Adam Kuban: Kublog

On Friday night (Day 12), I decided to make a leaven in preparation to make bread on Saturday (Day 13). Even though I had some misgivings about the new Tartine starter (“Francis”), I worked up a leaven using it. As a backup, I also worked up a leaven using my “Cavanagh” starter.

Come Saturday morning, Cavanagh was kicking ass. It had doubled in bulk, was nice and spongey and airy looking, and smelled sweet and floury, as Chad Robertson said it should in Tartine Bread.

Trouble is … once I looked at what we had on the slate for the day, I knew there was no way I’d be making bread.

So I just turned my leaven into my starter and waited….

For the Tartine Bread starter (which I’ve named Francis*), I’ve been roughly following the original amounts and proportions that Chad Robertson lays out in his book Tartine Bread. As I’ve said in earlier notes, for daily feedings he has you discard all but 20% of the starter and then add to the remaining blorb an equal mixture of flour and water. I believe he says something like “amount doesn’t matter.” But I’ve been adding back the same weight of stuff I’ve discarded. Which, yes, as my friend John Wozniak points out, is pretty wasteful of flour. (In fact, I’m now more than halfway through my two 5-pound bags of white and whole-wheat flours just on growing the starter alone). Flour is relatively inexpensive, and I anticipate I’ll modify the feeding once I make the recipe exactly according to the book. Read the rest of this entry »

Same as yesterday for both starters, though today when I got home I noticed that Cavanagh must be easily doubling in bulk, since I saw crusty evidence of that on the sides of the glass bowl I’m using to grow it in.

This morning I tried using a timelapse video app to capture the activity while I was at work. Unfortunately, the app seems to have crashed about 15 minutes into the day. Going to try to set that up again this weekend or Monday.

Nothing much to report. Cavanagh continues to thrive. After mistakenly adding the 50-50 white–whole wheat flour mix to it two days ago, I’m back to white flour, and it looks the same as before.

The Tartine Bread starter has lost the stink, so I think the “bad bacteria” has died off. It’s bubbling here and there but not very vigorously. Could be that the starter is so thick. It’s showing gas formation, though, so that’s good.

I’m thinking of making two loaves Saturday, one with Cavanagh, one with TB stater.

Because that’s what it’s like waiting for this starter to take off. I know it’ll get there, just getting impatient. And not much to report otherwise. Instead, I’ll just show you this:

ilcornicione's Tartine Basic Country Bread

That’s Il Cornicione’s Basic Country Bread. He and I (and Caleb Schiff) have been talking on Twitter about this recipe, and Il Cornicione shared this loaf he just made via photo.

Caleb, of the pizzeria Pizzicletta in Flagstaff, Arizona, also was inspired by the Tartine chatter to restart his own Tartine starter.

It’s kind of cool to see the chatter of the internet spin off into real life action.

In other news, Cavanagh appears healthy and will probably star in my Tartine bread on Sunday.

From left: The Tartine Bakery starter and 'Cavanagh,' a starter I made a long time ago.

Again, not much to report on the starter front these days. The Tartine Bread starter is less stinky and shows a small to almost-moderate amount of bubbling after feeding.

The book mentions that it’s supposed to double in bulk a couple hours after feeding. I’ve not seen this to be the case. But, as I said, patience. I’m sure it’ll start eventually. That’s what happened with my “Cavanagh” starter. Speaking of which …

I don't have a 'before' picture to show, but trust me when I say that it has doubled in bulk after I fed it earlier today.

I’ve brought Cavanagh up from off the bench (i.e., the refrigerator) and have revived it after months of neglect. Which is first-hand proof for me that you really can resuscitate a starter you’ve all but left for dead.

I brought Cavanagh back to life a couple days ago, stirring it up, adding some warm water to it and some flour. I’ve fed it regularly the last couple days, and today it doubled in bulk nicely.

'Cavanagh, is crazy bubbly.

What I’m going to do is keep feeding the TB starter and see if I can get it to take, but if not, I’ll use Cavanagh next weekend to make my first loaf of the Basic Country Bread.

Seriously, don’t bother watching this video. Nothing much happens. I got the notion of setting up a time lapse thing so I could see if the starter really was bulking up as part of the feeding cycle, as the book suggests it will.

This is about 3 hours’ worth of time here. I’m thinking I should have at least seem something, as Robertson seems to peg the cycle at about 4 hours.

Not much here but some bubbles, which at least tells me there’s something going on. Just going to have to wait it out before this one gets going.

FWIW, it took my original starter, Cavanagh, about 9 or 10 days before I started seeing vigorous activity — enough to make a leaven with.

(If you watched the video, don’t put it on me. I warned you.)

As I said yesterday, I decided to time-shift my feeding schedule to the mornings. Trouble is, I’m pretty groggy in the mornings. Today, for instance, I almost forgot about tending the starter. But then I went into the kitchen to take my vitamins, and BLAMMO. “What’s that smell?” …

“Oh. Yeah. Gotta feed this thing.”

It’s like it evolved this horrible smell just to remind me it’s there and needs my care. Ingenious.

After getting some advice from Andrew Janjigian in the comments of yesterday’s post and from John Wozniak via Twitter, I realize I just have to wait for the correct balance of bacteria/yeast to flourish. That may take some days. I know from reading along with Donna Currie‘s Sourdough Starter Along on Slice that it can take up to nine or ten days (though YMMV).

I don’t think I’m going to be making bread this weekend.

Photograph: monikahoinkis on Flickr

I fed my starter last night around 9pm. In his book, Tartine Bread, baker Chad Robertson recommends feeding in the morning. Not for any technical reasons. It’s just how he likes to time his day, he says. So he can feed the starter in the morning and use it for bread that’s ready for dinnertime.

That fits in with my own schedule. So I’m not feeding the starter tonight. I’m going to time-shift the feeding cycle to the mornings. That way I can stoke the starter when I get up on the weekends and prep dough for dinnertime baking.

In other starter news, this shit STINKS. Like something you’d smell in a gym locker. It is RIPE. I’m wondering how long my wife is going to put up with this.

A sort of dark crust has formed above the rest of the starter.

It’s Day 3 of my Tartine Bread “journey.” I started the starter on Monday night. The book said it may start bubbling by the second or third day. Here, it did. Read the rest of this entry »