Sourdough - Round Two Part Two

This morning's starter has revived nicely, but nowhere near doubling in size, so it's had a feed along these proportions tonight:

2:1:1 ratio of starter:flour:water

It's less than I had this morning which is good as I don't like chucking all that lovely organic rye flour away!

Later
I've just got back from collecting Peter from the station and find that I didn't publish this post and since then (about 8pm I think) this is what I've got:

Some serious bubbles and growth. I think that I'll be able to start the final build up to baking tomorrow. I'm a bit confused bout the timings as the recipe I wanted to follow is asking me to make a 'sponge' tonight, but I've already fed it once and I can't decide if the 8.00 feeding will last to when I get back from the gym at about 11am tomorrow. If I do that, the shaping and proving process will take up to seven hours so I won't be baking until late. Hmmm, what to do?

Sourdough - Round Two

It's time for my second round of sourdough. My rather obsessively documented first time was, to some extent, a success, but now I want bubbles, big airy air bubbles.

My starter has been languishing, ignored, in the fridge for about 10 days and it was looking a bit dull with a very thin layer of hooch, that's sourdough jargon for the clearish, yellowish, brownish water which collects on the top of an inactive starter, it's not a bad thing on a refrigerated starter and it can just be stirred back into the starter so long as it's not smelly or moldy.

After consulting many sources about the best way to revive a starter from a fridge this is what I did.

I poured the starter and it's hooch into a clean glass bowl and gave it a good beating with a wire whisk to blend back together and to get extra air throughout.

I added twice the starters' volume of rye flour and twice the volume of warm bottled water and mixed throoughly with a spoon to get rid of any lumps and then whisked again.

Poured into a clean container, lidded and level marked with red rubber band (thank you Mr Postman). It now sits on my shelf at about 22 degrees and I'll watch with interest.

Sorry for the lousy photo, but I used my iPhone....I've angled it down slightly so the top is visable, there are a couple of blips on it which are either residual from the whisking or it's leaping into action already!

The revived starter from the fridge - 9am.