what's up with my sourdough seed culture ?

aka Mr. No-Dough Risin'

A few months ago I purchased "The Bread Baker's Apprentice", by Peter Reinhart and this past week, I decided to give it a whirl.

After reading the first few informational chapters, I decided that I wanted to try pumpernickel, which is one of my favorites. So, first thing that I had to do was make a sourdough culture. Reinhart's formula intially calls for just dark rye flour & water and a 24 hr ferment. After the first 24 hrs, the dough had risen practically 100%, which is much more than the book says to expect.

The next step is to add bread flour and more water to the rye and ferment another 24 hrs. The photo below shows about 400% rise. Again, way more than what the book says to expect.



Day 3 is to take half of the culture and mix with more bread flour and water. It took pretty much the same flour/water ratio as day 2, which in itself is about 80% more flour than the books calls for, to make a wet (which I assume does not mean completely sticky) dough.

The problem I'm having is that the book says that you want to get at least a 100% rise after adding the day 3 ingredients and if you don't get that, repeat the day 3 step of halving the starter and adding more flour & water. After 24 hrs, I get *barely* 20% rise and even less after repeating the step as instructed.



This is my 2nd attempt, with the exact same results -- nice rise after day 1, huge rise after day 2 then barely anything after day 3 and beyond. Should I just make the barm from the culture after day two's big rise ?

Any ideas what is going on ?

'doh

Sourdough Starter Correction for "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" Readers

well, after day 4 using the pineapple juice method, I finally started seeing some decent fermentation/rise. Then a few minutes ago, I saw the fruit flies inside the plastic wrap.

Down the sink it went

I never had success trying to create a sourdough culture out of the bugs in my local air that way. It strikes me as sort of like mashing any old grapes and hoping you get pinot noir. With pineapple juice in it.

What works is this.