Guardian influencer distributes misinformation jeremycherfas.net
@jeremycherfas ok I’ll bite: what’s the best, no-pundit-BS, method to get a starter going? I‘m pretty sure I have 10 days in front of me ....
@seishonagon What flours do you have to hand? Do you have a good digital scale? That's important to know before we go further.
@jeremycherfas I have white “000” flour and a scale that works to the gram - although I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy a newer one.
@seishonagon Mix 10 g of your flour with 10g of water, cover loosely and leave in a warmish place for 24 hours. In the meantime, try to find some rye flour or some wholemeal. And in 10 days, you will need wholemeal and strong (i.e. High-protein >13%) white flour. Let's check in again in 24 hours. This could be fun.
@jeremycherfas ok. Quarantine may make it hard to get the high protein flour but I’ll try. For now. 10g and 10g ... I’ll let you now!
@strandlines it is definitely worth a try, although one you receive as a gift will be truly yours soon enough.
@jeremycherfas so I went ahead and fed the starter 10g each of water and flour. No luck on the whole meal for now but still looking.
@seishonagon When you say fed, you mean you gave the one you began yesterday more flour and more water? So you now have 40g. Or you only just began? Because I would advise waiting until you see bubbles before you next feed. Slowly does it at the start.
@jeremycherfas yeah I have 40g. Let's say there were a couple bubbles :-D I'll go slower now. So ... just watch and wait?
@seishonagon Yes. Give it 48 hours. The goal it to build up acidity. So next time, feed 20 and 20. You don’t want to dilute too much at this stage.
@seishonagon @strandlines OK, that's excellent news. But it is easy to become overconfident at this stage. You still need to build up acidity. That means not overfeeding. So, stir up what you've got, remove about 10 g to a clean container, and feed the same weight each of flour and water.
@jeremycherfas mine is nearly doubling in size in a 12hr period. Am feeding twice a day and have got it in the airing cupboard.
@jeremycherfas dead in the water... i woke up yesterday to a flat, lifeless badly smelling glob. I’m going to have to start again!
@strandlines sounds good to me. I reckon you could go for a trial bake on Sunday or Monday, with the possibility that it won’t be quite ready yet.
@seishonagon oh dear. You could try resurrecting. But it doesn’t sound good. How often were you feeding before? At what temperature?
@jeremycherfas I was rather hoping to make some at the weekend so thanks for the advice! It is really quite chatty this morning, making ‘glop’ noises.
@seishonagon And the temp? The thing is, you do better at not overfeeding by feeding a little, more often. That way, you maintain the acidity and the activity of the good bugs. So 4:1:1 starter:flour:water is fine at the outset, waiting for it to rise before the next feed. Then 3:1:1 to 1:1:1 and once it is reliably doubling within 8-12 hours at 1:1:1 yuou're good to go and to move feeding out to 1:2:2 and beyond.
@jeremycherfas one loaf made yesterday. A little bit dense (I think I over-proved it) but an even texture and tasted like the real thing! My family enjoyed it so I take that as an endorsement. Thanks for your guidance.
@strandlines Pictures or it didn't happen.
I am so happy for you. Could be over or underproofed, but that barely matters. You're on the path now.
@seishonagon Excellent news. More or less. If it doubles in volume within 12 hours, and doesn't smell funky, give it a whirl.
@strandlines Looks good; well done. Are those fatwigoos on your site, bottom right? Not sure where the sizing should go, but it looks off to me.
@jeremycherfas thank you! I shall probably make some more this weekend. I had to look up fatwigoos - I assume you mean where I have the webring links. I copied the code from somewhere and haven’t tidied it up yet.
@jeremycherfas ooh - that’s strange. I don’t see them. Other than a mb icon, I don’t have any others. At least, from my end that’s the case.
@strandlines it looks like the inline SVG nested in the <span> with inline styles also need styling for Firefox e.g.:
#kind-menu .svg-icon svg { max-width: 1rem }
@cn I've added that to the CSS and had a look on Firefox - looks like thats sorted now. Thanks @jeremycherfas for flagging it up and thanks again @cn for the code. 🙏