The Daisy Papers
A Baker's Investigation Into the Language of Starter Life
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Living Apothecary Series
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Part V
What pH Reveals That Your Eyes Cannot
The Daisy Papers
A Baker's Investigation Into the Language of Starter Life
__________
Living Apothecary Series
––––––––––––––
Part V
When Daisy Madre became Broken Daisy, I began researching everything I could about the biology of sourdough starters.
That is when I first encountered something I had never seriously considered before.
pH.
The measure of acidity.
Up to that point, I had always relied on my eyes and my hands. I looked at the rise, the bubbles, the texture. I felt the gluten network when I stirred the starter. I smelled the aroma.
For most bakers, those signals are enough.
But I had reached a point where those signals were no longer reliable for the level of precision I wanted.
Because Broken Daisy still looked fairly strong.
She had webbing. She rose reasonably well. She did not smell unpleasant or overly sour. By many standards, she looked like a perfectly healthy starter.
But something inside her had clearly changed.
And I needed a way to measure it.
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The moment I decided to measure Daisy’s pH came when I learned that the likely cause of her weakness was proteolysis — the process where acids and enzymes slowly break down the gluten structure.
If that process was happening, I needed a way to know whether the acid load inside the starter was still too high.
My eyes could not tell me that.
But a pH meter could.
Fortunately, I already owned one. I used it regularly for fermenting vegetables and making kombucha.
So I decided to test Daisy.
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The first reading I saw surprised me.
3.5
At first that number may not sound dramatic.
But when you begin studying sourdough biology, you learn something important very quickly:
The difference between 3.5 and 4.0 is enormous.
Most severely neglected starters rarely drop below about 3.2, because even in acidic conditions the microbial ecosystem creates a natural floor.
But the healthy working range for a balanced starter at peak is generally considered somewhere around:
4.0 to 4.3
That may look like a small numerical difference.
But biologically it represents a completely different environment.
A starter at 3.7 or 3.8 may still be strong enough to rise bread beautifully.
But it is also acidic enough that proteolysis may slowly weaken the gluten network.
And suddenly something else became clear to me.
For years, Daisy had probably been living in exactly that range.
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This realization was not discouraging.
It was actually exciting.
Because despite that acidity, Daisy had produced many wonderful loaves of bread over the years.
Some of them were truly beautiful.
Which told me something very important.
My technique had improved enough to compensate for an imperfect starter.
But it also explained something that had puzzled me for years.
Why some loaves produced a spectacular open crumb…
…and others did not.
My technique had been consistent.
But Daisy had not.
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Once I began measuring pH regularly, another discovery followed quickly.
Even when Broken Daisy appeared strong again visually, the pH told a different story.
Her numbers remained around 3.7.
That meant she had recovered to what I now understood as Old Daisy — the starter I had known for years.
Strong.
Active.
But still slightly acidic.
Not Daisy Madre.
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This is when pH revealed something my eyes could never see.
Two starters can look almost identical.
Both can rise well.
Both can show strong gluten webbing.
But one may have a pH of 3.7, while the other sits at 4.2.
To the naked eye, the difference may be subtle.
But biologically, the ecosystem inside those two jars is dramatically different.
And when a starter moves above that threshold — somewhere around 4.0 to 4.3 at peak — something remarkable happens.
The visual behavior changes.
The surface becomes creamy and smooth.
The dome disappears.
Large bubbles push through the surface and expand upward like tiny volcanic domes, their membranes thin enough to see through.
The starter suddenly looks alive in a way that is unmistakable once you have seen it.
That was Daisy Madre.
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Once I understood what pH was telling me, I realized something else.
If acidity was the problem, then I needed to remove the accumulated acids from the system.
The most effective way to do that is through large-ratio feedings.
So I changed Daisy’s feeding schedule to 1:20:20, twice a day.
At the same time, I kept her at 23°C (about 73°F).
This temperature encourages yeast activity, allowing the yeast population to catch up with the bacteria as the ecosystem rebalances.
For several days I repeated this process.
Feeding.
Measuring.
Watching.
Slowly the pH began to rise.
Broken Daisy was becoming Old Daisy again.
And now, for the first time, I understood exactly where she stood.
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You might think discovering that my starter had been acidic for years would have been disappointing.
But the truth is, I felt the opposite.
I felt relief.
Because for years I had been searching for the weak point in my baking.
I experimented with fermentation timing, shaping methods, hydration levels, and flour blends.
Yet I could never identify exactly what was preventing consistent open crumb.
And suddenly, in one moment, the answer appeared.
It had been Daisy all along.
Not that she was bad.
Not that she was unhealthy.
But that she had never quite reached the extraordinary balance that Daisy Madre had briefly shown me.
And once you see that difference, you cannot unsee it.
Understanding the pH of my starter did not make baking easier.
But it gave me something far more valuable.
Direction.
Because if you know what the problem is, you can begin learning how to fix it.
And for the first time in seven years of baking, I felt that I finally understood where to focus my effort.
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Starter Field Notes
Starter: Broken Daisy → Old Daisy recovery
Feeding ratio: 1:20:20 twice daily
Temperature: 23°C (73°F)
Initial pH: 3.5
Recovery pH: 3.7–3.8
Observation: visually strong starter, but still acidic.
Conclusion: acidity may explain years of overly extensible dough and inconsistent crumb.
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I did not come here to persuade.
I came to share what I had learned,
and to leave the choosing in other hands.