March 7, 2024 - 8:45am
Left starter in fridge for 4 months, now what?
I left the starter in the fridge for 4 months without feeding, liquidy top substance I mixed in. Fed it left in oven with light on overnight, I mistakingly left it too close to oven light and part of it baked a bit?it also didn’t rise but did have SOME bubbles. I baked with it and obviously was super dense and flat, didn’t rise but again had SOME air pockets.
I fed it today again now, if it doesn’t rise then what?
also do you really have to remove some discard every time I feed it? I never did and never had issues - just would take it out of fridge feed it 50g water and 50g flour. Worked fine. My friend swears I have to remove some to revive it, thoughts? Also, if so, how much do I remove??
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If you are going to be able to revive the starter, you just have to refresh it with flour and water, then leave it alone at room temperature. Stir it a time or two during the day. Once it shows some signs of life, refresh again and keep going that way until it's reliably active.
About discard, if you keep refreshing you will have to add more and more flour and water each time, and you will soon end up with way too much starter. At some point you either have to use most of it in loaves of bread, or you will have to get rid of the excess.
I have two homes. One in the Midwest and one in Phoenix, and I have starter both places. Our Phoenix house is for our eventual retirement, and right now we visit only several times each year. So my starter there only gets a good feeding a couple of times each year (if it's lucky and I'm not lazy). It's not uncommon for it to sit in the refrigerator for 6-9 months between feedings. (I'm in Phoenix now, and pulled it out last week. I think I fed it in September, but it may have been last May or even March. So it can be a while! And right now)
When I do get to feed it it looks pretty ugly (black liquid on top, thick and creamy on the bottom). I stir in the liquid and mix up the thick goo at the bottom until it's pourable, then I move 10 grams of this liquid to a new container, add 20 grams of water, mix, add 20 grams of AP or bread flour and mix, then cover it with plastic and let it sit overnight or for 24 hours. At that time it will likely have a few bubbles. I feed it again (10g from the initial mixture/20g water/20g flour), and 48 hours after pulling it out of the refrigerator I've got a reasonable starter going again. The one I started feeding again last Friday is doing fine and I baked with it the following Tuesday. Typically I feed it a few more times before I use it to bake with, but the point here is that it comes back even though it's been neglected for a long time. So don't give up on it just because you've not fed it for a few months.
As for the discard, I personally do discard the excess starter that I don't add to a next feeding. If the discard is coming from a healthy, frothing, bubbling starter I'll add it to my refrigerated starter jar (until it's got enough). Otherwise if it's young (i.e. just out of "hibernation"), or if my starter jar is full, I simply put it in the compost. Unless I'm making enough to bake with, I typically do small volumes (5/10/10 or 10/20/20 feedings), which keeps my waste low.
There should be no problem reviving that starter if it was good in the first place. Feed it twice, at room temperature... and feed it more. Might not take much mroe than that. Try at least 100 grams water and 100 grams flour. You probably were using too little flour/water and too much temperature.
Consider using the excess starter for sourdough waffles or pancakes. Very flavorful and easy to make.
And in the event that it never revives, just start over again.
If reviving - a little starter will get ya going. May take a week or 2 but if not dead it'll come back. Start thick and wait till it thins out before adding anything. Enjoy!
I forgot - no - you don't have to remove anything once it is established. Enjoy!
These days I bake at most once a week. I leave my rye starter in the fridge from 2 - 4 months between feeds. It gets a bit dense toward the end of that time period and throws off some hooch, but it works fine. When it's down to scrapings on the edge of the jar, I feed it what I judge to be 1:5:5 or sometimes 1:10:10 and in a day or two it's fine.
I once had to recover a rye starter that I had left in the fridge for 8 months. That process involved pouring off the hooch, scraping away all the black parts and the disgusting-looking stuff and using a bit of the light brown innards in a clean jar. It took probably a week and a half of feedings to have it raring to go. I started by giving it as much time as it needed to rise between feedings. It started out taking a day and a half. As it got happier, the feedings became more frequent. If I didn't discard I would have needed a much bigger jar. I also did this with someone's white flour starter that had not been touched in maybe 10 months. The process was essentially the same and the starter came back to life. Yeasts are amazingly resilient organisms.
I judge how the starter's doing by the quantity of bubbles and amount of rise. In my experience, a starter that's still angry at having been starved and needs to continue to recover will rise unevenly and often will create large and odd shaped bubbles. A starter that's happy and ready to go will have lots of smaller round bubbles and rise more predictably.
Rob