We've been reading all your tips and responses to other people's issues, and they've really been helpful -- thank you! We were hoping we could get some advice with our starter, which seems to be in a bit of a lull.

Some background: we have followed the King Arthur starter process, and our home is right around 70 degrees. Within the first few days we saw some decent rising action (which seems to be expected) and then things went into a lull (which also seems to be expected!)...but the lull continued on for a while. By day 10 we still weren't seeing more than a 10-15% increase in volume (though we were seeing bubbles) so we decided to follow your tip of changing the feeding ratio to 2:1:1 with whole wheat flour. After a day or so, that was working wonderfully -- a definite doubling in volume, and lots of happy-looking bubbles. After that was happening reliably, we made the switch back to the 1:1:1 feeding ratio with AP flour. And, as you warned might happen, things went back into a lull. Eight days later, though, and we're still experiencing the lull -- we're definitely getting some bubbling, and it smells like we think it should, but there's still only, at most, a 15-20% increase in volume and bubbling. Do you have any advice for what we can do, or is patience still the name of the game here?

One other note: The past few days we have tried the trick of using a cup of boiling water to make our microwave into a proofing box, in case that helps with anything!

• Reply