May 29, 2015 - 2:46pm
Is this mold on my sourdough? :(
I took my SD out of the fridge to use it for bread making, and its surface was covered with this yucky moldy-looking layer.. The smell, however, is quite the same, soury as usual.
I removed as much as I could and mixed it, and it looks ok (bottom right image). But can I use it??? I don't wanna be eating anything bad..
background info:
-it's a rye sourdough (1 part rye, twice as much parts water)
-last feed was almost two weeks ago. I keep it in the fridge and it always looked regular till now.
-I live in a very hot and dry area and summer started pretty bad the last 3 weeks.
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before being fed? More information on how you store it, and how often you feed it would be useful.
What you have looks like your typical build up of alcohol. Two by-products that yeast produce when feeding are carbon dioxide and alcohol. If you let your starter sit for a prolonged period of time with out feeding you will get a layer of alcohol on top. Like you have here.
You can do two things. One would be to just mix it all back up together and then feed it. No harm done.
Second would be to discard the liquid (alcohol) and then feed it. No harm done.
Either way it doesn't matter.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
i imagined alchohol to look watery- this is pretty lumpy..
about feedings- i feed it after each time i use it. meaning every 1-2 weeks. i let it bubble a bit on the counter and put it back in the fridge.
I feed mine about every week. Sometimes every 2 weeks when I don't have time to bake and I end up with an alcohol layer on top. Lumpy like yours. Which is just some of your starter mixed in with it.
i wonder, though, why this started just now. i've been baking with SD for a few years now and it was always very clean. does it have anytthing to do with the flour type? because this doesn't happen with my AP starter (which is almost 5 years old already).
Good question. Not sure myself.
I have used a couple different types of flours for my starter and the same hooch build up happens either way after not feeding it for awhile.
My starter now is a 100% stone ground whole grain rye flour, at 100% hydration or 1:1:1.
b.t.w, why the third "1" in your starter formula?
1:1:1= starter/flour/water
i keep a large amount of starter and just do starter:1:1
To refresh your starter with 1:1:1 or higher. This replaces a larger amount of spent flour with fresh flour keeping your starter nice and healthy.
So 1:1:1 is equal weights of starter:flour:water
Keeping larger amounts of starter and just adding far less flour:water and used flour will just build up.
Also, whole rye keeps a lot better than other flours.
If it smells good, especially if it smells of alcohol, then you are almost certainly okay. Mould doesn't grow on alcohol. That yucky layer is one of the reasons sourdough bread is so tasty. As long as you keep occasionally feeding your culture, the lactobacilli will maintain its acidity and see off unwelcome rivals. You'd have to leave it out of the fridge and in higher temperatures than the lactobacilli feel comfortable with for a long time to let unwanted bacteria or mould develop. So you're doing everything right. It can be unnerving just letting the culture get on with its thing, but it perfectly happy to do so. Just make sure you keep it covered, loosely.
i'll try to get friendly with that yucky layer ;)
Is there a reason why you do two parts water, one part rye? It seems to me that such a thin starter would result in a starter that gets hoochier, much faster. It may be worth it to switch it to a 1:1 ratio to alleviate this issue.
a reason that has nothing to do with starter quality or bread-making preferences ;)
i have a chronic wrist problem and a thick starter is difficult for me to handle. at least, i found that for my rye starter, 1:1 turned out too thick. i have an older AP starter which is indeed 1:1, and I can handle it better (depends on the day).
It gives less resistance than, say, a wooden spoon and doesn't clog as much as a kitchen whisk. It might help.
I'd be surprised if you've had any problems baking with the wet culture. As far as I can tell - there is so little research-based literature on this, but an awful lot of accepted convention - the liquidity of your starter is not particularly relevant. Fermentation proceeds much more happily in a wetter environment than in firm. There is less resistance to expansion, food is more readily available etc., For example, there are loads of recipes and threads on this forum using yeast water cultures (something I'm looking forward to trying this summer). So, as long as you are prepared to accept that whoever wrote your recipe/formula used a hydration percentage that you might have to recalculate, there no need to worry about this. But, again, even that's no big deal. Most levains typically only use about 10-20% of sourdough culture. As long as you're prepared to add a 12-hour (or overnight) build cycle instead of pouring your culture directly into the dough, you could create, with a stand mixer, even quite stiff levains using a wet culture.
Let us know how it goes. It's often the only way to know if any advice on this forum is on target and of use.
what is an overnight's build purpose? to make a thicker levain?
because up till now i did recalculate when needed and everything turned out ok.
By taking a small amount of your sourdough culture and giving a big feed of flour and water, the yeast and lactobacilli populations increase rapidly. However, it takes longer - usually eight to twelve hours - to get the activity of the levain up to that of a refreshed sourdough culture. But it is useful. It means you can mix (have you tried a dough whisk btw?) a levain of the required thickness without changing the hydration of your starter. You can also simultaneously build several levains. And all this without the mad step of chucking away unused sourdough to get the amount you need.
If you trawl through sourdough-based recipes on this site, you'll see that some (123 Sourdough, for example) add sourdough straight from the culture, whilst others build levains using relatively small proportions of culture. All produce good bread, they just use the sourdough differently. For example, I'm currently attempting Éric Kayser's sourdough baguette recipe. It uses a sourdough levain incorporating two feeds - something I've not done before.
i might try some of these techniques. i too hate throwing away starters.
and i haven't tried a dough wisk yet. actually i've never heard they exist till now, thank god for breadmaking :)
please,tell me more about this sourdough
whisk and where to buy one thank you
please,tell me more about this sourdough
whisk and where to buy one thank you
My sourdough does the same thing as yours
Designed by Danes tired of getting strained wrists from hand-mixing 100% rye loaves, they are very useful when you cannot use a mixer. Here's a bit of info from sourdough guru Vanessa Kimball on whisks:
http://blog.bakerybits.co.uk/danish-dough-whisk/
The great thing is that you can swoosh the whisk through the ingredients without the huge resistance you get from, say, a wooden spoon.
They are for sale on Amazon (of course) in the US:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dough+whisk
and in the UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dough+whisk
And pretty much any Amazon site or online bakery specialist stores. Here in the UK, I've seen them in Lakeland and, the whisks being Scandinavian in origin, was not surprised to see them in IKEA too. If you follow the link on Vanessa's blog, it'll take you to whisks at the BakeryBits online store.
Hope this helps.
i'm not from the states but i'm sure i'll find one :)