Starter has lost its love
After searching the forums I have found no one with exactly this problem. Hopefully someone can give me some advice.
I few months ago I made some Friendship Bread following the usual instructions: flour, sugar, milk, and a bit of yeast. I made the bread, gave some away, held some back, and froze the rest. Then it occurred to me to make a regular starter out of it. Over a period of weeks I stopped feeding sugar, then milk, until the starter was on a diet of 1/4 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of water once a week. When I had enough starter I would make something.
This worked well until I decided that I wanted to try a recipe for sourdough pancakes. So I started feeding extra flour and water more often to get the 2 cups of starter I needed for the recipe. The plan was to get the 2 cups of starter I needed for the recipe and have some left over to treat as before.
When I made the pancakes I noticed that the starter had become quite thin, more like milk and less like thin batter. Regardless, I fed the remaining starter with 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup water and put it in the fridge like before.
In about 2 days the starter went from bubbles to hooch with no sign of life at all. Rather than smelling like sourdough, it now smells like library paste. Currently I have the starter on the counter, I have fed it, and I'm hoping for the best.
This has been a good starter until now. It has survived my lack of scientific method...until now.
Is it dead dead or just mostly dead?
Starters should be fed the same amounts of flour and water by weight for a 100% hydration. Some keep higher hydration and some keep lower hydration starters.
But feeding the same volume is something like 400% hydration.
Take a little off (keep the rest to one side incase anything goes wrong so you have a back up) and start feeding it the same amounts by weight!
Try using whole rye flour too as it lends itself very well to starters.
Best of luck and let us know how you're doing.
It probably isn't dead but at this extremely high hydration it'll not bubble much nor rise.
You wrote: "In about 2 days the starter went from bubbles to hooch with no sign of life at all. Rather than smelling like sourdough, it now smells like library paste."
That sounds like an overfeed. For those who don't know, library paste is flour & water (and alum) cooked into a gel and sometimes a few drops of oil of cloves is added. Are you sure that was hooch and not water separation? As Abe pointed out your starter is rather wet, don't think 400%, maybe half that but very wet none the less, flour and water will separate if the yeasts population is not big enough to keep the culture stirred with bubble action. They will settle on the bottom and the extra water will rise to the top. What made you think it was hooch?
After taking some for Abe's experiment, observe the rest. If it separates again don't worry about it, but I would not feed when it smells like flour and water paste. Wait a day or two or three before doing any discards. You will just weaken the culture. Cover and find a warm place to let the little beasties party, somewhere around 76° to 78°F. It won't be rising when very wet but you will get bubbles running up the sides, foamy edges, and a more fermented smell. The clean line between the separated flour on the bottom and the water above will become fuzzy with bubbles rising and the liquid will darken and smell more beer like.
Yeah don't know volume off hand, I work in grams so just took an uneducated guess, so i'll google it and work out the actual hydration for you...
So 1 cup water = 236g (give or take)
1 cup flour = 127g
236/127 = 1.86
1.86 x 100 = 186% hydration.
I was way off but still VERY high! Problem still the same.
As long as the starter is runny and wet, it may ferment faster, then when the aromas return, don't discard but add more flour, rye or regular or a mixture of both. Then wait it out without refrigeration. Wait for maximum volume from the mixture which should resemble a soft dough or very thick pancake batter.
When that peaks in activity, reduce to 1/4 cup starter fed with 1/8 c water and 1/4 c of flour. Let that ferment and repeat until the rising peak is reached somewhere between 3 and 8 hrs. Once it is fermenting quickly, Feed more flour and water to stretch the feedings to 8 hrs peaking to wait and feed at 12 hrs. Then after about 3 such feeds, you can now chill the starter. Feed the starter, wait until it is about 1/3 risen (about 2 to 3 hrs) and then pop it into the refrigerator. It should be actively rising when it is chilled or risk reduction in yeast numbers.
Always before the watery stuff on the top smelled sour, so I thought it was hooch. When I saw what looked like the same thing recently I thought it was still hooch. Apparently not.
So my starter needs to sit for a few days so it can re-ferment? Looks like I need to weigh my feeds, too, rather than measure them.
And when it begins to look and smell like it should, start over with equal amounts by weight of starter, water, and flour? I will give it some whole wheat flour when I do that.
I appreciate everyone's help! I am so glad this starter is not dead!
It actually has enough water now. Your next feed can just be flour. To bring it back to 100% hydration then we'll need to see how much you have and work out how much flour to feed it.
Then with subsequent feedings always weigh!
Right now I have about a cup of starter. Last night, before I saw any answers here, I gave it 1/4 cup of flour (no water) because I thought it was making "hooch" again. So it is a bit thicker now. After reading the answers here I put the starter in a clean jar, covered it, and set it aside.
So, how much do I need to set aside and how much should I keep to feed? I don't have rye flour, will whole wheat do?
But this maths is getting way beyond me. Cups confuses me at best. I only ever weigh my ingredients.
I think go by feel. Add enough so it's a thick paste. Once it becomes active then carry on by weight only. Eventually it'll even out.
So keep about a 3rd of the jar. Thicken it up till it feels like thick paste, set aside in warm part of the kitchen and see what happens.
For every gram of flour you'll have 1.86g water in your starter.
2.86 grams of your starter = 1g flour + 1.86g water. Which is 186% hydration
To bring this back to 100% hydration you'll need to feed this 2.86g of starter with .86g flour.
That is the jist of it.
Take off 40g of your starter and feed that 12g of rye flour. This will give you a 100% hydration starter.
Mix this up in a small jar and set to one side in a warm part of your kitchen. (do not discard the rest just yet in case anything goes wrong).
Then see if your new 100% hydration starter comes to life.
So if I weigh out 40g of starter and add to that 12g of flour it should be good to go? Any excess over 40g I will put aside just in case.
:) Well you get the idea. You just threw me when you said in your last msg that you have already added 1/4 cup of flour.
I think don't be too concerned about it. Just thicken up and leave in warm place. Should it bubble up then take some off and feed equal amounts of flour and water by weight again. A few more feedings this way to make it healthy again and feeding equal amounts of flour/water by weight and it will balance itself out over time.
After reading everyone's replies, I think I'll just let my starter sit for a while and see what happens. It does have some bubble activity after being left out all night. It just still smells like wet flour/library paste. If it gets its sour smell back, I'll try the scientific method and see what happens.
That's probably the best thing to do. Keep it covered and stir once per day.
I've been stirring the starter once a day and leaving it loosely covered on the counter. A couple of days ago it foamed up about an inch, but still smelled like wet flour. Yesterday was pretty quiet, but some of the paste smell had left.
Today it smelled like it should, like regular starter! It is still quite thin. Now to cross my fingers and give it a fresh jar with equal amounts (by weight) of starter, flour, and water. I'll keep the rest in the fridge just in case.
Thank you, everyone for setting me on the right path!
A photo would be good :)
If it's still quite thin then why not just thicken it up some more till it's like a thick stiff paste and leave for another 24 hours?
If it springs to life then all's good. after that just feed it 1:1 by weight from now on.
That sounds like something I can do :) I'll get a picture, then give the starter some wheat flour to chew on while I figure out how to upload the picture.
what I suggested on Jan 19th. :)
Yes you did :) There is just so much information here it is all running together. Thickening the starter does sound logical so I will do that today.
Here is the starter before I do anything else to it. You can see where it rose a couple of days ago.
It has risen, I can also see it's very runny.
I think it's alive just fermenting very quickly because it's high hydration and won't be rising much for the same reason.
Feed just flour and next photo try and catch it when it's bubbly.
Best of luck.
After taking the last photo, I added 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour which brought the level up to the 3/4 mark on the jar. It has risen about an inch beyond that. The consistency before the rise was like really thick pancake batter.
How much did it rise altogether before it fell?
It's very much alive.
Abe, it rose to the 1 pint mark on the jar before falling back to the 3/4 pint mark.
But you've built up quite a lot now. Time to syphon some off and see what happens.
Take off 16g and feed that 17g water + 17g flour.
Wait till it bubble up and peaks.
Then feed your (almost) 100% hydration 50g starter with 50g water + 50g flour.
See what happens.
Use boiled water cooled till warm.
Let me see if I understand this. I take 16gm of the starter and add 17gm each of flour and water? Wait! I get it! When I've done that, I will have 50gm of starter to which I add equal amounts by weight of flour and water.
Thank you so much!
somewhere! Thickening it up helps us tell when it reaches maximum activity. When this peaks, make some bread with most of it but add some instant yeast to the dough, the starter isn't quite ready yet to raise on it's own, but close. A few more feeds will help.
Take about 1/8 cup stirred starter add 1/4 cup water and half a cup flour or slightly more to make a soft dough or very very thick pancake batter. Scrape down the sides of the jar and pack this newly fed starter into the bottom and level. Cover and leave it now until it peaks, levels out and starts to fall back (about 1/2 inch) then repeat starting with just a tablespoon of starter.
Every time you repeat the feeding and let it peak and then give a generous feeding, the starter will build it's yeast population. Mark the levels and keep track of the times as they shorten. Also keep track of the temperature. Warmer starters ferment faster, cooler starters slower.
MiniOven, I was considering offloading some of the starter for my usual sourdough recipe. I'll do that and give it some yeast if it doesn't bubble up as usual.
I may have more questions about the rest of your instructions. I think I understand your measurements...are the starter, flour and water the same by weight? I should start thinking that way if I intend to get much from this site.
There seem to be so many variations in the treatment of starter! Do you keep throwing out starter, keeping only a tablespoon? I begin to get lost at that point...
Basically the way to build up yeast in the starter is to feed it enough, often and keep at it. Always let the starter reach maximum peak of activity before reducing and feeding again. Yes, the cup measurements are roughly equal weights of water and flour but the starter amount is smaller. It really doesn't matter which way you choose to feed your starter as long as it gets fed. Starters can be fine tuned for long or short fermenting times. They can be thick or thin. It all depends on you and what schedule you like to work with. Where you want to keep your starter and how often you want to bake with it. Starter are very flexible within their perimeters.
I keep a firm starter in the fridge and use a spoonful of it to build flour and water to make the starter (preferment) I desire for a recipe. When the refrigerator starter gets low or looses activity, I feed some of it to build yeast population and then replace the refrigerator mother sourdough starter that I have. I experiment like crazy with the spoonfuls, that's where the fun is. The maintained starter in the refrigerator has a rather boring life but is healthy. It is sort of like always having two starters. One as stock, another for recipes. It is just that the second one is a little part of the first one. When I'm not baking bread, there is only one starter sitting in the fridge. (I do have some back up starters, dried, or hibernating somewhere in the fridge or kitchen.)
I think you and Abe are trying to tell me the same thing. I've measured some starter, flour, and water - about 18gm each by weight - and got maybe a heaping tablespoon of paste in the bottom of my jar. The mix is a wee bit thicker than cake batter. Hopefully all that leg room won't be a problem for it.
Looks like I have plenty of starter left over to make bread with, possibly a bit more. If that is the case, I'll feed any excess and put it in the fridge just in case.
I appreciate your help and the help of everyone who has answered my questions.
let us know how you're feeds go but I think all is ok.
Everyone's starter behaves differently because all starters are unique. A myriad of things can alter a starter...
Flour used
Hydration
Water used
Temperature
Where you live
Etc
We're all looking for our starters to double, or triple or turn into the magic porridge pot.
I think just feed it 1:1:1 from now on, give it lots of TLC and bake with it. Don't over think it.
I've seen bakers use starter that doesn't rise as much as mine and make far better loaves of sourdough then I do.
Hope to see some beautiful loaves soon.