Last weekend I baked my first loaf with sourdough.
The small boule is really pretty, but something happened
with the starter, because the bread doesn’t taste sour;
actually, it doesn’t have much flavour. Perhaps the starter
needs more time to develop its flavour?

Silvia, I am no expert on bread and cannot offer any advice. I just wanted to say that your bread looks wonderful

Silvia,
My wheat breads often don’t taste sour, depending on the age of the sourdough, and whatever yeast cultures I caught. So yes, you may want to let it age a bit longer. If you have rye in it seems to take a sour taste much faster. Perhaps, if you want the sour taste, you may want to keep a rye sourdough? In the end, a sourdough really is only a wild yeast, not much different from commercial yeast, and only some of the yeasts taste sour.
Your bread looks great!

Looks great, and Rose’s Basic Sourdough Bread isn’t sour at all.

Hi Silvia,
That is a very fine looking loaf. Yeast is the primary bacteria in “young” sourdough starters. Yeast produces mainly alcohol and CO2 as it ferments. The acid that we associate with sourdough is produced by lactobacilli. Over time your starter will be populated with lactobacilli and it will grow more acidic. This is true if you are using the ‘traditional’ wet starter method. If you are using Rose’s ‘stiff’ starter method the starter is less hospitable to lactobacilli and it will most likely not develop a high degree of acidification.

Great post, Gene, I learned something!

Lovely boule, Sylvia.

Beautiful loaf, Sylvia.  As you make more sourdough, you will learn how to control the amount of sourness.  As Slike says, rye sours most quickly, then whole wheat and the slowest is white flour.  If you are wanting to make a San Francisco type sourdough, you need to allow lots of time for it to get acidic (eg you can let the dough ferment in the fridge for a day or two) but with the same starter, you can make a very mild loaf if you make it in one day. 

BTW, did you get your flour/kneading issues sorted out - looks like you did!  What flour did you use for this loaf?

Thanks for all replies and great advices.
I used Rose´s recipe, Hector and Gebe. It´s good to know it isn’t supposed to be very sour; the
sourdough breads I have tasted are very sour.
I will continue to let it age and develop more flavour.
If I use a rye sourdough, will it need to be fed only rye flour?  Rye flour is very difficult to
find here.
Annie, last week I baked, as usual the basic hearth bread, and kneaded (kned?) it for about
15 minutes with the mixer and another 15 by hand. The biggest gluten window I got was about
2 x2 cm and wasn´t very translucent, but I didn´t want to keand my life away, so I continued
with the bread.  At about half the rising (raising) time, the dough burst open; I had never
seen someting like that! Another bread sculpture… But it baked nice, though it didn´t rise much.
The crust and taste, as always were, great, so I decided to accept the bread as it wants to be.
For the sourdough, I didn´t have problems with the kneading; I used also the all purpose flour.
Today I found a bakery, where the owner agreed to sell my a couple kg of strong flour.

Using Rye to attract lactobacilli is a good strategy. The sugars in Rye are favored by bacteria that produce acid. I would try one or two feedings with Rye and then return to regular flour feedings. After a few uses you won’t even know that the Rye was even there.
If you can’t find Rye flour you can always ‘cheat’ by adding a spoonful of yoghurt to your starter. You would only have to do that once. For the ultimate boost you could add buttermilk.

Gene and Silke: I will use some of my precious rye flour to feed my starter.

Gene - 28 October 2009 11:17 AM

Using Rye to attract lactobacilli is a good strategy. The sugars in Rye are favored by bacteria that produce acid. I would try one or two feedings with Rye and then return to regular flour feedings. After a few uses you won’t even know that the Rye was even there.
If you can’t find Rye flour you can always ‘cheat’ by adding a spoonful of yoghurt to your starter. You would only have to do that once. For the ultimate boost you could add buttermilk.

I’m not much of a bread baker, but wow… you’re loaves look extremely good!

Thanks for all the compliments, they encourage me.