You got it. 100% hydration means the amount of water called for in a bread recipe is the same as the amount of flour called for, by weight. It means the same thing when referring to starter hydration.

The pineapple juice is helpful sometimes for getting a starter established. Once you have a lively starter, there’s no need for pineapple juice or vinegar.

I suggest going with a long fermentation of around 12 hours. By the time 24 hours rolls around, your starter has run its course (”petered out” as they say), so it’s not surprising you’re getting no oven spring after that long. Try 12 and let us know how it goes.

I’ve got a good, active starter (couldn’t get my hands on pineapple juice, so I used a tsp of white vinegar to one cup water and a cup and a half of flour) sitting at about two weeks old. I’ve got a lot of rise, a lot of activity….but no oven spring. none. zip. zilch. nada.

I’m doing a very long ferment (longer than 24 hours), otherwise following the no knead recipe.

suggestions?

I have my reasons for doing the long ferment, and just wondering if there was anything I could do to get more lift out of the baked loaf. The flavor’s good, the crumb’s nice, but I’d like something besides 3″ wide sandwiches.

replies appreciated.

Sam

I know this is an old thread but wanted to say that Evelyn was right about the directions saying not to refrigerate the Amish starter. It’s surprising that it can keep so well at room temperature with such infrequent feedings and with milk in the recipe, but it kept well when I had some. The Amish starter is made with 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, and 1 cup sugar added to 1 cup of starter.The directions for the Friendship starter say not to refrigerate and to keep it at room temperature. Use or discard all but one cup and feed every 5 days. A friend of mine kept hers in a zip loc bag on her counter for months.

I adapted the Amish recipe a couple weeks after I got it to the one given in Joy of Cooking for sourdough starter with less sugar, 1/2 cup instead of 1 cup so I could use it for making regular sourdough bread. Joy of Cooking says you can refrigerate it or freeze it. I kept mine at room temperature for the first couple weeks, then refrigerated it. I used it for many months for making regular bread and fed it more frequently. It made delicious bread and I was very happy with it, but it finally developed an off odor and would no longer rise the bread well, so I had to throw it out. I’m going to bake some Amish Friendship bread tomorrow (more like a coffee cake than bread) which needs the sweet Amish starter so I used a couple of TBSPs of Carl’s 1847 Oregon Trail starterand and added 1/2 cup of flour, milk and sugar to make enough starter for the Friendship bread. I think it’s going to work fine. It smells good and looks healthy and is full of bubbles all the way through.

I know this isn’t a very precise answer, but you just need to feed it enough to keep it healthy. There are a zillion scenarios for feeding and storing that will work. When you’re only using 1/4 cup of starter at a time, sometimes you might have to (or want to) dispose of some so that you can double or triple the volume when feeding just to give it a robust meal and really refresh it well without ending up with a ton of starter.
You’ll likely want to keep in the fridge between feedings. Except for taking it out to feed before baking. Was that sufficiently vague and confusing?

Using whole flour is fine, of course, but just know (if you don’t already) that whole wheat starter requires more frequent feeding than white flour starter. The germ oil, absent in white flour, is prone to spoiling at some point.

You should always allow for air access to your starter to release the CO2. I don’t think you can, or necessary want to, keep whatever yeast is floating around your kitchen from getting in your starter. Sooner or later, your starter is most likely going to take on whatever indigenous yeast is dominant in your house or locale and it with become authentic Carl starter or something along those lines.