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I’m ecstatic! Yes!! My culture has become uncultured and is now officially a starter. (I hope…) Yesterday morning, the starter had doubled overnight. I fed it and this is what I saw at midday.

Note the orange sticker on the side of the bowl. When I mixed it, it was as high as the bottom edge of the sticker. Many thanks to Susan (Wild Yeast) for the hand-holding; here is a portion of her calm and kind reply to my shrieking “How do I know if it’s right???” query:

I have found the best indicator of when the starter is ready to use is that it can double its volume in 8 hours
or less after feeding.

Judging by the happy doubling and bubbling, I now figured it was safe to proceed with preparing the starter for actual bread making. And this is what the mixture looked like last night just after feeding.

And this is what it looked like this morning!! Zowie! I can’t tell you how absolutely thrilled I am!

So. Only fourteen days instead of the recommended six in Susan McKenna Grant’s Piano Piano Pieno. That certainly says a lot for how our house retains its coolness, I think! Because I’m pretty certain that it was the cool night temperatures of this past couple of weeks that slowed everything down.

Here is what the dough looked like earlier this morning. I’m just about to go down to turn it as per the instructions in the slight variation of the basic sourdough recipe on page 46 of McKenna’s book.

Wish me luck!!