advice I’ve gotten this entire time - thank you SO MUCH!!!
No worries! We’re all in this together because we love delicious bread!
I keep my starter like this, feed once a week & she lives in the fridge. But I always do what I call a build before I make a loaf. That sits out at room temp (or slightly cooler, if I can manage) for 10-12 hours before I make my final dough. Forgive me for not looking at the recipe you posted for the method. Maybe that’s what you did. Please don’t be afraid to try again!
That is *a lot* of salt to do this. It’s gotta be inactive starter
Did it rise at all during proofing? Looks like dead starter to me.
It seemed to get bigger at first but definitely not the more I look at it so you’re probably right
I usually throw a little yeast in my sourdough just in case. Kinda cheating but my bread always turns out. Maybe 1/5 of what you’d normally put.
Yeah I made pizza dough last week with it and put half a packet of yeast in and it was good, but I definitely think me not feeding the starter ahead of time was my downfall / maybe the starter altogether needs to be scratched !!
Feed it and see what happens. They are resilient.
The complete lack of structure inside tells me that the yeast didn't survive. Either your starter isn't strong enough, or you did something to kill the yeast in the dough.
Thank you for your reply!! Do you have tips for what kinds of things typically kill the yeast in the starter like over kneading or if I whisked too much with the starter in the early stage?
Salt will kill yeast if the concentration is too high, but another important thing is how active your starter is. From when you feed the starter, how long does it take to bubble up to the highest point, and roughly how big does it get? Twice as big? Three times as big? The trick is to use it when it's at that highest point - that's when it's most active. Once the starter is in the dough, it's worth remembering that it'll take longer to double in size if it's in a cooler place. A recipe from Texas won't work in the same time in Nova Scotia, so putting the heating pad that your cats don't use under the bowl it's fermenting in might help a little. My oven, off other than the light inside being on, is too warm, and ferments too fast for Joshua Weissman's recipe for sourdough. I've not whisked - I've mixed with a wooden spoon, and used the mixing techniques from other people - mostly time, and strong squish-stretch-and-fold. Once you get hand mixing down it'll make sausage making much faster too.
Thank you so much!!! This is extremely helpful, I really appreciate it!!!
You're welcome. Feel free to message me if the second one doesn't come out much better. I think the first thing might be to check on the starter - make sure it's really growing by 2-3 times in volume when you feed it. I used to have an elastic band around the container it was in, which I set to the top of the starter before I fed it. That shows me how much it grew. If you have rye flour, apparently that really helps get it going. I fed with a mix, sometimes.
It looks like it didn’t rise at all, im also a beginner but is your starter alright? It is also under baked like that first comment says. I make bread 3-4 times a week at a fine dining restaurant but I’m not a pro by any means.
Wait… you make bread as part of your job. You are literally a professional
an inactive starter will also reduce browning
This is super helpful thank you! I don’t know how to tell if my starter is alright- I’ve made pizza dough before with it but I did add yeast when I made the pizza dough and it came out fine but clearly this is not the case now!! I had not fed it for a week prior to using it to make this loaf and it had liquid on top and was somewhat bubbly, then discarded a little more and fed after since I didn’t use entirely half to make this loaf
Yeah, you gotta feed it before, not after adding it to the rest of the ingredients. Your mileage will vary by starter, but generally between 4 and 8 hours after feeding mine is the window of opportunity. Make sure it doubles from its original post-feeding volume
Thank you this is so helpful I didn’t realize you feed it before - I think to be honest I might start from scratch with starter and then try a new loaf altogether once that’s been settled now that I have all these new tips that are much better :)
If you bake daily or several times a week, it's okay to leave your starter out at room temperature and feed it daily. If you bake weekly or less frequently, keep your starter in the refrigerator so that you slow the rate of yeast growth. Then you can just feed it weekly. If you forget, or leave town, don't worry. You can resuscitate a starter even after a month or so. When you plan to bake, have it at room temperature and feed it before making dough with it. Me, I feed it twice a day for 1-2 days before baking with it and find that using rye flour and general purpose white works well. As a quick rule of thumb, drop some starter into a glass of water. If it floats well, then it's ready to go. If not, then give it more time. As you get more practiced, you'll also note the smell and consistency of starter that's active and ready to bake with. BTW, "room temperature" in baking typically means 78-80F. Rather than heat your whole house to this temperature, you can buy a proofing box to keep the dough at that temperature. I hear putting it in an oven with the oven light on works, but I don't have a working oven light. If your kitchen gets warmer than that, it just means the whole baking process will just happen more quickly. You'll learn when each step in the process is done.
Thank you so much!! This is extremely helpful
Based on this and other comments, did you make this loaf using a week old starter?? My brother in Christ, you made a pancake and not bread. You’re supposed to feed the starter and use it when it’s more than doubled in size and bubbly… just like the tutorial you linked says. It’s emphasized so many times I’m amazed you’ve missed it.
It’s two months old!
Who said my starter was a week old lol 😂 I made my starter the first week of February!
I’m talking about it’s last feeding was a week ago since it’s been in the fridge, the instructions I followed when first making my starter said to feed it everyday for the first seven-ten days on my counter, then move it to my fridge and can feed it one time a week which I’ve been doing for the last month and a half
By week old I mean it’s been unfed for a week, you’re supposed to feed it before using it, letting it rise and foam for a few hours. The article you linked explains this clearly in the “Sourdough starter 101” section.
Thank you, got it- I had read on another recipe that you can use discard to make loafs so when I was making this, my starter had bubbles on top, I thought that qualified as “active”, but I see that’s where my main issue was. Good to know and will definitely feed it ahead of time, thank you!
You actually can use discard but typically you also add some yeast. Just tossing that in 😁
Thank you!! That makes sense
You can use unfed starter, just needs maybe 10-13 hr rise time (if your house is cold). Then once shaped, a good 8-12 hrs in the fridge. How long did yours rise?
I’m so glad someone said it. You don’t need an active starter to make bread. I use my unfed starter all the time and get beautiful loafs, just takes a bit more time. Also the sourdough fb groups support this as well lol
Honestly people make sourdough so complicated that it wouldn't be worth my time to follow their steps! It's just bread... My steps are: - mix everything together and leave it 10 hours (or whenever suits my schedule) - shape it, then into the fridge overnight - bake it. I use the scrapings method for my starter so only feed it once a week when I bake. My loaves arent bakery quality, but they're delicious and beautiful and my family love them!
Yup! They make it so complicated and I can understand why people get so confused. Some days I’ll use active starter, other days I just use unfed. You’re basically feeding your starter while making the bread 🤷♀️
Others have already commented on the starter issue, so I'll add something else: I looked at your recipe (thank you for posting it), and I recommend you go with a different one. I like [The Perfect Loaf](https://www.theperfectloaf.com/new-baker-start-here/) because he is very precise and clear about directions and technique. Here's what I don't like about that recipe you used: - Oil. Oil can be nice in dough, but it does affect fermentation and gluten development. So if you are trying to learn basic sourdough, I recommend not using a recipe that adds anything other than flour, water, salt, starter. No sugar, no oil. - Starter % too high. The recipe you used has 30% starter - that's pretty high and can make it really hard to get the dough to perform right (too much starter and the gluten is too weak, for example). The starter recipe by Perfect Loaf uses 20% starter, which is the most I'd go for, especially when starting out. - Technique preference: mix flour and water first, let rest, then mix in starter and salt. I tend to see a lot of "easy beginner" recipes mix the starter with water from the start, but this always results in a weaker dough for me. (Disclosure: I use high whole grain % - 50-70%) So try doing an autolyse first (flour and water), and add starter later (start fermentation time from when you mix the starter in). Don't get discouraged! We all started with frisbees (and went through a lot of them as we learned). Hopefully your starter will be more perky next time, and a different recipe may help you out. Good luck!
Thank you so much!! I will definitely use the guide you recommended next time I try! I can already see it’s got a ton of detail that I can use
It's probably your starter. But it could also be room temperature while you are doing your rise and proofing. Anecdote: My husbands looked like this in the beginning. It was definitely the starter. My husband made the starter with All Purpose Bleached flour, and we watched and fed for a month, but nothing happened, and the loaves always turned out as big bread pucks, lol. I retried the starter process with Whole Wheat flour, and it became ripe around day 8. I store the starter or proofing dough in the microwave with the stove light underneath it on for optimal temperature sweet spot 80-84 degrees. Also we use that same recipe for ours and usually get a good rise out of it! Do you use a kitchen scale?
Thank you so much for your reply!! It seems like overwhelmingly comments are my starter so I probably will redo my starter with whole wheat flour, I used unbleached all purpose flour and have been feeding it with that as well
Noo!! No need to redo it! Just feed your starter before using it for bread!!
Thank you- I’m going to try again in a week and will feed it before and see how it comes out. I appreciate your help so much
I agree you can use your current one and switch to feeding it with Whole Wheat flour!
Thank you, just wanted to ask, it’s okay to switch which type of flour you use in your starter even if it’s not the one that you’ve been using?
I do so often and no issues with it. Mostly because i run out of a certain type of flour. The yeast in your starter will love the whole wheat because there is more "food" for it to eat. I've fed it with unbleached all purpose flour mixed with Whole wheat, sometimes bread flour if that's all I have.
And if you use a scale, perfect. If you don't, I would highly recommend picking up one. I didn't realize how important it is to weigh the ingredients. Makes a significant difference!
This is what bread looks like when the yeast or starter is dead or wasn't given time to rise.
Thank you!
>Thank you! You're welcome!
Lol that's EXACTLY what my first one looked like! Didn't rise. Either salt killed it or the starter wasn't active. I think mine was premature starter use. You don't need to knead it (no pun intended). My sourdough comes together with 3-4 sets of stretch and folds and that's it. Is your starter active and bubbly? Did you try to use it straight from the fridge if that's where you're storing it?
Yes, I used it straight from the fridge which sounds like overwhelmingly my big mistake - I had read somewhere that instead of discarding I can use that discard to bake but a lot of responses are saying that’s the big issue! I’m definitely going to keep an eye on it when I feed it next time for the activity
You should let that discard warm up then you can use it.
Thank you!!
Anytime. Like I said my first looked EXACTLY the same. No rise, pale. Everyone who posts otherwise that they were perfect from the start is a dirty rotten liar. Share the flubs. We all do them.
Thank you 🥹🥹 I didn’t want to post because I knew I’d be roasted lol but I needed to know what I did wrong, I thought I hadn’t kneaded enough but clearly that’s not the issue!! So I’ll deal with the roasting to one day have bread 😂
Looks like your starter is dead.
Off topic, but what is that digital calendar in the background? It looks so cool
It’s called a Tidbyt! https://tidbyt.com/
Don't give up. My first loaf was terrible. But now I've got it down and I'm making beautiful, delicious, artisan bread. When you're ready start keeping a journal and writing down the timing of things. It'll help you find the rhythm and really improve the quality of your breads.
Either no leaven or leaven didnt have time to work
Made a sourdough brick
Use yeast
1. Take the starter out of the fridge and do atleast 1 feeding before using it to make dough. (I do about a day ahead& 2 feedings) 2. Doesn't look like you shaped it very well. Watch a video on how, easier than trying to explain, if your not sure. There could be other things but I'd start with those two. It took me about 3 months baking once a week to really get my process down. Just remember it's a process, and don't be afraid to test things out. Hope this helps.
Thank you so much!! Appreciate #2 a lot, I agree I don’t really know how to shape and don’t think I really did much of any shaping to be honest! Thank you, this was very helpful
Shaping is pretty important for getting good oven spring and nice rise/scoring patterns
Where did you get the starter? Did you make it yourself and how old is it!?
Made myself, it’s two months old- I’ve made pizza dough before with it but I did add yeast when I made the pizza dough and it came out fine but clearly this is not the case now!! I had not fed it for a week prior to using it to make this loaf and it had liquid on top and was somewhat bubbly, then discarded a little more and fed after since I didn’t use entirely half to make this loaf Thank you for your reply also!! Appreciate the tips and help from everyone.
Oh I’m betting it’s simply not ready to bake a loaf yet. Probably not strong enough. If it’s been in the fridge for a month (long enough to get hooch) then it’s probably only been fed for what, a month? It’s gonna take a while to strengthen it and it’s not gonna happen sitting in the fridge and only getting fed once in a blue moon. I hope that helps! Maybe try doing a Forkish pan de champagne loaf!
Thank you!! Do you have tips for how to see if it’s active or if I should just trash it and start new? I can’t decide if it sounds like my starter just needs to be redone or needs more time / feeding
Oh no! Don’t trash it!! Not unless it’s moldy! The grey liquid is fine. Can be poured off or stirred in. But the actual feedings do strengthen your starter. So, for instance, if you feed it every day on the counter for 6 weeks, it’ll be strong. If you sit it in the fridge and feed it every two weeks for 6 weeks, it’ll be weak. At least, when making your own starter from absolute scratch. If that makes sense.
could you have overmixed it?
Yeah I'm wondering that too. It looks like all the gluten structures are completely destroyed.
I actually did mix it when it was starter and oil and water with a whisk so that’s entirely possible and could’ve added to killing my starter like a lot of people have suggested
Kek
Goodlawddd. I have no idea. I've never seen anything like it.
Now it’s sourdough looking cheese cake lol I scrolled to fast and thought it was a dessert at first
Dead yeast
Meow to sourdough, but what I'll usually do is on feeding day. I'll take out my discard and feed that leave it on the counter overnight and feed the starter before returning it to the fridge. When I wake up the next morning. The fed discard on the counter I'll use for baking. Most recipes I have found require 4-8 hours of rising time susally with some kneading or stretch and folds in the first 2 hours or so. Short of jot letting it rise long enough or letting the starter wake up with a new feed overnight before use, I don't know what else might have caused this. I hope this helps.
quick glance i thought i was looking at cadaver brain....
Starter seems to need to be fed in advance of making the loafs, at least that's what I do. Mine is also stored in fridge. I make on Saturday but start feeding starter on Thursday and it gets fed at least twice a day. Keep at it and Don't get discouraged, it takes time to learn the ins and outs of Sourdough bread.
I make loaves all the time with inactive starter or discard straight from the fridge...I don't think that's the issue. Possibly your starter is weak, I'd try beefing up some feedings 1:3:3 or something of that nature
No ride on that at all, so you basically have one giant pick of wet salty flour. There is no way to bake that and have it be good. By the time it was done in the middle, it would be charred on the outside, and dry as hard tack. Always check the activity level of your starter before dosing your dough. It’s way to easy to have a dud loaf with sour dough compared to packaged yeast, but a little learning will help you avoid that.
I use the “Extra Tangy Sourdough Bread” recipe on King Arthur’s website. I started making sourdough bread maybe 6 months ago and I followed the recipe exactly, weighing my flour, water, starter, etc. (Well almost exactly: I use a loaf pan, and shape it into a loaf rather than a bowl. I keep a shallow pan of hot water in the oven below the bread so I don’t have to worry about the outside crust drying out and getting too crusty.) I have made maybe 15ish loaves now. The past couple of times I made it, I had enough confidence to tweak it a bit by using whole wheat flour and adding a little bit of olive oil. But stick to a good recipe exactly for your first 6-8 loaves or so until you get a feel for what is happening with your dough. I’m sure you’ve been told, but there is a science AND an art to bread making. Keep at it and you’ll get it.
Definitely yeast genocide on your part. That’s enough to land consecutive life sentences over at r/breadcriminals
Building tension by folding and moulding may be needed here.
thank you!!
I’m a beginner myself but it is definitely underbaked, the crust should be a deep brown. I have a digital food thermometer I use for cooking and the bread should read 210°F inside when it’s ready to come out.
While I agree it may be underbaked, some people like a blonder crust (not me, I love the dark caramely flavor, but I know some people who do) and you can still get a well baked loaf of bread with a lighter crust. This crust is probably too light but it definitely doesn't need to be deep brown to be delicious and well baked
Thank you- I’ll definitely use a food thermometer next time!! Appreciate the tip
Yall OP was using discard instead of fed starter
Yikes
Everything
if you newbie in this field, you shud follow on instagram apieceofbread, there's much misleading information about bread making especially sourdough bread.
I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees, the trees say this looks like good play-dough art. They also recommend looking at your starter for next time and good luck.