On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 01:45:11 -0600, Samartha Deva
> wrote:

>With a normal starter
>birth, without yeast, it takes a bit longer and can be slow.

I tried to get a rye-water mix (50-50 by volume) going based on the
technique written up on your website. I thought I might have succeeded
- I saw what looked like tiny bubbles after about 24 hours - but alas
it was a shoo shoo(*) after 48 hours. I covered the mixture to avoid
"catching" anything.

As an expedient I used some "Pillsbury Medium Rye Flour". I am waiting
until I sort all this out before I make a trip to the health food
store. The ambient temp was 80F, which should have been warm enough.

This is the second time I tried to get a rye starter going. The second
time I added an equal amount of bread flour (and water) to the rye
mixture after 24 hours thinking it was starting based on what I
thought were bubbles. But even that second kind of flour would not
start.

>Baker's yeast cannot take the vinegar produced from sourdough LB's and
>dies away within three generations (or refresh's), that's been
>researched.

Hmm... that's an important thing to know.

As a public service in the spirit of trying to keep the local pedants
at bay, I point out that you are attempting to co-join two
incompatible entities in your sentence, viz, "baker's yeast" and
"sourdough". According to one "expert", you must use the term
"olddough" if it has anything to do with baker's yeast.

So in the interest of harmony on these bread forums I ask your
indulgence as I post the pedantically-correct phraseology:

"Baker's yeast cannot take the vinegar produced from olddough LB's and
dies away within three generations (or refresh's), that's been
researched."

There, now it's technically accurate and we won't have to put up with
any pedants - for now anyway.

>Maybe you get some ideas out of this.

I am getting all sorts of ideas. What I want, however, is some
successes. I am disappointed that the rye starter did not work because
I truly want to make a genuine sourdough - none of that "olddough"
crap for me.

Maybe I need to expose it to the air inside my house after all. I have
done that with yeast-based starters. However, I believe the baker's
yeast in those starters overwhelmed any thingies in the air. Without
yeast, those thingies, being part of the air of Houston, could produce
diesel fuel for all I know.

---

(*) shoo shoo - quaint New Orleans expression for a firecracker that
did not explode. It comes from the fact that such a firecracker
usually makes a sound resembling "shoo shoo". In its generic use it
means anything that ends up a dud.

Next time, I will try to work "lagniappe" into a sentence.