Day two brought growth!
Waking up Saturday morning, I was ecstatic to see that my starter had grown! I think it is safe to say I have created an obsession of sorts… Wake up, check my starter, walk in the kitchen, check my starter, before I go to bed, you guessed it, I check my starter. I am constantly at eye level searching for bubbles and growth. Although I was very impressed with my starter’ss growth Saturday morning, I was over the moon to see even more growth later that evening!
My millet starter was created a day before my brown rice starter, so naturally, I saw activity sooner with the millet. But, something changed by day three, and the tables turned. My millet stopped growing and still hasn’t grown much in the past two days, but my brown rice starter has boomed- every day, there is growth and activity. In the first couple of days, my brown rice starter was releasing excess hooch, so in hopes of counteracting that, I started to up my ratio of flour to water. Creating a thicker starter resulted in more activity. Currently, my millet starter has higher water content, which may be why it has slowed growth.
On day two, for the brown rice starter, I began seeing significant growth and activity. Each day since the starter has shown activity after each feeding. On the other hand, my millet starter seems to be slowing down. It is safe to say that I will be baking with the brown rice starter first as I allow my millet starter to continue developing.
Let’s talk about the smell.
Each starter has gone through the following phases of smell- days 1-2 flour smell, days 3-5 sweet pancake smell, and the days after is a mix of sweet pancake and sour. My brown rice starter is currently at the sour pancake stage. After doing some research, it is safe to say that once your starter reaches this scent and is continually growing after being fed, you can begin baking with it.
I want my sourdough loaf to turn out on the first try, so I plan to bake my first loaf using the brown rice starter on either day six or seven. I will allow my millet to continue to grow a few days longer as I have not seen continual activity. I will follow up this post with a test of Kim’s (Let them Eat Gluten Free Cake) sourdough loaf recipe, yay!!
Update- featuring two curious dogs that will be making an appearance quite often on The Burnt Cheddar.
On the left is my millet and on the right is the brown rice starter. Both have grown in just four hours! The millet has significantly less bubbles than the brown rice, but it is growing and healthy!
Stay tuned for the big bake and sourdough discard ideas!
