Spent $45 on a fancy digital scale and it just saved my sourdough starter

I've been fighting with this starter for like a week, couldn't get it to rise right. My old scale was a cheapo one from a garage sale and I guess it was way off. Weighed everything with the new one this morning, exactly 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water, and bam, it doubled in 4 hours. I feel like an idiot for not just buying a decent scale sooner lol. Anyone have a good recipe for the first loaf with a revived starter?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jennifer1mo ago

Honestly I used to think the same, but my starter was a total mess until I fixed the weights.

christopher_craig1mo ago

Gotta disagree a bit here. A scale being off by a few grams shouldn't kill a starter that badly if everything else is right. Starter is pretty forgiving. Mine survived my eyeballing it for months before I got a scale. The issue might have been your water temp or how active your starter culture actually was. A good scale helps, but it's not always the magic fix.

robert_craig5d ago

Has anyone tried testing their old scale with a known weight like a bag of sugar to see how far off it really was? Ive heard of cheap scales being off by 10 or 15 grams, which messes with hydration a lot. But I see @christopher_craig point too, temp and activity level matter a ton.