13
My sourdough starter looked like a science experiment gone wrong
I tried making my own sourdough starter from scratch last week using only whole wheat flour and water from my tap. Day 3 it smelled like gym socks and had this weird pink fuzzy patch on top. Turns out my tap water had too much chlorine in it which killed the good bacteria somehow. Anyone else accidentally grow mold instead of a starter?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
vera_murphy1mo ago
Stella I get what you're saying but I've gotta disagree a little bit here. I live in a real hard water area and my tap water has chlorine too but I just let it sit out in a pitcher for 24 hours before I use it and my starters have always been fine. The pink and fuzzy stuff sounds like it was just bad luck with contamination maybe from the flour or the jar not being clean enough rather than the water itself. Whole wheat flour is actually trickier for starters because it has more natural yeasts but also more stuff that can go wrong if you don't stay on top of feeding it daily. My first starter took almost two weeks to really get going and I had a few gross smelling days in there but no mold once I switched to a glass jar with a loose lid instead of that plastic container I started with.
5
stella_baker1mo ago
Honestly, my buddy Dave tried the same thing last year and his starter looked like something out of a lab accident. He used filtered water and still ended up with a greenish fuzz that smelled exactly like old trash. He finally tossed it after a week when a tiny mushroom cap popped up on top.
4