la gripa colombiana wrote:
> I activated Carl's Oregon Trail starter last week, had it 30C for 3 days,
> moved it into the oven and used that to jump-start the culture after feeding
> (i.e. I turned the coil on for 30 seconds then turned the oven off, the temp
> rose to perhaps 35C which then declined before the starter ever got too warm.
> It's going very strong, I followed the brochure's advice to add a few potato
> flakes (~1/8), and toss in about 5cc of sugar for about a half liter of
> feeding mixture. Now it's only a room temperature, I don't zap it, and my
> work schedule allows me to feed it every 12 hours.

All of the extras they advise seem totally unnecessary to me. But I've
never used Carl's starter. I just know that, in my own experience,
sugar and potato flakes weren't needed at all.

> My problem is it doesn't taste sour. I tasted the starter itself and there
> is no tang at all. Is this something that develops with maturity or did
> something happen to the Lactobacillus in it?

I would want to develop a starter for several weeks to let it develop
character.

> Also, since most of my bread recipes use milk or allow for it, I decided to
> test the starter with a feeder containing milk. I mixed in some dry and
> whole milk along with water and flour and sugar, and it didn't proof. The
> mother culture fermented nicely while the test milk culture stayed flat.
> But today it had risen somewhat, but was not noticably active. I would
> have thought the Lactobacillus would have thrived on it, did it affect the
> yeast in some way?

I think your experiment is already telling you something: Don't add all
of that other stuff.

> Also, what's the limit for salt? My favorite bread recipe using ordinary
> yeast uses 1.5tsp salt per 3 cups flour (7.5cc/750cc) yields good results,
> is that proportion of salt in sourdough too much?

I use about the same amount of salt for about the same amount of flour
in my sourdough and it's just fine.