January 31, 2020 - 2:03pm
Help! I fed my starter with bread mix by accident!
In my sleep deprived state (new mum) I realised this morning I had fed my starter with bread pre mix which contains yeast ?
What does this mean for my starter?
I'm so sad! It was 4 months old :(
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Should be fine if the mix is just wheat flour and yeast (and maybe other flours). Just continue as normal with your original flour. After 2-3 feedings there will be so little of the bread mix left anyway since you discard most of the starter or use it.
Oh phew, hopefully it'll be alright then!
Will the bread mix yeast stay though? I wanted to keep it wild yeast only ?
The concentration of commercial yeast will already be really low after just a few feedings. Say you use only 10% of the mature starter for the next batch and so on and so on...after just three feedings you will have only 0,1 x 0,1 x 0,1 = 0,001% of the bread mix in your starter.
So, technically the bread mix stays in it forever, but the concentration will be only 0,000000...01% ;) And that is so incredibly low, you can consider your starter wild yeast only very soon again :)
Plus, commercial yeast is not fit for reproduction or maintaining a starter, it will die off after some time.
You've got no idea how happy that makes me hahaha! Not sure why I'm so attached to this starter ?
Thank you!!!!
I can totally relate to being attached to your sourdough starter. I feel the same! I second the other reply though - in my experience they are quite resilient whatever they are fed, so if you carry on with normal feeding process it should be fine.
Im sorry gonehiking, BaniJPs math... That’s how much of the flour will be left. But The Yeast is active, it will eat and multiply.
I don’t know how wild yeast and baking yeast will compete.. the good news is baking yeast brewers yeast, wild yeasts they are all the same genus saccharomyces and there’s no reason I’m aware of that they can’t live in harmony. You probably already had some of this type in there. I’m not sure it will make any difference at all, and all the wild types of yeast are still in the culture and alive.
I’m hoping you just deepened the gene pool, with no noticeable changes, but I am interested to hear how it turns out.
If you are interested there’s a great article http://microbialfoods.org/yeast-profiles/
in short, you didn’t add anything that wasn’t already there, and different yeasts will ramp up under different conditions of temperature and hydration.. this added diversity is probably why everyone says it’s so forgiving.
We recently had a thread on how to make a "backup copy" of your starter.
Pay attention to chefcdp, he's the expert. (I mainly just run my mouth/fingers.)
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/62174/long-term-starter-storage