Hi Michelle, 

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble getting your sourdough starter to rise! It's not uncommon for sourdough starters to take longer to rise and double than the approximate 5-8 days indicated in our Sourdough Starter recipe. It often takes up to two weeks to develop a fully mature starter. As long as your sourdough is bubbling, there is definitely hope!

The good news is that patience almost always pays off when it comes to sourdough starters, so I wouldn't give up hope! Even if you continue exactly as you're doing now, eventually the starter organisms will start performing as they should. 

​To save on flour one option you might want to consider in the meantime is reducing the size of your starter. Our smaller starter recipe requires only 20g each of starter, water and flour for each feeding, and fits perfectly in an 8-ounce canning jar. Once your starter is rising predictably, it's easy enough to build the volume of starter you want to maintain, or you can keep your starter small and build it when you're preparing to bake. This blog post explains how to do this. 

One other factor you might want to take into account is that we've noticed a pattern that sometimes occurs with starters that experience an early rise. This early rise is actually caused by bacteria that give off carbon dioxide rather than representing yeast growth. Unfortunately the presence of this type of bacteria seems to be linked to a subsequent delay in the wild yeast kicking in. Again, patience will still win out, but if you think that's what is going on with your starter, you might want to consider taking a more proactive approach by adopting this modified feeding routine that was suggested to us by microbiologist and sourdough baker, Debra Wink. She discovered that increasing the acidity of the starter seems to help pave the way for the wild yeast to become active. Here's this plan:
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1. Feed only once a day. 
2. Feed with whole wheat flour rather than unbleached all-purpose flour. 
3. Feed 2:1:1 (starter:water:flour, by weight). For this method your once a day feeding would look like this: 1/2 cup (113g) starter + 1/4 cup ( 57g) water + 1/2 cup (57g) whole wheat flour.

If you wanted to a do a "smaller starter" version of this feeding routine, it would look like this: 30g starter + 15g water + 15g whole wheat flour.
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Once your starter is rising predictably (twice) with this feeding routine, you'll want to resume twice daily feedings. It doesn’t have to be doubling at this point, but an increase in rising should be evident. You can also gradually transition back to feeding with unbleached all-purpose (AP) flour over the course of 3-4 feedings (adding just a little more AP flour each day) and resume the normal 1:1:1 ratio (starter:water:flour, by weight).
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It's important to resume twice a day feedings once your starter begins rising because this will help keep yeast activity vigorous. Ideally you want to feed the starter when it's at its peak of rising, or just beginning to fall. Allowing the starter to fall significantly between feedings tends to cause the yeast to become sluggish over time.

 

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