Sour dough bread

[Deleted]

I'm attempting to conquer sour dough bread. I've managed to get a pretty good starter going in the last week but I'm having trouble baking with it. I've baked 2 loaves and I've had to add a little yeast (maybe 1/3 normal amount for a non-sour dough loaf) each time to get it to raise. On top of that it's taking about 4-5 hrs to get a loaf through both raisings.
What am I doing wrong? Is my starter not old enough? Something else? The taste and texture is great, other than the rising issue I'm happy.

[woolybear]

Umm, yeah you're doing better than I did with sourdough. It took me 18-24 hours to get to the point that is was ready to bake.
I have this website that I refer to often www.sourdoughhome.com/index.php?content=startermyway2
I gave up on the sourdough for awhile, but may go back to trying it again, since I got a kitchen scale to measure the grams of flour and water. And I have to find a way for the dough to not be so blasted sour. I read somewhere about salt? mellowing out the sour taste.

[Skandi]

The taste is going to depend on what yeasts and other things you get in your starter. I've only made sourdough a couple of times, just to make sure I could, and both times I let it go overnight and baked it in the morning, that seemed to work, but my house IS very cold as well, so even "normal" yeast takes 3-4 hours to do one rise.

[Deleted]

Ok so maybe I'm good then. I just need to give it more rise time. Like I said we are loving the taste. It just takes a long time to rise.
Thank you to you both!

[Deleted]

I made my first sourdough loaf a few days ago.  It was delicious.  It took a few years before I got the gumption to attempt it.  Apparently, just doing it works!  It took a good 20 hours from mixing the stater to making the sponge and finally putting it in the oven.  Don't know if I will ever go back to commercial yeast again.  Well worth the learning curve...just keep at it:)

[Deleted]

I've been making a load weekly for the past 4-5 weeks and it seems to be working out pretty good.

[Deleted]

We tried sourdough a couple years back. Didn't realize then about just how long it would take it to rise, plus the first time we fed the starter I think we waited a little too late to begin the bread making. The starter had quit making bubbles and was pretty quiet looking. The second time around was better and we had two pretty good loaves. We got a packet of dry sour dough starter from a San Francisco company as a Christmas present. Its supposed to make some great tasting bread, plus it came with a little book all about sour dough bread making, how to keep the starter going...with all the details. I know its going to take the incentive of making some good bread to keep this as a regular way to make bread though. It would be worth the effort if we can pull it off.

[Deleted]

I've made sourdough with both stater purchased from King Arthur Flour & home made starter with "wild caught" yeast, had an issue with rising with both, but now believe I just didn't give it enough time.

[moldy]

There is a place on line where you can get starter for a SASE. Google 'friends of carl sourdough'. Also (IIRC) mikes sourdough (again google is your friend) is a great site to help you troubleshoot sourdough.