Question about grey starter
I've been lurking rather than posting for a while, but I've been mostly consistently baking and having some success, just hadn't had the energy to try and document the process and formulate posts, but my starters have been doing great, really active and healthy. And then I had to go out of town for a week and a half to help my 2 oldest move down to L.A., so I put my starters in the fridge and thought nothing of it for that short a trip. Went to feed them this morning and didn't notice until I'd already started stirring down my 'main' starter (Porthos, I am a Musketeers geek), that they both had a thin grey film on top. It wasn't at all liquid, like hooch apparently is, so I'm wondering... was it hooch in the making that just hadn't gone liquid yet or was it possibly an early stage mold problem?
It was even across the one I hadn't touched yet, not spotty, and I'm pretty sure it was on the one I had already stirred down as well. Very light grey, no darker spots. I scraped the grey layer off the second one before feeding it, and just fed the first one as is and hoped for the best. The one I stirred down has actually doubled in the last 5 hours, no problem, and it smells... maybe a bit sweet, rather than sour? But not at all bad. The one I skimmed is actually not really doing anything.
Anyway, any thoughts on if that was just a precursor to hooch and I'm okay? Or should I toss it and start over rather than baking tomorrow as planned?
I have had grey layer several times, no worries, refresh it a few times and you should be good to go. I definitely would not toss it, it takes a lot more than that to kill a starter. BTW, once you have it refreshed a few cycles, make some extra, then thin it out with some more water and spread it on a slipmat or parchment paper and let it dry. Then crush up the flakes into a powder, and wrap in plastic, label it and throw it in the freezer. If your starter does die, you can throw it out, then you can just add some water to that powder, and your starter will be up and running in no time.
Thanks, I was hoping that was going to be the answer from someone with experience. And I keep meaning to dry some of my starter and just... not getting around to it.
Gray is OK. That’s not uncommon at all. I wouldn’t even bother scraping it off – just mix it in when you feed. Of course, if there are suspicious looking spots or if it has a strange odor, it might be contaminated. But simply turning gray is normal when the starter hasn’t been fed in a while.
Well, it's doing its thing in today's batch of dough for Norwich sourdough, so we'll see how that turns out. Think I'm going to go to something higher hydration after this, though, b/c man it's stiff to work with, and I don't like needing to use my mixer.