December 18, 2015 - 1:00am
Heating the starter a bit too much..
Hey guys,
I am in the middle of making the polenta-pumpkin seeds variation of the Tartine basic country bread, and I think I have a little bit of a problem. Last night I made the starter (I tweaked it to mostly High-Extraction flour with 100% hydration) and left it to ferment overnight. In the morning (10 hours later) I saw that, as it is very cold here these days, the starter has risen only slightly so I put the bowl near the radiator to heat it up a little. When I came to check it an hour later I realized that It was too close to the heating source and the bowl (and the starter itself) got very hot (150F I guess).
Does that mean I've killed my beloved starter or I can add the flours and water and the yeast will survive it?
Thanks!
Jonathan.
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placing next to a heater will kill off a starter. And you only need a tiny bit of healthy starter to inoculate a lot. So providing there's some live yeasts/LAB in there it will survive and another feed will bring it back to normal. So feed it and see.
Might be good practice to create preferments by taking some starter off (i.e. keeping the mother starter and preferment separate) to avoid any accidents. So there's always a back-up.
I did leave some of the starter aside and fed it as I usually do, and that will be the "mother" for the next loaves.
Anyway, I continued making the dough with the starter and added a little dry yeast to give it an extra kick. I hope it will turn out well!