rye starter smells bad
I've made wheat starter before, but now I'm trying to make rye starter for the first time. I ground the rye berries myself, and after about the third day of casting off half the starter, adding equal parts water and rye flour, it developed a VERY bad smell - not at all like the sweet/yeasty smell of wheat starter, more like rotting food.
So I dumped it and started again, this time using pineapple juice instead of water, according to Reinhart's method in Artisan Breads Every Day, and stirring to aerate it 2-3x/day. Also, according to his method, I started with 2 oz pineapple juice. 1 oz flour, then after 2 days, added 1oz flour, 1 oz juice. Again, by the third day, the same bad odor developed, though not nearly as strong as the first attempt. Today, the fourth day, the bad smell is definitely there, again, not nearly as strong as my first attempt, though the odor seems partially masked by the pineapple.
Should I dump it and start again, or keep going? What could I try differently? I didn't use a boiled/sanitized jar, or bottled water, or is there an advantage to using professionally milled rye flour?
Take this with a grain of salt, but I'd offer that if you keep feeding and discarding and maintaining the ambient conditions for the culture you want, it will eventually settle out of itself. I commented on another thread on this - making "mother" cheese culture from yogurt to begin a traditional cheesemaking year in alpine cheesemaking; it takes a good 20+ generations (think, basically, a feed and discard schedule, applied to milk and cheese) to get a stable, desired culture. Truly, egregiously nasty for several generations. And only worth it if you are producing all the time.
Same is true for a cheese cave. For any given rind, if you set up the right humidity, temp., substrate (the cheese itself), and right salinity, a regular washig will bring you what you want because the flora you are providing a home for will outcompete those not made welcome.
If it were me, I'd just keep feeding and discarding because eventually nature will optimize and give us what we want. On the other hand, I think it's a whole lot easier in breadmaking to just start over. Just wanted to mention it because sometimes I think we spend a lot of time trying to get the right starter going, but forget that half the battle is won simply by setting up the right conditions for our desired flora to starve out these noxious critters.
Good luck, however you go.
That bad smell is likely from Leuconostoc citreum a bacteria that often grows in the early days of your starter. Many bakers here have had success with the pineapple juice method that Debra Wink, a microbiologist was so kind to share with us. This is the link to the article. Have a look at it, you probably do not need to discard the starter but you could continue with pineapple juice for another day or two.
Benny
In terms of pineapple juice, etc., certainly nothing wrong with that at all. I know I've used anything from unsulfured grapes to gelatinized and saccharified potato, honey, etc. I'm not a microbiologist but I have extensively researched the microbiology and biochemistry of cheese cultures, most especially surface ripening cultures (as I make hard alpines), as well as things as arcane as the influence of alpine forage species on microbial development; just another part of the ecological process that grew naturally out of the tradition of 1000's of years (Pliny the Elder, I think it was, sang the praises of gallic Beaufort, essentially, large version of the Abondance I centered on).
I'm just making the point that there's usually nothing to worry about. It's about setting up an environment so good flora outcompete bad flora, for our purposes, with very little intervention on our part needed. Things like pineapple juice (which sets up a propitious pH), or sugars (making available what has to happen through metabolic pathways otherwise), etc., just give a good head start.
But ultimately, you keep going, under the right environment, you will end up with your proper culture. Calvel makes mention of it:
"...recipes for this purpose (building starter) are often quite amusing, including cultures based on grape juice, potatoes, raisins, yogurt (I'd forgotten he included this, until just re-reading now), honey and so on.
In fact, building a culture is simply a matter of inoculating bread flour, and the results have always met with my expectations." (he goes on to refer to a table, and indicates 50:50 bread flour: rye flour, with salt to slow proteolysis an malt for its amylotic enzyme assistance) and, of course, water. Calvel, Le Gout de Pain, p. 89.
It's all good, however you get there.
Edit: Crossed in the mail with Dan. I agree.
Jimmy, is it possible that you are not accustomed to the smell of rye? A healthy rye starter will smell nothing like a wheat starter. They have a semi-funky smell even when healthy.
If you are using pineapple juice (an acid that lowers pH), the bad bacteria (Leuconostoc) shouldn’t be a problem. Wished I could smell it for you.
If it is bad bacteria, don’t throw the starter out. Keep feeding and in short order the good bacteria (LAB) will overcome and overtake the bad bacteria. Once your starter stabilzes the bad bacteria will be gone forever.
Also, a healthy wheat starter can be easily converted to a rye starter by switching flours. I go back and forth at will.
Danny
Jimmy, these are soil bacteria from the surface of unwashed rye kernels: fecal bacteria and grass bacillus (enterococci and b. Subtilus). They smell like grass, hay, putrid sweat, stinky cheese, dirty socks, smelly feet, rotten garbage, vomit, manure and feces in the initial stages of starter fermentation. Such smells are normal and they are welcome, they mean that bacteria from flour started producing acids, very good!
Commercially produced flour has fewer of those, because millers wash grains from dust and soil particles thoroughly prior to milling.
They , those microbes and their stench, should disappear quickly, die out within hours. I am not a big fan of supressing them with acidic juices or vinegar, because these microbes on their own produce enough acid to die out and their remains are food for good bacteria that develop later on. Still, last week I created a rye starter from scratch, although it was not acidified with juice, but with sour yogurt, so the stink appeared on the third day and lasted for only two hours and was soon replaced by the most heavenly flowery-berry-like aroma of rye starter. The starter was ready for baking with it in three days.
So, if everything is going well, the stench in your starter will last only for few hours, 1-2 days max, depending on your temperature and refreshment schedule. It's both normal and temporary.
In case it persists, change your grain or your flour. I once bought rye kernels imported from Poland which were contaminated so badly that even after 4-5 days of feedings my starter was still smelling bad right after refreshment, then as it would mature the smell would change towards normal within 3-4hrs, but it was never gone forever like in starters made with flours from washed grain from established millers.
Just jumping in to say thanks mariana, as that's fascinating and I personally didn't know that. OP please forgive the short hijack but mariana, if you have any particular material by way of articles or books in bread science you might recommend, I'd be grateful. Point of interest on dirt, possibly?
This reminds me of a problem I had with rye a couple of years ago. I bought some organic rye grain from a trusted, small, UK miller. I wasn't using the rye to make a starter, but whenever I used it in a bake, even at small percentages, it had a characteristic unpleasant smell - I think baby sick is a common descriptor, though I can't remember what that smells like! I think Leuconostoc may well be the culprit.
I bought rye from a different supplier and the problem was gone.
Lance
This is totally unknown to me. In brewing, unless it's a "roggenier" or rye beer, some use rye, both raw flaked and malted, as a small part of a grist bill during mash; it lends a kind of earthy spiciness that persists into final beer. It can also be nasty with beta-glucans so care has to be taken in the mash tun with temperatures and rests to make sure you don't end up with sludge in lieu of runoff.
Given some of the issues mariana and Lance, you mention (and it's likely a stupid question), is there any anecdotal issues with ergotism in using modern rye? Has it ever been a significant issue?