Watery Sourdough Starter

[curabrad]

I'm on my 2nd try of getting a sourdough starter going. The first one basically exploded. It tripled in size in 1 day (I live in UAE) and got thick and bubbly. I fed it for 2 days, but then it developed a SCOBY type layer and I saw mold so I panicked and got rid of it. (I also noticed the muslin cloth covering wasn't on well.)
This second one is slow going, and I noticed after the 2nd day that a thin layer of water developed on top and in it is a kaleidoscope of...not sure what. It's very watery overall, but doesn't smell bad in any way. Should I keep at it, stirring multiple times a day and waiting for the fermenty bubbles? Or, is it time to start over again?
It's a simple mix of organic rye flour and filtered water.
Thanks in advance for your help.

[WWFSM]

Sounds fine to keep.
The liquid on top may be hooch, so drain it off and stir in some more water and flour. Maybe more flour than water.

I recommend you do not use muslin to cover your starter, but instead use a tightly woven cotton or linen cloth. It keeps out a lot more contaminants that the coarser weave of cheesecloth.

Also, if you can bring home some organic fruit. A small bunch of grapes and an apple would do it. Put the fruit next to your wouldbe starter, the yeast on the fruit will migrate to the starter.

I know this isn't the popular opinion right now, but a sourdough starter can be as runny as water or as thick as playdough. So don't worry about the texture. There are a lot of people out there in the cooking and baking world that tell you that you need a specific concentration of moisture to flour molecule - um, I know they mean well but quite frankly, they are doing more harm than good. It's only in a setting where you need consistent results (like a commercial bakery) when your starter needs to be exactly such-and-such percent hydration.

So don't worry, it sounds like you are doing well. This time of year, the yeast activity in the air is starting to die down, so catching a starter will take longer than say, late summer to early fall.

Some things you need to know:

As you are capturing wild yeast, every starter will be different. Some will need to be fed 4 or 5 times a day, others once every 4 days. The collection of yeast in your starter are unique to you. So any advice given is exactly that: advice! Play around with your starter to see what it needs. You can even divide it into two or more starters and treat each one different to see what works best.

Over time, different species of yeasts grow and die in the starter, so it's behaviour will change over time. Which means timing for making bread, and starter feeding schedules change as well. The kind of flour, the water you use, the humidity and temperature in the house, all that stuff will have an influence on how your starter behaves.

You can change the flavour, texture, speed of rising, and shelf life of the bread, by adjusting the thickness of your starter (and sponge). Basically, don't listen to those people who say you have to have it an exact texture - it's more a guideline than a rule.

I've caught many a starter in my day, and the instructions in Nigella Lawson's book, How to be a Domestic Goddess are the best, easiest and most successful...though I usually leave out the milk. Inspired by her recipe, here's my procedure for catching wild yeast: http://wholewheatfsm.blogspot.ca/2012/09/rye-sourdough-starter-recipe.html and some general troubleshooting: http://wholewheatfsm.blogspot.ca/2012/09/how-to-divide-sourdough-starter-plus.html

[curabrad]

Thanks very much for all the advice. I'm happy to keep experimenting and will definitely split it into 2 and treat them differently to see what happens. I'll likely be back with more questions. Thanks also for the links.

[WWFSM]

Let us know how it goes.

[curabrad]

Hi there,

So, your advice was awesome! It was flourishing and all was going well. I didn't get the chance to separate into two batches, but it was going great so figured it wasn't so necessary at the moment. I was tending to it once a day, sometimes twice, stirring and then feeding once. Then today...I found mold :( or something fuzzy along the sides of the jar just above where the starter is and a layer on top :'( Could it be because I need to stir more or is it the cover? I'm covering with a muslin cloth because it's more tightly woven than cheese cloth. I use a tea towel when I'm brewing kombucha (continuous brew) so am wondering if I should try that instead???
Is it the temps? I live in UAE and it's getting nicer here but it's still pretty warm in the day.
Going to start again...hopefully the 3rd time will be the charm!
Thanks for your help and encouragement! This is a bit more frustrating than I had anticipated, but I am determined!

[WWFSM]

Did you toss it out already? If the mould is not black, you can carfully peal off the top layer and take a bit of starter from the very centre, you only need about 1/4 tsp, put it in a clean container and add roughly 1 cup of flour and whatever water is needed to get the right texture.

Also, about what temperature do you keep your starter?

It may have formed from lack of stirring, but more likely the yeast and bacteria in the starter were unbalanced. If the yeast is too active, and the bacteria not active enough, then the starter isn't acidic enough to scare off any mould. (yes sticklers, I know, I'm over simplifying, but really one doesn't need a full on science lesson to make this work). Eventually with trial and error, you will get the feel for how to keep the starter balanced and happy.

Things to prevent mould.

A tightly woven towel is a great idea. Definitely go with this over course weave every time. In fact, I just about never use cheese cloth or muslin for anything in the kitchen, except straining. It's not fine enough to keep the dust or bugs out, so using it as a cover doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The starter doesn't need a huge amount of air (assuming you stir it up vigorously each time you feed it). If I don't have a towel on hand I'll even use a heavy lid, just resting on top, usually upside down to make certain it doesn't produce a seal. But tightly woven cotton or linen towel is your best bet.

Try not feeding it as often so that the bacteria (the sour part of the starter) can build up a little. Maybe forget to feed it for one or two days every week or so. The starter will bubble up and then look flat and dormant, but the yeast is still hidden in there. You can still stir it on your regular schedule, until it becomes more balanced if you like. But once it gets sour enough, you should not need to.

You could keep a thicker starter and change the feeding schedule so that you don't feed it so often - unless you are baking with it the next day. This will make a more sour tasting bread, but also keep the starter sour enough to keep mould away.

Double check to make certain your water isn't treated with something that might harm bacteria, or that there hasn't been any anti-bacterial soap residue on anything that comes near your starter. Dish soap, hand soap, air sprays, all that stuff.

Another thing that helps is to keep the inner sides of the bowl/jar/starter-living-space clean. As you stir the starter, and the starter rises and falls in the bowl/jar/whatever, it will coat the walls of the jar with starter. If this stays moist it can attract mould. If I'm feeling fussy, then I will wipe the inside walls of the jar clean with paper towel every time I feed it. However, if I'm feeling a bit more lazy, I'll change the bowl that the starter is kept in every week or so, then wash the old bowl - but actually, this one is the more difficult method because washing dried starter is a pain in the butt.

A cooler temperature will slow the growth of mould, so it might help to move your starter to a cooler part of the house or if you aren't baking bread every couple of days, try keeping it in the fridge. In the fridge you need to feed it every week or so to keep it strong, but you can forget it for months or sometimes years and will be able to revive it. However, you do need to take extra steps to wake it up before baking with it, so that can be a pain if you just want something quick like sourdough pancakes.

Maybe someone with more science can step in here, but is the bacteria in sourdough air-loving or anaerobic? Searching the dark corners of my pre-coffee brain, I'm thinking it doesn't like too much air. So by string too often and having a coarsely woven cloth on top may - that's MAY with capital letters - be inhibiting the bacteria which makes it sour which reduces mould. Perhaps, as an experiment, you could try stirring it more vigorously when you feed it, so that the yeast can get some air, but don't stir it in-between feedings.

As an example of how a more sour starter can keep mould away, I usually keep a stiff, stand-your-spoon-up-in-it-and-it-will-stay-there-for-days-without-falling-over starter. I use this, along with other techniques, to make a very sour loaf. This sour bread can stay in plastic, on the countertop for weeks (2 in the summer, 3 to 4 in the winter, though the current loaf has been out for almost 5 weeks now with no mould grown - but that was the first time I used cultured whey instead of water) before it grows mould. Um, we aren't bread eaters here, that's why we go through it so slowly. Usually the bread get's used in things, instead of eaten on it's own. But we do like the strong sourdough taste.

Having more than one starter on the go has saved my ahem more than once. So I highly recommend you divide your starter and play around with different techniques until you find one that fits you. Sourdough can be really flexible, and conform itself to your schedule - but it takes a bit of trial and error to find the method that works best for you.

And sometimes you do everything right and mould just happens. It's good to have a back-up plan.

When you get a starter you really like, dry some by spreading it very thinly on a sheet of tinfoil and leaving it out at room temperature, somewhere where it gets lot of air, till it dries. No need to cover it. Once it dries completely, you can powder it up or put it in chunks into an airtight container and keep it for about a year. When you need to start a new starter, add a generous pinch of this, maybe half a tsp or more or less, depending on how much you have, to a mixture of flour and water. I usually start with 1/2 cup flour and enough water to make it the texture I like. If you can crumble up the dried starter before you add it, it will work better. Feed the starter as per normal, slowly increasing or decreasing the size to what you normally like to have it. This usually makes a happy starter in 3 to 5 days, but I've had it take as little as 1 hour to become a happy and overactive-spilling-all-over-the-countertop-and-making-a-huge-mess starter.

[WWFSM]

In that long post of mine just now, I forgot to say that I'm glad you are sticking with it. You will get it right.

A lot of instructions for sourdough these days are very restrictive and don't take into account different weather, flour available in your part of the world, and other conditions. Too many authors of bread books, write for the North-Western European or North American conditions, which are somewhat different than the rest of the world. Sourdough is a living thing and like most living things, being too ridged in how it's treated can end terribly. Sourdough instructions, directions, recipes, and even random people on forums giving out advice, should all be taken as a more a guideline than absolute rule.

Keep trying, and keep experimenting.
Please keep us updated what's working and not working for you.

[curabrad]

THANK YOU! Your thorough replies are encouraging. I haven't gotten rid of it, but it's a bit on the grey side so I'm thinking of starting over. Am sterilising 2 large Fido jars now so that I can split the starter in 2 and experiment.

I think the culprit may be the "wet starter on sides of jar" after I stir. I wondered about it, but figured it was part of the process. Aaaahh!
I'm going to go with the tea towels on both, refrigerate one and keep the other in another, not so warm room and will CLEAN THE SIDES OF THE JAR. It really is a royal pain in the a** to clean that dried up starter.

Thanks so much for all the tips. We're not big bread eaters and we generally feel better on a mostly gluten-free diet (just preference), but sourdough seems to work for us and would love to get this balance figured out!

Will keep you posted on yet another new starter!

[curabrad]

So, after a couple of months break from sourdough, I started up again and have had GREAT success! I'm managing to keep it happy and fed and bubbly and even keep 2 starters now to play with each and see how they go. Sourdough pancakes are coming out fantastic and my husband and daughter love them. Bread is proving to be trickier, but I experiment bi-weekly and hope to reach some kind of success eventually. THANK YOU so much for all your replies. I keep going back to them for reference! Also, since I've started the sourdough, I also got my hands on some kefir grains and have that going a few times a week, also. It's all a bit time consuming, but I love it!
Thanks again! I'll be back for more advice as my fermenting repertoire grows

[rafwatson]

I know this is an older post, but I'm finding it very helpful! I, too, have some questions. I'm attempting my first batch of sourdough starter.

I'm using the recipe in Nourishing Traditions, which says to start with 2 cups rye flour and 2 cups water. Then, each day for 7 days, add 1 cup rye flour plus enough water to make it soupy. I've been doing that, and it's been great up until yesterday, which was the 6th day. There was a layer of grayish mold on the top. I scraped it off, added more flour and water and left it again. Today, the same thing. But now, it's maybe smelling less sour and more rotten. The smells have been interesting. For the first few days, it was kind of smelling like bacon, then it got a nice yeasty scent, and now, kind of rotten. I'm thinking I should dump it and start over.

I live in Jordan, so like you, curabrad, I think it's maybe too hot. My kitchen gets pretty dang hot in the afternoon, even with the AC on. So, maybe I should move it into the dining room where it doesn't get direct sunlight? I'm happy to hear that you got yours to work. What is it just scraping the sides that did the trick?

And WWFSM, can you explain this a little more? "Some will need to be fed 4 or 5 times a day, others once every 4 days." How do you know when it needs to be fed? I'm thinking mine probably needs to be fed more since it's getting mold? Is that about right?