Unfortunately John Dough my trusty starter of many years has a fatal infection. Finally returning home after 3 months away, I found grey mold on top and some orangey discolouration. That orange mold is said to be quite dangerous so I tossed the whole thing. Fortunately, I had dried him over the past 2 years and kept the dried flakes of starter in ziplock bags in the freezer.
So I am trying for the first time to revive him as follows. I hydrated about 7 grams of the dried starter with 7 grams of filtered water. I allowed this to hydrate for about 1 hour. Then I added about 4 grams of whole rye and 3 grams of bread flour. These measurements aren't exact because the consistency of the mix is more hydrated than 100%. Now three hours later I see some small bubble on the surface of the mixture.
I will leave it in my proofing box at 82*F until I see much more activity or possibly a bit of growth before I discard and feed. I am encouraged by the fact that there are some small bubbles on the surface. Fingers crossed.
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Your heart must have sunk, Benny! All fingers and toes crossed. I'm hopeful he will be revived. Update us!
Thank you for the support Lin. We got home very late last night, more like early this morning. One of the first things I did was to open the fridge to check on him, I immediately saw the grey mold and thought no biggie, I'll just scrape that off the top and grab a bit of starter from the bottom of the jar. Then on closer inspection I saw the orange colour in there and knew I had to toss my starter. Oh well. We had a layover three weeks ago at home, but he looked fine then and I didn't have the time to feed and ferment him so figured if he was fine for over two months, he'd be fine for another three weeks. Unfortunately I saw wrong. Fingers and toes crossed here too.
Benny
Oh no, Benny. Good luck with the reconstitution! John Dough II lives!!!!
Rob
Thanks for the encouragement and luck Rob. Yes John Dough the 2nd seems to be alive. I will be keeping him at warm temperatures until he is good and active with feeds eventually. There are a few more bubbles now, so it seems to be alive, not well, but alive.
Benny
If anybody can save him, you can. 😀
Maybe this will prompt those who haven't, to back up, back up, back up.
I'm not sure about that, but I like your enthusiasm!
Yes instead of just discarding, dry and freeze some of your starter as a backup.
Benny
After 4 days of 12 hourly refreshes all good. Might not be the same starter I left in my refrigerator while we traveled for 3 months, but it was lively and apparently happy. I think I discarded the revived reconstituted starter since my refrigerated stuff only needed a hooch pour-off and a few feedings to get back to “normal”.
Bonne chance,
Phil
That is great to hear Phil, I'm glad you were able to successfully use your dried and frozen starter to get a second generation of your starter going well.
Benny
Hi Benny,
Recently I give Cariah Marey freezing treatment to make her even more bulletproof, because I'm working on true-sourdough croissants, and I always freeze my shaped croissants for later use. It worked with no adjustment whatsoever. I even froze her pate fermentee descendant, Lennifer Jopez, pate fermentee I took from failed batch of true-sourdough croissant dough
Good luck with your starter!
Jay
Jay, this interests me. What is this freezing treatment that you gave your starters? Could you describe what you do? What is the hydration of your starter?
Benny
Before feeding, (as 3 grams of dough, if it's a dough at all) I froze them overnight. That's all
The current state of my bran starter is bran:sugar:water 9:2:4 . Pardon the uneven numbers, I usually use my starter in 3 grams increment, for easier formula building and making sure no discard whatsoever.
Jay
Interesting, thanks for sharing that Jay.
It would pay to get 2 going. 1 new and 1 old. Use little starter and a lot of food and wait. Hey - that's what yeast is for. You'll survive - one way or the other. Enjoy!
I’m getting some growth already so I’ll hold off on making a new starter. But thanks for your suggestion.
Benny
Oh no Benny, how awful.
Having patience with recovery from the dehydrated state might make for a more peaceful time, it does always come back, just might need a day or two more than the expectation.
I remember John Dough being a champion with the sweet stiff levains, I'd think to try one of those after recovery as a test that everything was back to normal.
Good luck!
-Jon
Thank you Jon, I will be as patient as possible during this recovery time. I plan on doing nothing until John Dough II has peaked and started to fall. Often times people feed too soon which just dilutes the concentration of microbes which we are trying to maximize.
I don’t know how long it will take to become vigorous, but I’m going to be patient which isn’t my nature LOL.
Benny
They say patience is a virtue. Even if a starter is "dead". Enjoy!
About 24 hours after starting with dried starter and fermenting at 82°F I have about 40-50% rise. I will maintain this at this temperature until it has peaked and started to fall before doing a first feed.
I also plan to keep the feeds at about 1:1:1 for now until I have to slow the feeds to make it overnight.
A few hours after that photo the starter had peaked and the dome fallen. It was fairly liquid at that point so I did a 1:1:1 feed. Now 2 hours later it is starting to rise and there are some bubbles. So far so good. I may need to feed again tonight at this rate.
I hope we're looking at a fairly stable recovery trajectory here. Will uncross my toes with your next positive update.
Things are looking great. After my third feed yesterday it was growing too quickly after a feed of 1:3:3 so I placed it in the fridge overnight. This morning after an additional six hours at 82*F it had more than tripled so I fed it again 1:1:1 and will see how it is this afternoon. I didn't expect the dried frozen backup to work as well and as quickly
What a relief! Now to find out if the re-built starter works differently from the old one.
TomP
Yes that will be an interesting thing to find out Tom. I'll aim to bake something later this week and find out.
Benny
That's a relief! Happy baking, Benny!
Jay
Yes it is a very happy relief Jay, thank you.
Today the starter is again able to triple at 82*F in 4 hours after a 1:1:1 feeding. I've just given him another feeding.
It has a slightly acidic fruity scent at peak.
Benny