How To Keep Your Starter Alive

Troubleshooting your sourdough starter

The nose knows.

When your starter is unhappy, it will smell strong.

Here’s a few rapid-fire troubleshooting instructions…

Smells like nail polish remover, alcohol, vinegar, etc

It’s starving, feed it. The stronger this unwanted smell is, the more it’s screaming for you to feed it.

It’s telling you, danger, danger, I’m gonna die, you better feed me or you’ll have to start a new starter from scratch again.

Give it 3 feedings, and it’ll be happy again.

Smells really, really sweet

This is what my rye starter smells like.

They say that if your starter smells really sweet, it’s got too much amylase (the enzyme that breaks down starch) and that it’ll make your fermentation times unpredictable.

I don’t know. I’ve never had problems with it and this is my preferred starter —the starter I use to do all my bakes.

So do with that information what you will.

It’s going bad (as in mold)

This problem only arises when you don’t feed your starter frequently enough.

If I skip 2-3 feedings, it will start to smell like bad rice. It will start to smell like rotting, slimy rice. Yuck.

Once this happens, it’s gone bad. Throw it away and make a new sourdough starter (or buy sourdough starter)

If in doubt, discard all but 10g of the starter. Do not mix your starter before discarding.

Mold usually shows up on the surface or on the sides, so discard from top to bottom, from outside in, making sure you’re building anew from the innermost part of your starter.

Take this 10g of starter and feed it at a ratio of 1 : 10 : 10.

It looks like this:

If it rebounds with force, congrats, now you have a new and improved starter.

If it does nothing, then you have your answer. Throw it away and make a new sourdough starter (or buy sourdough starter)