Sometimes it feels like the weeks just sprint by. We’ve been caught up with our day jobs, building a new home, friends’ birthdays and the rest. When life gets busy it can be hard to catch up. Not surprisingly, our sourdough bread making has taken a back seat.
I posted about our foray into homemade sourdough bread last month and you can re-visit that post here.
Our sourdough starter was in a pretty bad state due to inactivity. Serious sluggishness. After a while, starters will start to smell sour whether you are using your starter regularly or not. This happens due to the natural build-up of organic acids in the starter.
Once a month or when your starter is smelling too vinegary, it is a good idea to purge it. You do this by throwing away all of your starter except for 1-2 tbs. Add the 1-2 tbs in a new clean container along with 100g of rye flour and 150g of water. Give this a good stir and leave somewhere warm. The mixture will ferment and become bubbly when it is ready.
Our starter was in a bad way. Not only did it smell really sour but it had also separated with a brown liquid on top. This means our starter was feeling neglected. Guilty as charged.
To purge our unloved starter, we fed the remaining 1-2 tbs with 50g of rye flour and 75g of water. We stirred it, let it ferment in a warm place and then repeated the whole process again. Threw away half of it, re-fed it and let it do its thing. We did this 3 times over the course of a couple of days and voila – our starter was back to its old self again.
Sourdough Starter FAQ
How do you revive a neglected sourdough starter?
Purge it and feed it. Throw away all of your starter except 1-2 tablespoons, then feed it with rye flour and water in a clean container somewhere warm. Our neglected starter revival used 50g of rye flour and 75g of water, repeated three times over a couple of days – and it was back to its old self again.
Why does my sourdough starter smell like vinegar?
A vinegary smell comes from the natural build-up of organic acids in the starter. It happens whether you are using your starter regularly or not. Once a month, or whenever it smells too vinegary, it is a good idea to purge it.
What is the brown liquid on top of my sourdough starter?
When a starter has separated with brown liquid sitting on top, that is a sign it has been neglected and is in a pretty bad state. Ours looked exactly like that – the purge-and-feed revival described above brought it back.
What is the biggest mistake beginners make with sourdough bread?
With starters, it is neglect – exactly what happened to ours. Life got busy, the starter sat unfed, smelled sour and separated with brown liquid on top. The fix is easy (purge and feed as above), but a well-cared-for starter only needs attention about once a month in the fridge to stay out of trouble.
Is there a sourdough starter recipe for purging and feeding?
For a standard purge we keep 1-2 tbs of starter and add 100g of rye flour and 150g of water, stirred and left somewhere warm until bubbly. Rye flour tends to produce a more reliable starter than wheat flour, and a well-cared-for starter can live for many years in the fridge between feeds.