Scientific Progress Goes Splort

[hudebnik]

The last few batches of bread have taken a long time to rise. They all did eventually, but last weekend's bread showed no activity at all for about 24 hours, and it was about 48 hours from start to baked loaf. And the starter jar has been smelling not so much of sourdough as of vinegar. So I looked in the freezer for a frozen backup, and found two. One was completely unlabelled, the other helpfully labelled "sourdough", so I thawed them both, put them in two separate containers, and fed them, alongside the already-running vinegary starter. After 24 hours there was very little activity in any of the three jars, although the other two at least didn't smell vinegary, and I was about to resign myself to mail-ordering a new sourdough starter.

Then Tuesday morning I came into the kitchen to see this:

(Note that all three lids were on loosely.)

I guess I know which one is active. I threw out the other two, fed this one some more, put a quarter-cup into the freezer, and am ready for this weekend's batch of bread.

Comments

[ilaine]

I had mine go green and fuzzy, sigh. There's one frozen backup left. I might just leave it there till the hot weather passes and baking motivation returns.

[hudebnik]

I don't think I've seen a starter "go green and fuzzy", at least not in the past ten years, but from time to time the surface turns orange, which I think indicates the triumph of an acetogenic strain over the preferred strains that produce lactic acid. When that happens, I discard the top half inch and feed the remaining, non-orange stuff.

[cellio]

I never thought to freeze backups. Thanks!

Also, wow. Glad you got that one back among the living!