Wild Yeast Discoloration

I'd throw the entire thing out. It looks like the red bacteria Serratia marcescens that colonize a shower or toilet. It often grows in standing liquids that are devoid of chlorine.

I also see what looks like a blue-purple bacteria. That scares me as well.

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/228495-overview

Throw down the sink- then bleach the sink. Careful not to splash! Wash hands and containers and counter as well. Start another starter.

I'd probably toss it and sanitize everything like the others have said ...it's interesting though, since in 35 years of baking with sourdough, I've never seen nor heard of such a thing.  You weren't by chance feeding it with milk were you?  Some cheese molds occur naturally and are orange in color (google Taleggio ...one of my favorite cheeses.)  If it's a cheese mold, it's edible and fine ...but who wants it in their sourdough?  Were you storing mold-ripened cheeses in your fridge at the same time as the sourdough?  Was the sourdough always covered well (tight plastic wrap cover w/pinhole to let CO2 come out)?  What does it smell like?  Taleggio can be fairly stinky and be fine, so what it smells like doesn't necessarily say much...

BTW, if you do happen to feed with milk (or milk & water) because you like the taste ...there's no reason you can't do that, but you should change your procedure a bit.  Always feed with pure natural water and white unbleached all-purpose flour ...then when you want to bake, you feed the starter with your milk (or blend) for the one recipe and do NOT put the milk-fed starter back into your mother starter ...feed it separately with water and flour to refresh it and don't blend the two.

Brian

Serratia is NOT a common bacteria in the human bowel, according to a couple microbiology sources, but it IS present in the human mouth around the teeth. Interestingtingly enough, so is the famous San Franciso yeast. Makes you wonder what was used to start the original culture?

If it is serratia on your culture, simple handling with fingers can do it. I remember one site,a long time ago, gave instructions to stir the beginning starter with your fingers since humans are colonized with all the bacteria/yeast needed.It was not mentioned if the finger was well washed. I'm not so sure I'd eat in his kitchen. I'm sure we are colonized with lots of stuff-some good and some not so good to be in our food.

As tananaBrian suggested, it could be a cross contamination with something else. Very possible. I have discovered I have very few fruits and vegetables that mold/rot, since I started fermenting sauerkraut,kefir and villi(Swedish yogurt). Everything seems to ferment and smell pleasantly sour. "It" (prob some lactobacillus) is literally in the air.

Probably best to sanitize and start over.Those biggers can be persistent in the environment! Don't forget to do the mixer and any other breadpans or bowls since anything the dough was in probably would still have remnants.

 Sorry for your loss! Have fun making a new friend!

When in doubt, throw it out. These are words of wisdom, especially when you're dealing with fermentation. If it isn't right, it isn't worth taking a chance that what's wrong isn't harmful. You are risking your health.

Storing a starter in the refrigerator keeps some of the organisms in the culture in a subdued, dormant state. They are simply sluggish and slow going about their normal processes, some of them very much so. As a result, other organisms that would normally be competing find the environment much more hospitable. They move in, push out the dormant "friendly" organisms, and trash the place.

This is how I've seen it explained before, anyway. I'm no microbiologist, only an enthusiast like yourself.

Yesterday afternoon I mixed some kefir water and flour, and let it sit overnight to see what would happen. When I got back today, about 24 hours after, I saw it had turned yellow and upon opening up the plastic wrap got a whiff of something awful! Truly disgusting; I can't even describe it. I've had that vomit smell while trying to culture sourdough before and this has it beat by a mile. I wonder, does anyone have any guesses on what that might have been?

I'm sure I deal with worse bacteria unseen on a daily basis but it's a bit scary nevertheless. I boiled water in the glass in the microwave and microwaved the sponge after cleaning up.

The "kefir water" is the sugary water I've got left over after fermenting for 24 hours or so with milk kefir grains. I am following some instructions on how to get sugar kefir grains out of milk grains. So far nothing (but only four days now) but the liquid smells yeasty and the pH was in the 3.5-4 range (using pH paper so it's not super accurate) so the yeast and LAB seemed to be working. I hadn't tried tasting the water yet and after this I don't think I will until the culture looks like it's stabilized in its new medium. The milk kefir from the same batch of grains tastes great and has given me no (noticeable) ill effects.

Hello Angelo,

I noticed your container did not seem to be suitable for a lid.    You may want to use a container with a lid, but with a lid you can poke a few holes in for breathing, but not wide open.

I would throw that out.

When I was in Nursing School, the Microbiology instructor gave us each an unknown to identify......Someone kept messing with mine so I had to redo it repeatedly......shortly after that, I ended up with a HORRIBLE Kidney infection.....I must have been in too big a hurry to go potty between the lab and the lecture to wash my hands BEFORE I went....anyway...it turned out to be Serratia.....NOT what I would EVER call a "Harmless Bacteria".....but I agree with everyone else....toss it and start over! Good luck!

Get rid of it, it's probably the red bacteria Serratia marcescens.

To Habahabanero, Please don't misunderstand me....and THANK YOU for going to all that trouble to explain bacteria to us. As a Surgical Nurse for almost 20 years, I am well aquainted with some of them, in that we have Staph that live quite happily on our skin, yet when it comes into conttact with the right situation, a limb for example, is lost to it. I agree that we shouldn't dump our starters out of fear and I must admit that I have done just that before. I was not poo pooing your post....not at ALL!! I guess my headache today made me quicker to jump on the fear bandwagon. Thank you again for the information and I WILL reread it and keep it to reread again as a reference tool.

Thank you!!

My experience with similar faux pas is that starters tend to form a stable and good mix of bacteria and yeast if you just give them a chance.  Before mixing, I'd scoop off anything that looks like mold (mold and bacteria are opposites ...only one or the other is dominant, not both), then stir it up really well.  Take a tablespoon of it and mix it with 50/50 rye or whole wheat flour and white flour and let it ferment until it reaches a peak and drops off a tad, then repeat doubling it until you have your desired volume back.  You can stop feeding with the whole grain (rye or wheat) after a couple of feeds when the starter looks pretty active again.  I've had to do this several times in the past (and my starter needs it right now too ...woefully neglected in the fridge!) and this process seems to work pretty well.  As for that orange stuff in the original poster's post ...All I can say is YUM!  It reminds me of my favorite cheese ...Taleggio!

Brian

I've never seen anything like that - recently quite a few of normally very rare orange lobsters have been trapped in Maine.

Maybe there's a connection....

As a physician, I would throw it out, it looks too virulent - better safe than sorry. And even if you don't feel any ill effect from it, I doubt the bread would taste very good.

Karin