Wild yeast starter help please!
My wild yeast starter isn't growing as it should, it doesn't have its characteristic tangy smell, and it's gone from looking like normal dough to the consistency of potato soup in the span of <48 hours. It hasn't increased in volume, though there are bubbles at the top indicating that something is alive and active. I'd appreciate it greatly if anyone can shed light on my problem because I can't figure out why this is happening. Details below.
This is a wild yeast starter that I made and have been feeding and using for a couple months now. I usually keep it stored in the fridge. Two days ago I pulled it out of the fridge to feed it again. When I first took it out of the fridge, it was still a pretty firm starter- not liquidy at all. I did everything as usual: double by weight, add a little sugar, mix, then let sit at room temperature (about 65 degrees F). The only difference is that after mixing, I temporarily removed the starter from its usual glass jar home so I could clean the jar. I used normal dish detergent, then thoroughly rinsed before putting my starter back in the jar. After nearly 48 hours, the starter still hasn't grown! There are some small bubbles at the top, but that's it. I tried increasing the ambient temperature to 75 degrees F for a few hours, but that hasn't made any difference. And now, it's super liquidy.
It's been a little over a week since the last feeding, but this isn't the longest I've let it sit before refreshing it. I have no idea what's wrong with my starter. Please help!
Don't panic - it's highly unlikely you've 'killed' it, and by changing the environment back to one that will favour the kind of microbes you want to foster (that's not just yeast by the way, but also their co-workers the lactic acid bacteria) you will bring it back.
What I would recommend is take a small quantity of it (say about 10 grammes) - keeping the rest as a safety backup - and add it to a mix of 50g flour and 50g cold water. The type of flour doesn't matter greatly but if possible include some stoneground wholewheat in there.
However do not add sugar: that is completely unnecessary, and likely to do more harm than good: the microbes that you want to promote in there don't like 'our' kind of sugar, and you're likely to have them overrun by less helpful neighbours. All a sourdough culture needs (and indeed wants) is water and flour.
Once you've done that 1:5:5 refresh, leave it for 24h at room temperature and see what happens... if nothing, after 24h do a normal discard/feed: take a third of it, discard the rest, and add an equal quantity of water and flour. Keep doing that until you have a really active and reliable culture.
Good luck and please let us know how 'the patient' responds :)
Thanks for the reassurance! I refreshed my starter with a 1:3 flour:2 water ratio last night (did it before I saw your comment), and it seems to be back to normal now as far as I can tell. I'll try to make a loaf with it tomorrow.
As for the sugar, I started out with just flour and water for the starter, but the resulting loaves weren't sour enough. With a little added sugar, the loaves had much more of a tangy flavor.
By the way if you want your loaves to have more of a sourdough taste, then the way to achieve that is to adjust the conditions so that the lactic acid bacteria (the symbiotic co-workers essential to wild yeast) produce more acetic acid in comparison to lactic acid.
There are a number of ways to achieve this - for example this very straightforward little article by Debra Wink for Brod & Taylor: https://brodandtaylor.com/make-sourdough-more-sour/ (scroll down past the 'broken' image at the top to read the content... In summary to make a more sour tasting loaf you can adjust one or more of the following factors:
Don't use sugar. If you feed it 1:1:1 every 12 hours with good flour (some whole wheat) you should have a good starter again very soon.
If You want to add sugar do it in your final dough formula rather than your starter. i have found that tanginess often comes about with a bit of neglect, that is don't feed it for a day or two and then revive it with scheduled feeds a bit like where you didn't feed it for a week, that always seems to do the trick for me for a sourness boost.
regards Derek