Sourdough woes

[LakeFlyPie]

Late to the lockdown sourdough party but cultured a starter with rye flour last week and made our 1st loaf a couple of days ago. Have been adding white bread flour to the starter as I'd prefer a white loaf rather than the darker rye type. Thought I'd killed it but it's bubbling away again so signs of life but it smells distinctly vomitty Have fed it with a bit of rye flour this evening but am reluctant to use it whilst it smells so rank, will it come good or should I ditch it and start again or just sack it and go for a freshly baked loaf with yeast

That smell can indicate it’s hungry so keep feeding / discarding on a daily basis until you’re confident it’s used to the new type of flour - then either bake with it or put it in the fridge until you want to and feed it once a week

Also, you can use a rye starter to make a white loaf - your starter doesn’t have to be made with the same sort of flour as you bake your loaf with

Exactly as above. My starter was a rye starter that The local bakery gave out at the beginning of lockdown. I feed it with whatever flour I have but mostly use it to bake a white and whole meal mix loaf.

I did use self raising by mistake for a few feeds and it was very unhappy but came back.

Discard most of it and give it a good feed or two.

Try just adding 2-3 tsps to 100g each flour and water. That really helped mine get going.

Keep all the discard in a separate pot of lots of recipes for it.