Finally!!! Sourdough Starter Success

Okay okay,  this is so exciting!!   After 2 failed attempts at making just a sourdough starter,  AHHHH!  We finally did it with success, thanks to the lady over at Baking with Paws and her interesting inclusion of how to make fruit yeast water for your sourdough starter.   Love that little secret 'no fail' piece of information.  And after 7 days of waiting for my apple yeast water it was ready to use!

My little Abigail has been waiting for this final step,  I pointed out that lovely foam of bubbles among the fermented apples....

a closer look at that foamy loveliness...

A peek from the top...

I tasted it too,  but no thanks to all the congestion I've been dealing with the past 5-6 months my sense of taste is way off,  I think I could detect a little bit of heat almost, but mostly a faintly apple flavored sugar water.  Okay well, I then put together my starter, 1/4 cup of apple yeast water and 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour as I discovered that the white flour I had used for my previous failed starters WASN'T UNBLEACHED WHITE FLOUR!  I was like,   "maybe that's why they weren't working" I forgot that 'all purpose' doesn't mean 'unbleached' 😒 Yeppp,  I feel stupid,  but whatever,  this worked.  Check it out...

This morning... it was just about double volume!!

All day yesterday I was waiting to see the starter begin to rise...and absolutely nothing, even before I went to bed,  I didn't notice a difference,  no rise.  It was suppose to take 24 hours for it to rise to double,  but it wasn't showing a percentage of anything.  Till I checked it at 9 oclock this morning exactly 24 hrs later.

Even Minky was interested in seeing it..

And it's risen even a little higher by this evening around 7pm, so so cool!   Pioneer sourdough,  here we come!   I can't wait to make my first,  real sourdough bread like they used to do in the old days.  I wonder what it's going to taste like?