March 27, 2021 - 7:45pm
Found larvae in the flour I used to feed my starter!
Hi everyone I was going to feed my sourdough starter tonight when I saw that my flour had multiple little beige worm looking bugs which I think are larvae from what I could figure out on google. I of course got rid of the flour and didn't use It but I've used that same bag to feed my starter for the last few days. Is my starter okay to keep? I haven't seen any bugs in It, only in the flour. Thanks!
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No bugs no problem. Enjoy!
Unless you are grossed out by the possibility of them being there you are fine. I would check your other flour bags though. Particularly non-white flours.
To check your other flours and all dried products such as pasta and cereal that aren't in sealed containers. We had an infestation from some sort of moth once and they were in everything. We had to keep all such dried products in sealed plastic containers for a couple of months to stop them from getting reinfested once the contaminated products were thrown away. The adult bugs were apparently hiding out about the house waiting to lay their eggs.
Sift
48 hours in the freezer for any products you have cleaned up, maybe by sifting, is also a good idea, to kill unhatched eggs. But neither the eggs nor the larvae will actually harm you.
Bit hard to sift the starter : )
Strain, perhaps? Still, depends on the size we're talking about.
Purely thinking of ideas here - not sure how practical or effective - but you could convert to a liquid starter and then strain.
What I would probably do is:
Will it work? Not sure. Are there easier ways? Probably.
Just throwing out an idea.
Best of luck - I've had to throw out a bunch of flour that got infested via - I strongly suspect - a pack of pappadums.