I have a lack of culture, its clear to me now.
If you haven’t read about my culture, I’m trying to capture and develop yeast to create my own sourdough starter, read how I did it here.
I don’t know what went wrong, but I have not yet seen the tell-tale signs that I’m supposed to be looking for to tell me my culture has developed… which are:
- The surface will be glossy and dotted with air bubbles, like a pancake ready to be flipped (I may have seen this)
- The culture will have risen anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 (never saw this)
- It will smell like very ripe apples with undertones of wheat (nope)
- It will taste tart and fruity (possibly)
- When you draw a rubber spatula through it and lift it up, long elastic strands will hang from the spatula (definitely didn’t see this)
He ( Daniel Leader) also talks about how if you don’t stir it for a while there can be puddles of grayish water on the surface… which is alcohol and water, normal byproducts of the fermentation which are referred to as hooch. I saw a clear separation of liquids when I didn’t stir it, but the liquid was more yellow and clear (see below)… being that I only had maybe one sign above, I don’t think I had a healthy culture.
So I started again… and the same thing happened…
Tomorrow I am going to attempt to create a culture in a stiff dough levain… the starter needed to make the “Quintessential French Sourdough”. I will not give up.