Icanhazontop: Sourdough starter diary

Sourdough had been a fascination for me. I will watch videos on how to make the perfect sourdough eg ilovecookingireland and frenchguycooking. Of course I do read a lot of articles as well during my preparation for the soudough starter journey. From what I read, it is advisable to try it out with all purpose flour first as it is the most predictable. Being the rookie, of course I try it out with all purpose flour first. It turned out beautifully and gave me a confidence boost. I then continue my journey using wholewheat flour. I got this from my local bakery supplies store which is already mixed between wholewheat and breadflour. I'm not sure what is the mixing ratio however it worked fine no matter which store I got the flour from. Once you get a hang of this, you can just basically try out with different types of flour to make this starter. Your starter and your bread can even be of different type of flour eg I used my all purpose flour starter for my wholewheat bread. However the degree of proofing might be different. Some might be stronger and proof larger. Some might not be strong enough to proof really big.
There is a test called the floating test. You will fill your bottle with lots of water and put in a chunk of your sourdough starter to see whether it floats. I tried it with all purpose flour and it floated beautifully. Unfortunately for my wholewheat flour, it did not float. I then proceed with baking my bread using it, my sourdough bread still turns out nicely so do not despair if it does not float. Try baking a bread with it, it might give u unexpectedly pleasant results. Just make sure that you add the flour and bread during the same hours for the rest of the days eg if the first day you are doing it at 8am, it is advisable to add in the flour and water at the same time for the rest of the days. During this journey, if by noontime after your starter has grown big and you found quite some amount of water on the surface, add a tablespoon or so of flour and mix it because it means that your starter is still hungry. The consistency is supposed to be doughlike texture and not too gooey. Generally, my sourdough starter will start to rise by noon and grow bigger in the afternoon and last till the evening. The next day it would have fallen but still there will be lots of air bubbles inside and it will still look more compared to when you just mixed your ingredients.
In the end when I'm done with it, I will add equal amounts of flour and water into my starter. When it startes to grow with air bubbles in between I then store it in the fridge. If I want to make bread, I will remove 100 grams of sourdough starter from the original jar and store the original jar back into the fridge. For the 100 grams that I want to use, I will add in 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water and wait for it to grow. Usually I will do it in the morning and only use the started the next day. For the original starter that is in the fridge, when there is like 1/4 of starter left, I will add 200 grams of flour and water each. After 2-3 hours after it has grown, I will then store the starter into the fridge.
This is the beginning of my sourdough starter journey. I prefer to use glass with big mouth so that I can add or remove the ingredients easily and I love watching the air bubbles in the transparent jar. Give your starter a name and show some love then it will grow really well. For my diary, I usually do it in the morning around 7am. Do make sure that the water you used for this starter is not tap water but filtered water because chlorine is bad for your starter. The water used should be hot or warm. Store your starter in somewhere hot and dark. Do not close the lid tight. For me I prefer to cover the top with cloth and tie it will a rubber band.

Day 1
50 grams of flour
50 grams of water
Mix these 2 ingredients and leave it in a container.