Science experiment... in the kitchen

For the last two weeks I have been working on making a sourdough, today was the first time I used it for making bread, it has been a pretty interesting experience, first I tried to make a starter with all purpose flower and it didn't work, after a few days it smelled awful and it didn't start to show any activity of yeast.

After that I decided to start all over again, but this time I decided to try two ways. One of them would start with only whole wheat flour and water, and in the other one I put a little bakers yeast with the flour and water. In just 1 day I could see some activity in the one that I added the yeast, and the other had a little activity too, but it was to small.

After a three days the one with the yeast started to develop pretty well, it already had some alcohol smell. The one that had only flour and water started to show some more activity and it was already starting to rise.

At the fifth day the one with the yeast was already starting to double its size in just a few hours, so that one was ready to bake, and the other one was catching up, so far there isn't much difference between the two of them, just that the one that I didn't use yeast has a stronger smell, but that might be because of the container.

So, today I used the sourdough that had yeast to make some bread, and it taste so good, even though I, as always, forgot to put salt in it, I seriously have a problem with salt.

I leave here some pictures of the development of my sourdough, it has been a really great experience and I'll try to make some bread with each sourdough to see if there is any difference. So far I can tell that it really makes a tastier bread than using bakers yeast, and it had a better crust and was fluffier, but it might be other factors there too.