Found larvae in the flour I used to feed my starter!

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kmichae1 on 27 Mar 2021 at 19:45

Hi everyone I was going to feed my sourdough starter tonight when I saw that my flour had multiple little beige worm looking bugs which I think are larvae from what I could figure out on google. I of course got rid of the flour and didn't use It but I've used that same bag to feed my starter for the last few days. Is my starter okay to keep? I haven't seen any bugs in It, only in the flour. Thanks! 

Unless you are grossed out by the possibility of them being there you are fine.  I would check your other flour bags though.  Particularly non-white flours.

To check your other flours and all dried products such as pasta and cereal that aren't in sealed containers. We had an infestation from some sort of moth  once and they were in everything. We had to keep all such dried products in sealed plastic containers for a couple of months to stop them from  getting reinfested once the contaminated products were thrown away. The adult bugs were apparently hiding out about the house waiting to lay their eggs.

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JeremyCherfas on 30 Mar 2021 at 03:56

48 hours in the freezer for any products you have cleaned up, maybe by sifting, is also a good idea, to kill unhatched eggs. But neither the eggs nor the larvae will actually harm you.

Bit hard to sift the starter  :  )

Strain, perhaps? Still, depends on the size we're talking about.

Purely thinking of ideas here - not sure how practical or effective - but you could convert to a liquid starter and then strain.

What I would probably do is:

  1. Buy some fresh flour, keeping it sealed and separate.
  2. Get a new jar/container for your starter.
  3. Take a SMALL amount of your starter and add it to the new jar.
  4. (Keep the original, potentially problematic start - just in case.)
  5. Convert your new 'seed' into a liquid starter over several days.
  6. Strain it.
  7. Once you are happy, take another fresh jar and convert it back to your usual consistency

Will it work? Not sure. Are there easier ways? Probably.

Just throwing out an idea.

Best of luck - I've had to throw out a bunch of flour that got infested via - I strongly suspect - a pack of pappadums.