My starter is about 3 or 4 weeks old and it started smelling like latex paint a few days ago. It was going really well. I had made crackers, a loaf with commercial yeast added, and pancakes. They all came out delicious.
It's all-purpose flour, wild yeast from my house, and I've been feeding it every day the same weight flour and water. I did skip a day a couple times more recently, and have slacked off weighing and estimated a few times. I guess my slacking is where it went wrong. It also got over 70 degrees outside this week. My husband thinks that's the issue, it got warm outside and now there's something gross living there. My house is still nice and cool inside.
Do I need to dump it and start over? Can it be rehabilitated?
Phew got that off my chest. First of all here are some good practices when feeding your starter.
1. Use bottled water or boiled water from the kettle cooled to room temperature.
2. Give good feeds of 1:1:1 or greater. Lesser feeds will just increase the amount of spent flour and the starter will begin to smell "off".
3. There's no need to feed everyday and to keep it at room temperature. Give your starter a good feed, allow it to bubble up by 1/3rd and store in the fridge. Take a little off each time to build preferments. When your starter in the fridge runs low just take it out, bring to room temperature, allow it to feed by 1/3rd and return to the fridge. This is good for a few reasons... you can build your preferments to the required flour, you can always give it a good feed without discarding, with good feeds your starter will be stronger and healthier. I never keep anything more than 150g or so at any one time. When it runs low to something like 30g i'll feed it 60g flour + 60g water so it's had a feed of 1:2:2 which keeps it nice and healthy.
4. Different flours will keep differently and some are easier to maintain and seem to keep well in the fridge for quite a while. Whole rye is good for this purpose. I have two starters. My whole rye starter always smells ok but the other one needs more TLC to keep it smelling good. I suggest you start to keep a whole rye starter and build from that.
Here's what I suggest... take about 10g from your starter and feed it 20g whole rye flour + 20g un-chlorinated water. Allow that to bubble up and peak.
Then feed that 50g starter with 50g whole rye flour + 50g un-chlorinated water and allow that to bubble up by 1/3rd. Then store in the fridge. And use this for your bakes. Just take a small amount off each time and build that into your levain. Then when it runs low just give it a really good feed and so on.
Best of luck.
Looking around this site, you guys make your starters way way different from how I was told. I was adding 4 oz of flour and also water, by weight, every day! It is huge! Like 4 cups. So this will be way more manageable. Thank you so much!
Mine has smelled like that before. The smell does change when the weather warms up, and so does the consistency. My starter has never really smelled like food. Always a bit chemical, maybe paint-like, or a little alcoholic. It isn't a strong odor. The flavor is not unpleasant, a bit sour, maybe sort of tart. It doesn't taste like bread dough. But I would expect that as long as it doesn't show visible signs of contamination, it could be trusted.
I bought a small 8-bottle wine cooler for fermenting dough, and I keep my starter in there, somewhere between 60-65 degrees.
Also I maintain only small amounts of it when I'm not preparing to use it. A feeding is 20g starter + 10g water + 10g flour. Keeping it always below 70F, and feeding morning and night. I've gotten down as low as 10+5+5, but that amount is a bit too small to measure accurately or mix up properly.
My starter, in the fridge, was running low. Was down to about 15-20g. So have just fed it 40g flour + 40g water that has been boiled and cooled. This feeding is about 1:2:2. Will allow it to feed and bubble up by 1/3rd and will return it to the fridge. When it comes to baking I will take a little off at a time and do preferments. This way both my starter and preferments have good builds of 1:1:1 or greater keeping it healthy and strong. All the while not building too much and never having to discard.
Feeding less than 1:1:1 (your feedings are currently 1:0.5:0.5) then the spent flour is greater than the fresh flour. Not good practice.
Were you replying to my post? Are my feedings not right?
Ideally feed 1:1:1 or greater. Feeding less means spent flour is building up.
Hm.. Ok, I'll check into that. That's the first I've heard of that ratio.
But your statement that "the spent flour is greater than the fresh flour" doesn't make sense to me. In the 20g of old starter, there is 10g of flour. Then I add 10g of flour. So the spent flour isn't greater than the fresh flour. Spent flour to new flour is 1:1. Your 2:1 ratio probably works ok, but I don't see that I'm "building up" spent flour either. Can you explain?
It does raise a question that I haven't given much thought yet: what would be the optimal ratio of new flour to old in a feeding? I'm thinking you should add enough to keep the yeast and lactobacillus happy. They would probably be just as happy with more, up to a point. I would expect 1:1 like I do would be sufficient, but maybe not. A higher ratio would also be ok for the organisms, but would also be a waste.
On top of that, temperature is at least as important. Again, the best temperature would be one that keeps the yeast and lactobacillus happy, thriving roughly equally, but then also a temperature that doesn't cause you to waste your time or ingredients. (Based on the numbers provided by Gaenzle) Between 66 and 77 degrees, the two are within 10% of each other. At 69, they are within 5%. Somewhere above 66 seems like it would be ok. Anything higher or lower than that range, and the lactobacillus begin to dominate, which I think means more sour, but seems like it could also degrade the starter over time. My thinking is that over time you weaken or otherwise diminish the yeast.
But if you want to keep them both working, then 66 to 70 seems like a good range to be in. Higher, and you either feed more often for no benefit, or else they spend time starving (which also favors the lactobacillus). At lower temperatures you can feed less often, but you give an advantage to the lactobacillus.
I know I have a lot to learn still, but this is what I've come up with so far.
Where you see a starter feeding ratio of 1:1:1 it means same weight for starter:flour:water or, for example, 20g:20g:20g.
You make a good point about in that 20g starter there is 10g flour + 10g water though. But I've always learned a good healthy feeding is 1:1:1 or more. My point about spent flour I'm not sure now if it means feeding greater or less than the starter or flour within the starter.
I get around the problem of continuous build up by keeping my starter in the fridge, see my explanation above of my maintenance, and only taking off however I need to do my builds. Then topping up my starter when it runs low with a generous feed. This can be maintained with no discard.
A starter is symbiotic. There is a balance of one dominant yeast and bacteria. Depending on various factors it can change with other yeast and bacteria vying to take over. Invariably it is one kind of each at any one time I believe.
Not only does the starter effect the dough but the temperatures at which you ferment the dough plays a part. Keeping ones starter in the fridge doesn't necessarily mean it'll produce a more sour bread. Afterall when you do your preferment and fermentation at warmer temperatures you are encouraging a yeast leavening. If you retard in the fridge then lactoballicus.
I don't regulate temperature too meticulously. No thermometer here. I have my kitchen as a warm place and my fridge as a cool place. So far for both starter maintenance and bread baking it has sufficed.
Sourdough is a continuous learning curve.
When I received my copy of Josey Baker Bread, I used his method to start a batch of sourdough. All was good for the first week, but then it started to get that strong odor. What should have been a nice, alcohol sort of smell was more like ketones (paint or solvent sort of smell). I took that painty smell to be bacteria that out-competed the yeast. I tried to take a bit and feed it, but it just fed those pesky bacteria instead of the yeast. I ended up dumping it out and starting over. I don't blame his method, it worked fine the second time.