IT LIVES Starter Saga
Who says starters are not tough ?
in November 2018 I started my first ever starter. Two actually. One based on rye flour and the other based on whole wheat flour. Both 150 grms flour 150 mls water.
When feeding, discard 200 grms of the starter and replenish with 100 grm water 100 grm flour
They were kept in the fridge all of the time.
Now it starts to get a little weird. I faithfully did this every 12 hours for a full month and they were going gang busters.
Now all of you here would, and have jumped in a started using them. NOT ME, for reasons I will not go into, I was side tracked from bread making even though I had acquired a formidable array of absolute necessities like we all do.
After a month I was feeding them, my pet substitutes, now once a week and all was well, even good. Everything religiously documented.
Fast forward to end of April 2019 all hell let lose in my families medical situation and my poor little friends were neglected.
When I say neglected, I really mean TOTALLY ignored until LAST WEEK MARCH 30 2020 YES a full year.
They had started to smell with an almost gag inducing stench. I have been a chef all my life and a black bear hunter using raunchy meat as bait. These starters smelt worse.
One of them, I believe the wheat one had a nice little coral like looking floret of mold on it with a base about the size of a quarter. NO VIVID COLORS THOUGH, Both had a hockey puck like surface about an 1/4 of an inch thick that was removable as one very solid disk. That allowed even a stronger stench out and I mean STRONG.
Now having invested about 10 kilos of flour in feeding these guys for so long, I figured, I'm locked in the house, yeast seems to be hard to find right now and why not.
SO, I cleaned them up, discarded about half of each, and not expecting anything to happen, eyeballed adding flour and water. I fed them once a day, discard 2/3rds add flour and water to approximately original amount. Have done that for 3 or 4 days.
UNBELIEVABLY the rye one seems to have already returned to it's former glory, doubled in volume over night and has lost the stomach churning stench. It still does not have the smell I remember, but it no longer smell BAD. The whole wheat on has shown very limited bubbles but has last lost the been dead and decaying for months smell.
Just this minute checked them and both seem to have a much more starter like smell now. The whole wheat is showing more activity, but it is still limited and it has not risen, but that maybe due to the fact that it appears I may have made that one more watery.
The rye one seems to be "ready". I am going to feed it a while longer to let it hopefully cleanse itself thoroughly and then try a little bit out. Fortunately the local stores have toilet paper again, so if it goes wrong I should be OK
Just thought that with all the discussion about the longevity of starters I would add this account to this well of information.
Like I mean, we ALL HAVE THE TIME right now !
the rye seems good. the whole wheat starter has shown good signs or resurrection and the evil small from both of them has completely gone
So I made a pita with the resurrected rye sour dough starter. Simply flour, starter water salt and a little sugar. Bulk fermented in fridge overnight.
Seems to have worked. Now if SOUR is the goal of sour dough starter, this one is IT ! What a strong flavor. I have never tasted sour dough bread that you could really tell was sour dough bread, this one YOU CAN.
If anything I need to figure out how to tone it down. I am abandoning the pita idea because I have eaten pita for too many years and my mind can not get around the sour dough pita.
Kneaded it back together and I'm going to bake it as a simple loaf and see what happens.
I think that with the strong flavor that it has now, it will be good for certain sandwiches, but not the kind of loaf that you just tear a piece off, butter and devour. I think it is an acquired taste.