Can you describe the smell of a good starter too?

[pizzanapoletana]

I would like to mention Nancy's yogurt available at my local Whole Foods.  It contains 6 cultures with 4 being different lactobaccilus cultures.

TM

These are still selected starters coltures injected in a sterilised environment

True Wild yeast starters, crisceto, sourdough cultures, have many more organisms in it with  2-4 of those being dominant.

Ciao

[Kinsman]

If the culture is strong, it would out-compete anything else (well almost anything else) that tried to get established.
That is, if anything could live in such an acidic environment.

I taste my culture all the time.  I like it.  Hell, you could drink the hooch if you wanted to, and it would taste horrible but it would be good for ya.

[ernestrome]

I have wondered if letting hooch build up would kill off other organisms.

[Kidder]

Mine is getting to the point where it burns my nose upon first smelling it, extremely sour right now. Hard to describe how exactly it smells. Maybe like a wine vinegar? It definitely makes good bread though. I'm going to try making another sourdough boule again this weekend (if I find time) and let it rise a little more. I had serious oven spring last time. It was 10x better than Kroger's sourdough bread.

The starter smelled the worst between the second and third day of creating the starter.

[DNA Dan]

Mine is getting to the point where it burns my nose upon first smelling it, extremely sour right now. Hard to describe how exactly it smells. Maybe like a wine vinegar? It definitely makes good bread though. I'm going to try making another sourdough boule again this weekend (if I find time) and let it rise a little more. I had serious oven spring last time. It was 10x better than Kroger's sourdough bread.

The starter smelled the worst between the second and third day of creating the starter.

That's because the ethanol products are all built up. Be sure and grow it up 1-2 times before dumping in your bread, unless you want some really really sour dough that hardly rises. You need to wake those critters up a bit if you want the true flavor and growth of the culture to shine through.

[Kidder]

Yeah, last time I refreshed it by mixing a cup liquid starter, a cup flour, and a cup water. I then let it sit for 4 hours before mixing a cup of that 'refresher' into my dough mixture. The bread turned out great and nicely soured but I should've let it warm rise for longer than I did. I definitely got air pockets throughout but....underrisen dough + improper slashing = massive oven spring where you don't want it to occur.

I love my starter. It usually repsonds within an hour of feeding.

[DNA Dan]

Well don't get too attached! If for some reason that sucker dies you will be up a creek! Have a backup somewhere ...

It's hard not to love the little critters.

[thehorse]

New on the forum, just started my first Italian culture from sourdo.com. My oven has a proof setting, so I added flour and water and put it in my oven set at 90F at 3pm sunday. By midnight it had some bubbles, and by 9am the next morning I could swear it smelled a little sour like a sourdough bread, with a layer of foam, but no alcohol smell yet. Is this normal/possible so quickly? I fed it at noon today(less than 24hrs) to avoid staying up until 3am for the next feeding. It smells pretty good to me. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Mike

[troppoli]

I just as new as you!

I did the same sort of thing, except mine started in a proofing box. After 12 hours I fed the little guys... 3/4 hours later my cat became interested in the proofing box, so I looked inside and they had overflowed the top. I mixed up the ciabatta recipe from the booklet... 12 hours later there were bubbles, but not really rising in the sense I expected... I contined the recipe anyhow and made two wonderful cricket bats instead of ciabattas. I thought my guys were ready, but I don't think they were.

I've since taken that jar from the fridge and poured some into another jar and its back to the proofing box... it seems that the initial activation is tricky.