Hello! I'm very new to sourdough and am unsure if my starter is salvageable. I pulled it from the refrigerator and it has a blackish layer on top. I read blackish liquid is fine and can be poured off. Can someone tell me if this looks like just a drier variation of hooch or if this is some kind of mold/mildew? It smells like a load of laundry that didn't get to the dryer soon enough (hopefully I'm not the only one who has done that before!) I am confused how this happened so fast - I think it was in the fridge 5 days without being fed and I had heard up to a week was fine. I have my starter in a wide shallow dish, so the starter is spread thin... I'm not sure that I can scrape this all off and have much left. Thoughts? Thanks!
It's alcohol produced as a by product and is harmless. It may be poured off to maintain a less tangy starter or stirred in to promote more tang. Normally it's clear or can have a tinge to it.
This is not hooch and I'd be careful if I were you. Venturing a guess at contamination but get a second opinion.
If it's mould then depending on what type and how far the contamination has gone then in some cases it'd be okay to find a small healthy batch of starter, transfer it to a very clean jar and feed it back to health. But this is extensive and in all cases you never know exactly how much it's affected.
Edit: toss it and start again. Before I was looking on my phone and it wasn't so clear but now I'm on my tablet I can see its no good. Not worth the risk.
Toss it. Looks like mold colonies. How fast did this happen? Was your flour old? Does your flour smell like mildew? Does your house smell like mildew?
With a newly cleaned jar (perhaps even hot, sudsy water, and rinse with a few fillings of boiling water.), start a new starter. If it gets moldy again, I would start looking at your environment to see why it colonizes so fast.
It was only in the fridge 5 days and looked good when I put it in there. I'll go smell my flour, but I didn't notice anything when using it last. It's from my local food co-op in the bulk bin, so presumably gets turned over faster than a bag on the shelves for months. My house isn't mildewy, either. Thank you!
continues.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/44573/abnormal-black-dots-surface-my-halfday-old-sour-dough-starter
Interesting! Maybe it's the same thing. This was not fuzzy at all, so I wasn't entirely convinced that it's mold. Whatever it was, it was strong and did not smell edible, though, so I'm glad I composted it. Hoping to steer clear of it now!