can healthy starters turn bad in hot wheather?
Greetings
I was happy with my very active starter and its awesome smell. But lately the room temperature at my end went too high in the 90's. One day my RT was 98F (37c). I noticed that my overnight RT levain was full oftoo much foamy bubbles, while it didn't rise much.
Is that normal?
Then yesterday and today I noticed that my levain didn't rise at all, and the awesome smell disappeared, and was replaced by a hint of bad smell, not much, just a hint.
I've disacred my starter, because from past experience I know that once a hint of bad smell invades a starter, it would deteriorate to something nasty. Luckily, I have another jar in the fridge full of stiff starter, so I have decided to abandon my usual way and switch to dabrownman's no muss no fuss method, because then my starter would be safe in the fridge away from any hot weather contamination.
Right now, I'm doing a one-stage levain from 20g starter + 80g water + 80g flour. It turned out that disolving the stiff starter in some water was much easier than I thought, using a silicon spatula by pressing against the walls of my glass jar.
But I still wonder, can starters go bad in very hot weather? I thought that healthy ripe starters are resilient enough to defend itself against unwanted bacteria. I was proofed wrong, it seems. (After feeding my starter, I used to keep it overnight on the counter before returning it to the fridge. Perhaps that's why it went bad?)
Do you have any info in that regrd? was that a normal foam?
in warm temperatures and that has to be taken into consideration. When not fed, the bacteria and yeast will quickly deplete the available food and then turn on themselves. Your bowl of starter looks over-fermented.
Bacteria will quickly increase at high temperatures resulting in a massive drop in pH, some bacteria are sensitive to low pH and may phase out as the condition persists. Yeast can go dormant to survive the condition (taking days to revive) heading the aromas first toward wine and ev. vinegar. The starter becomes very lopsided with over production of bacteria and fermentation byproducts, more so with very warms temps like you describe. It becomes important to keep the sourdough culture well fed.
Only a small amount of starter is needed to inoculate dough. If underfed too long, the culture then changes resulting in a different profile. The starter then requires yeast building care to bring it back, much like making a starter or reviving a dried starter or neglected hooched starter.
Without refrigeration, encourage slow fermentation using one or more of the following :
Thanks for the great info. This confirms why my starter turned bad. I'll try in the future to avoid feeding in hot days, or leaving it too long out of the fridge.