Starter runny and no longer doubling
Hi everyone,
I have a sourdough starter, which I brought to life in April using the King Arthur recipe. She has been making delicious loaves. I’ve been keeping her on the counter and feeding her pretty much daily at a 1:1:1 ratio with AP flour. Occasionally I’ll feed her twice a day if I’m doing more baking and, every once in a blue moon, I will skip a day.
Within the last week or two, I’ve noticed that the consistency is very runny. Instead of a thick, cake batter consistency, it’s more like thin pancake batter. My last loaf also didn’t rise as it should. My starter is also starting to collapse well before doubling in size. She is bubbly and smells wonderful, though.
The only thing that’s changed really is the weather. I live in the South where it’s hot and humid, but our home is air conditioned at 75 degrees.
I keep her covered with a washcloth fastened by a rubber band.
Any thoughts on what I’m doing wrong or what I could be doing differently? I worked so hard on establishing her and keeping her alive and I don’t want to lose all of my hard work!
Thank you.
It could simply be that your starter has become active enough that it requires either higher ratio feedings or more frequent feedings.
Try a day or three feeding at a 1:2:2 or even 1:3:3 ratio.
Thank you - I will try that tomorrow!
You’re welcome ?
Please keep us posted, so that we know how it went.
Good luck!
At 111 feed ratio once a day and 75F, may have thrown your starter out of balance. 122 is closer to what it would need for once a day feeding. Slowly over time it crossed over to the too acidic side. Take a small amount and feed 132 (sfw) for a few days and it'll be good again. Don't be afraid to stir it well whenever your near it. Enjoy!
Thank you so much! A question, though, from
this novice baker - doesn’t the starter need to be fed equal parts flour and water? Or did I misinterpret that “rule”?!
also, When you say stir whenever I near it, do you mean after it’s doubled in volume, while it’s in more or a resting phase?
I fed 1:2:2 this morning and the volume only increased by maybe a 1/3. ?
It may take a few feedings at the new ratio to get your starter back to its whipped-pudding-like consistency.
The idea of equal parts flour&water is really just a function of maintaining the 100% hydration level of the overall starter. By Increasing the ratio from 1:1:1 to 1:2:2, you are still feeding an equal amount of flour and water (therefore maintaining the 100% hydration). But even though you’re maintaining the hydration level, you are also increasing the amount of food source that each yeast cell has access to.
The idea of “doubling”, in regards to a starter, is less about a starter actually physically doubling in between feedings, and more about a starter’s overall ability to rise to at least double its post-feeding bulk. As long as it’s able to double, it doesn’t matter if it actually does (if, for example, you are periodically stirring it).
Also worth noting is that “doubling” and “peaking” are two different things. It’s a mistake to assume that a starter is ready to use or to feed just because it has reached the point where it has doubled, as many starters increase in bulk well past the point of doubling. A starter hasn’t peaked until it stops increasing in bulk.
As for stirring: now that we know that it isn’t absolutely imperative that a starter actually doubles (as long as we know that it’s capable of doubling), you can do a stirring at any point. Since yeasts are immobile, they can only process the food sources that are directly adjacent to them. Stirring redistributes both the yeasts and the food sources, allowing for more growth of microorganisms and more fermentation of the flour present. This can also stretch out the timing of a starter’s peak. If you stir a starter before it has peaked, you simply push back the peak to a later time. If you stir a starter right after it’s peak, you will often see a second rise (and also a second peak). Doing this too often, however, can change the balance between yeasts and lactic acid bacteria.
Ultimately, a starter is a living breathing organism. With time and observation, you’ll learn to recognize its moods and it’s needs.
Wow. So much great information here for me to digest! - I cannot thank you enough.
You can feed whatever ratios you like, there is no real rule. It boils down to how much time you want to spend on your starter. The less food you give it, the more time you'll spend on it and vice versa. I would say the 111 ratio can be handy if worried about the math of hydration percentage. Not being one who frets over 68.53882% hydration instead of 70% I've never really paid much attention to set ratios.
It can take a bit to get back to normal. If it's on the thicker side it'll be easier to see the bubbly stringy goodness when it happens. Enjoy!
Stirring - whenever is good, but, it's good to remember how much it's risen each time it's stirred if you're worried about the did it double/triple thing.
Thank you, Phaz! Gosh I still have so much to learn. So with respect to hydration, does the % hydration of your starter affect the bread in any way? And if the %hydration doesn’t matter, why bother weighing?
lastly, does the consistency even matter? I think I assumed I wanted a thicker consistency, but does that matter? TIA!
Hydration - it's importance depends on the baker. Some live by it, some don't. I happen to be one who doesn't. But, I do use dough of different consistency (hydration) for different proposes. Bagels at 75% hydration just isn't right, neither is a yeast donut at 50% so I do vary a bit. And here's the benefit of a scale - you'll get to know the difference (look and feel) between different hydration levels much faster with one then without - and once you have that feel - the scale will sit in a drawer.
Does starter hydration make a difference in a dough - yes it will change the numbers, but, logically, as the starter amount is usually a small portion of a formula, the end effect will also be small. I don't lose sleep over a 2-3% difference, you shouldn't either.
Hmmm - that make me think - variations in flour (brand to brand and even batch to batch) will change consistent even with exactly the same hydration level. Maybe we should be testing viscosity instead of just going by a hydration%. Eh, that would be a pain.
Consistency - of a starter matters. To thin won't hold air bubbles, and those trapped air bubbles cause rising. If looking for rising or peaking, we should be looking at how high was the peak, it'll be easier to see when thicker.
So much to learn - would ya believe - if you can gain a little understanding of 4 or 5 concepts - you'd be a master. It's really not that complicated. I like to say things are only as complicated as you make them to be, so don't make things complicated. And I can't believe I went this long without coffee! Question everything - Enjoy!
After you've got your starter back to a healthy place, you might consider keeping it in the fridge between bakings otherwise you'll create a lot of discard. I'll make up a couple days worth of starter, let it rise a while and then pop it in the fridge. You can use it right from the fridge with warmer water.
I had NO idea that you could use starter right from the fridge in bread. Can you tell me a little more about how that works?!
I thought refrigeration made the starter dormant, and that you needed to feed it a few times out of the fridge to “wake it up” before baking. I probably bake a loaf every 2-3 days so I’ve been struggling to figure out the right storage And maintenance. I will say I do use the discard a lot - we have a large family and I make things like muffins and sourdough pizza dough weekly, so having a decent amount of discard isn’t a bad thing!
If in the fridge a short time (days), no problem, when you get into weeks, best to tlc it for a day or 2 just in case. Storage - long term (weeks/months), fridge. Short term doesn't need storage. The trick there is start small and as you feed you build up to what you need. I came up with a kinda formula for this if baking on a regular schedule ie. every x number of days. Divide the amount of starter you'll need by x and work backwards, like so
You need 200g starter every 4 days
Day 3 200/4= 50
Day 2 50/4= 12.5
Start with 12.5/4 = jar scraping
There we have the amount we need every 4 days. We started small and feed or way up to what we need, no discard so no waste, and were also maintaining a healthy vibrant starter with a daily feed schedule (of about 122 - 122 is an average ratio for once a day). Even easier, just throw in 100g flour and water right off and stir a couple times a day (I'm a fan of easy). Enjoy!
I'm dittoing Phaz- if the structure of your starter seems good in the fridge, go for it. If it looks like soup, give it some TLC.
How long you can go likely depends on a lot of factors. My 100% hydration starter is good for maybe 3 or 4 days. I had a very stiff levain in my fridge for at least 10 days and tried it and it worked just fine.
I wanted to thank you all for your helping to educate me. After a few days of 1:2:2 feedings my starter is back to where it should be and the oven spring in my loaves is so much better!
I’m going to play with the refrigerator storage a bit and see what happens.
if I leave t my starter out on the counter, can I continue with daily 1:2:2 feedings?
and if I move to the fridge, I’m assuming I should feed it before moving to the refrigerator?
You can continue with daily 1:2:2 feedings if kept outside of the fridge, although you may reach a point where your starter requires an even higher ratio. This is a good thing, as it denotes that you starter continues to grow in strength. If you notice that the 1:2:2 ratio is allowing your starter to peak in 4 to 6 hours, you may wish to consider either moving to two (or even 3) feedings per day, or a higher ratio (1:3:3 or 1:5:5).
At this point, unless you are baking every day, the fridge might be a better option. If you go that route, most people say to feed it, and then let it set out for an hour or so prior to putting it in the fridge. The fridge won’t make your starter go dormant, but it will slow it’s activity a great deal.
I used to do this, feed my starter, leave it out on the counter for a few hours, then place it in the fridge for 1 to 2 weeks before using it again. What my experience was with my fridge at 3ºC was that I was diluting the starter and making it weaker. I found that at the temperature of my fridge, the yeast activity has essentially non existent but the LAB are active, so my starter had lots of acid and not enough yeast in it so then it would take quite a few feedings to get it fully active again.
Instead what I’ve recently been doing and is working so far, is feeding the starter and letting it rise fully to peak and then putting it in the fridge. Now after 1 week in the fridge I’ve been able to take it out and build a levain in one feed and have a very active starter right out of the fridge. Then another week later still able to do the same.
I don’t think I’ll do the feed, leave out for a few hours but not to peak then refrigerate any longer. Of course your results may vary.
Benny
Hello Skelley,
I'm new to sourdough, I started in late January.
My niece sent me starter and what she instructed me to do, (she sent 25grams wet starter) was, add 113apf & 113 water (per her bread recipe for the next day required amount of starter) before I went to bed and it would be more than doubled in the morning to then make dough, it was! Awesome 👌
So then...after learning how to actually make and work the dough getting understanding of what it's supposed to look and feel like, experience.
Last month I started treating my starter differently than how she told me to, which is after I use my starter for that, recipe I will have 25grams in the jar,
Stick that in the fridge, the night before I want to bake, before bed, like 11:00 p.m. add the 113/113 in the a.m. it's overdoubled for me.Terrific.
When it's not broke don't fix it.🙄
So all my sourdough starter reading, led me to wanting to keep it out of the fridge....🤷♀️ any way...I've been doing that for about a month and it's been slowly getting runnier! Now, its very runny and by bread is not rising as before, which leads me to wanting to stick it back in the fridge when I'm not baking, however now I think she needs tlc to get her back strong, before doing that.
I've been for the past three days feeding 1-2-2, still not pillows like before🤦♀️
I don't know how to fix it.
So Skelley, my locale is similar to yours, I live in Florida..keep my home at 75°
My starter consistently used to make me think of, Fluff..The jarred marshmallow, now like overly thin pancake batter. Ugh.
But! I see your post is four years old, so maybe you and/or others have messed around, messed up! And found the way back on track😬
Thank you!
Here are a few things that weren't mentioned in the thread before, or not really brought out.
The organisms in a starter can adapt to new conditions. They can even evolve. So a starter that is mostly kept cold may adapt to working better while cold. If you transition it to being warm all the time, it may take some time and refreshments before it fully adjusts to the new warm conditions.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't take a cold but active starter and bake directly with it. That can work well and I do it all the time. But it does mean that a starter can change its characteristics to adapt to its environment. And your starter has a mixture of yeasts and bacteria, which may adapt differently and at different rates.
A starter that gets thin and soupy is displaying degradation of its protein. This can happen because enzymes in the flour eventually degrade it, and also if the starter gets too acidic. A starter left in the refrigerator for a long time will tend to get very acidic. You can often detect this by simply smelling it. You may notice an acrid, sharp smell.
You can also end up with a thin, acidic starter in starters that don't get refrigerated. For either kind of starter, you are getting a signal that the starter has gone too long between feedings.
How to feed such a starter? When you feed a starter, you are diluting its existing organisms. If you dilute them too far, you can make the starter able to be influenced too much by new organisms that come in with the new flour. If you don't dilute them enough, you won't be fixing up the excess of acid-producing bacteria (the LAB) that was created by the long time between feedings (the yeast will build up faster than the bacteria at first - or at least the LAB will produce acid slower than the yeast multiplies and produces CO2). The temperature will also affect the growth and balance.
Since none of us can know exactly what our organisms are and how many, not how they will interact with the new flour and its own organisms, we have to go by guesswork and past experience. So, for a thin, weak starter, begin by discarding almost all of it. A 1:1:1 feeding (old starter:water:flour) won't dilute the existing concentrations much, so it won't change the character of the starter much. If you have a good starter in good condition, that's fine, but it's not going to do much correction.
1:3:3 or 1:5:5 will make more of a change. You don't have to stay with 100% hydration - though it's the easiest way to go - so just consider those relative amounts of flour and make any adjustments from there.
There are additional ways to get a starter to last longer before it thins out. Here are two that I use:
1. Use bread flour instead of all purpose. This starts with more protein so it takes longer to degrade.
2. Add salt to the starter. 1% of the flour weight seems to work well, and it's not a critical number. Salt does slow down the fermentation, but at this level not that much. It also counters proteolysis, which is what you are after. Note that the salt won't keep the yeast from running out of food, so if you keep it unfed for too long you can still end up with a very acidic starter that hasn't thinned out yet.
The use of salt is not conventional but some bakers regularly do it. I only started recently and I think it works well for me. The salt certainly has not caused my starter to behave badly; if anything it's better.
Remember, what should be obvious from the above, there is no one right way, and different bakers have had different experiences and have used different methods. Keep your eyes on the main behaviors, don't worry too much about exact details anyone else may write about but do use them as ideas that may be helpful starting points.
HTH
TomP
If runny after a while - feed more flour. Feeding is based on usage - not what's recommended. Enjoy!