drying starter

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_vk on 7 Jun 2016 at 22:04

Hello. As an experience I'm drying my starter. I spread 50g of it in a paper, covered it with a very open cloth, and let it dry at normal room temperature. It took about 72 hours to dry (climate is very humid). 

My question is: it is normal a odd smell in the dried starter? 

The live SD is fruity scented, but the dried smells not well. Is this ok, or it has been contaminated?

 

thanks

 

 

 

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_vk on 8 Jun 2016 at 05:52

Well I threw it away. It was smelling really bad. Next time I'll try to dry it in the fridge...

 

I feed my SD with different flours, indeed it is very whole now. Does it mean I didn't need to throw it out? 

I put the sheet of parchment on a cooling rack so that there was air flow above and below the parchment sheet.  That batch seemed to dry faster than previous attempts where the parchment sheet sat on the counter top. 

Spreading it as thinly as possible is a definite advantage, too.  You may have to add some water to thin the texture of the starter (I know, that sounds counterintuitive when we're talking about drying it) so that it is easier to spread thinly.

Paul