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Reviving a refrigerated starter

DaphneG's picture
DaphneG

Reviving a refrigerated starter

Hello,

I just got started baking my own bread with natural leaven following the instructions from Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread book.The first loaves, though far from perfect, were delicious and convinced me to keep baking my own bread regularly.

However I have no time to bake on a regular basis so I decided to refrigerate my starter instead of keeping feeding a starter I only occasionally need (about once a week). Unfortunately I haven't found specific instructions on how to revive it now that I would like to bake again.

After 2 weeks of refrigeration in an air-tight contained my starter smells very acidic (vinegar-like). It was active for about a week after I put it in the fridge (I could see bubbles forming through the container's glass) but now looks completely inactive. How can I revive it? I hope it's not dead...

Thanks a lot for your advice.

Daphné.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

:)  Rest assured the starter is just waiting for you.  Hello little beasties!

Just scrape back the top skin if any and get a whopping teaspoon of the starter underneath.  Put it into a clean jar and add equal or double the amount of starter with water and add flour to thicken to your favourite consistency.  Let it ferment.  When it has become all bubbly and smelling good, feed it again without discarding to whatever you need to bake and save a little to feed and continue growing the starter.    Save the old starter for back-up, a few days until you're sure this fed one is doing well. 

After saving some mature starter, feed it and watch it start to get active, then pop into the fridge.  Take out in one to two weeks and repeat the process.  :)

DaphneG's picture
DaphneG

Thank you very much Mini Oven and A BakEr, I have followed those instructions. And may long live my starter!

D.

drogon's picture
drogon

My starters live in the fridge all the time. I sometimes use them directly, chilled, right into the flour & water, but often need to bulk them up with more flour & water before the mix & knead. The fridge just puts them on hold for the duration (almost - they're still working just very very slow) If your starter was good when you put it in, then a few days or a week or 2 isn't going to change anything.

Give it a stir, let it come up to room temperature and off you go, or work out how much you need - e.g. if you need 150g active starter, then 30g from the fridge plus 60g flour and 60g water, leave that for a few hours and off you go.

-Gordon

Doc.Dough's picture
Doc.Dough

You don't need to keep much starter since you can grow an enormous amount in a couple of days when you need it. Before I travel I refresh my starter in the evening (x:13:15) (starter:water:flour) where x is a function of the season. When the weather is cold (kitchen counter 65°F) x=3 to 5g, when it is warm (kitchen counter 80°F) x=0.2 to 0.4g. Let it sit on the counter overnight.  In the morning it will have begun to rise and is ready to refrigerate before I head for the airport.  Generally it is good for a couple of weeks, maybe three if kept at 40°F.  When I return I take it out of the refrigerator and let it sit on the counter to warm up, then feed it as I normally would (x:13:15) and let it grow for 24 hrs.  If it has been refrigerated for more than one week I usually refresh at least once and usually twice before using it to begin a batch of bread.