"Monte" > wrote in message
...

"I noticed one of the other posts suggested that Carl's isn't a great
sour taste producer. What starters are? And what's the difference?"

Well if this isn't a can o' worms....

I didn't EXACTLY say that, I simply tried to share my own experiences with
it, and an inkling of my own preferences. If you spend much time here, you
will find that there are quite a few posters who are extremely precise in
every aspect of their sourdough baking. I more often than not don't exactly
fall into that category, I rather like the idea of my home made bread being
less of a science project and more of a simple enjoyment, even if my results
are not identical from one bake to the next. I imagine a search of RFS will
turn up plenty of procedures on getting sour from your Carls OT, just in
case someone isn't putting together a gloriously well written step by step
instruction for you at this very moment.

You say you have been baking with Carls for 5 years, and have never, ever,
gotten what you call sour? Not even by accident? That, to me at least, is an
indicator that Carls is not the easiest to coax sour from. OK, now I don't
know if you actually started baking sourdough 5 years ago or what, but not
all that long ago when I started out with some other culture, I made allot
of mistakes, baked allot of leathery footballs with gooey centers, allot of
hubcaps, etc. But somehow I definitely did end up with some sad looking but
seriously sour loaves (a little incompetence goes a long way) that made my
wife's face pucker up. I eventually got the opportunity to be splendidly
inept when using Carls also, but have yet to make my wife pucker with the
results.