December 18, 2014 - 5:14am
How to keep my starter alive while I travel?
I'll be travelling for 2 weeks and I'm horrified at the thought of my viable starter dying and having to start from scratch all over again. I'm planning to feed it and stick in the fridge and say a little prayer. Will that work?
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Better than working, it will be just fine. If your starter is very healthy, two weeks in the fridge is nothing. Look up dabrownman's method. He keeps his for a LOT longer than that! I don't know how you're currently maintaining your starter or how in-tune you are to the starter's timings, but here's what I'd do if you really want to be sure about it. Keep it out on the counter/fridge-top/somewhere and feed it twice a day with enough food to peak in 8 or 9 hours. It will be past peak when you feed it at 12 hours, and will be very active and hungry. Do that for at least three feedings. The last time you feed it before you put it in your fridge, don't let it peak. Feed it the same amount of food, but let it sit out of the fridge for only 3 or 4 hours, then refrigerate it. When you are ready to bake again, you will want to feed it a couple of cycles to completely wake it up, but it won't be hurt.
In reality, since I've already abused my starter so much, and it continues to thrive, I don't worry about it. It lives in my fridge all the time, and I feed it when I bake. If it is to stay in the fridge for a couple of weeks, I just make sure to give it 2 or 3 feeding cycles before trying to bake with it. I don't actually prepare it for storage at all.
Edit: For the truly paranoid, there is another option as well. Lay out a thin layer of your starter on some wax paper and let it dry. Collect up the dry starter and put it in a freezer container or Zip-Loc freezer bag and freeze it. That way if you ever do have a mis-hap with your starter, you will have the seed to bring it back in a couple of feedings. It will be viable for a long time if dried and kept in the freezer - possibly many years.
Hey, I resemble that comment. Paranoid? I've been called worse.
If you are indeed "smitten" by sourdough, then drying down some of your starter every so often and storing it away is as advisable as backing up your hard drive regularly. Room temperature in a sealed container (e.g., mason jar) has always worked well for me, even for months. I've never tried, or needed, freezing dried starter.
Mistakes and contaminations happen and it's nice to be able to go back to a trusted but dormant, dry stock and reconstitute a useable starter in 24 hours, rather than the longer process of starting a new one from scratch.
My starter has never seen refrigerator temperatures, so I don't store it there when I travel. I dry some down and rehydrate it when I return. And interestingly enough, I invariably enjoy an improvement in its behavior and fragrance after it's been through the de/rehydrate cycle.
Safe travels,
Tom
Thank you for putting me at ease!! Will do as advised by you. My starter is pretty healthy, fed twice a day, been living on the counter. Will feed it and stick it in the fridge just before I leave.
hydration for the last feeding before it hits the fridge. Cold means less activity and less water means less activity too. 2 weeks is no problem - I let my rye starter at 66% hydration sit in the fridge fir 12 weeks no problem without any maintenance.. Even after 3 months 3 stage progressively larger build of 4 hours each, without trowing anything away, and it is back to full strength ready to raise a loaf of bread.
Happy Travels
And feed it 30g of water and 30g of AP flour, at 12 hourly interval. How do you recommend "drying it down" please?
That is the same thing I was talking about with laying the starter out and just letting it dry up on its own. I'd recommend doing it just after feeding, so it has plenty to eat until it dries out, but that may not be necessary. Drying out the yeast makes it go dormant, but it is still alive. Once it is completely dry, put it into a sealed container, and don't let it get wet, and it will keep for months. I've heard that putting it into the freezer will make it last years. To make it useful again, you dissolve some of it in water, then feed it and it will wake up from its dormant state and be active again.
My regular feeding schedule is 3 to 4 weeks for my SD culture (100%) that spends it's entire life in the fridge. Never had a problem for 10 years. Why do you worry about a SD starter? All it takes is a few days to get another one going.
Ask anyone who's ever had a yeast infection if it was easy to get rid of.
Some years ago I gave my brother a piece of my starter with instructions for its care. He took it home, put it in the back of his fridge and forgot about it. Three months later he asked for my advice. I told him to try to restart is in the manner I'd been using for years - mix some into some water, add flour, cover and let stand at kitchen temperature over night. It worked!
My guess is that if you leave your starter in your fridge for two weeks and refresh it when you return, you'll be pleased at the results.