microbe mystery: something in this inhibits sourdough intensely! i tried to feed a starter with this for a while and had to restart it (!). i'm not sure what it would be, specifically. one of the things added during bleaching? or enriching? i'd love to understand, i've never seen anything like it.
This guy @norwegianwood50.bsky.social seems to have great knowledge about sourdough and baking in general. He might be able to help you get this sorted out.
additional data: when i restarted the culture with a different flour it immediately went fine, and i've /never/ had trouble with starters until that attempt.
Thanks for the shout out! Would love to help trouble shoot 😊 currently set up at a Farmer Market.
the suspicious flour was this one! www.aldi.us/product/bake...
This flour has 3% protein which is extremely low! 😅 KA Ap is about 11.7% if I remember correctly Where I don’t use bleached flours, I know ppl that use them and dont have issues All Trumps for instance
thank you for your thoughts! how interesting. someone else suggested maybe it is the particular way they bleached it? or maybe one of the additives. curious. yeah, as soon as i went back to KA it worked perfectly.
All flours are technically “bleached” some naturally or with the addition of chlorine dioxide or benzoyl peroxide. Enriched flours basically add back the nutrients lost during the milling process (except folate) in white flours
to be clear: it's not good flour. in fact, i'm advocating against anyone bleaching flour at all. but access to food is limited for a lot of people and this is literally the only Aldi flour, so it's not people's fault if they get saddled with it (i did, this week).
I do use it as a base for my pizza dough: 1 cup spelt, 1/4 cup whole wheat, and the remaining 2 1/4 cups is this stuff. I get a good yeasted rise for a huge pie and a couple rolls if I prove it twice before spreading on a pan. But I have never tried making sourdough with it and I guess I won't!
it tastes fine but for some reason i've had trouble with it with sourdough? it's weird! i wonder if mixed flours helps. they do say whole grains are better for sourdough.
Hey Loren, I am not familiar with aldi brand flours as we use KA or Bobs red mill for our little bakery. I did see you mention going back to KA. How does your starter perform just on its own? What is your feeding schedule like?