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Zech wrote:I'm a bit nervous about catching wild yeast in case I get something completely different by mistake. Could I get a sourdough started with commercial yeast, then carry on in the same way?

Zech don't worry you won't catch anything nasty, the yeasts come from the flour, not the air, so unless you are using rotten flour....

You can use commercial yeast, but you are missing out on an important part of a natural leaven, complexity and flavour, as commercial yeast has only one strain of yeast.

If your sourdough starter is seperating it probably means it is being left too long between refreshments. You need to refresh your starter once a week if kept in a fridge. Once it has separated you might be able to recover it but it will probably be too sour, so it will need several refreshments to get back to normal, probably easier to start again.

I feed mine 1/2 rye and 1/2 white bread flour. The rye makes all the difference- its like steroids for sourdough!

Thanks for the tips

Since asking here, some friends have given me a Herman the German friendship cake starter, which has nudged me further along the sourdough road. I've taken some slow-rise bread mix that was escaping from its tin this morning (ordinary commercial yeast), mixed it with a little Herman that was also escaping and threatening to take over the kitchen (mixture of various strains, presumably) and added more flour and water. Hopefully this will grow into a nice sourdough starter.

In the meantime, I just need to find a Herman cake recipe that my husband likes

The cake mix has sugar and milk in it, quite lot in fact, so your first batch might be a little sweet. But after that it should be OK I would have thought.

Gra wrote:If your sourdough starter is seperating it probably means it is being left too long between refreshments.

Mine keeps separating after all of about twelve hours since the last refreshment. It gets very, very sour as well - not something I'd want to bake with. I keep draining off the sour liquid and topping up with fresh water and a little more flour, once or twice a day. I've also tried throwing out most of the gloop and adding fresh flour and water, but the result was the same.

I haven't quite given up yet, as it's only been going for five or six days, but I did buy some more yeast today. This is costing me a lot of flour

Zech, sorry to hear about your trouble, either take up SuzieGee's offer or start completely a fresh, try using mineral water and equal quantities of flour and water. Rye flour is the best, but wholemeal is good but white will do. Put in a jar with a loose lid (enough to let gas escape). Leave it somewhere warmish. Once it starts to bubble and doubles in size, then refresh it. Do this 2 or 3 times and then it should be ready to use. If then kept in a fridge it should only need refreshing once a week.

SusieGee wrote:Rachel, I've had a sourdough starter going now since Feb so if you're in the area you'd be welcome to half if that would help.

Thanks Susie I may well take you up on that offer. I did think for a while that mine might have recovered, but it separated again this morning. I give up!