Storing sourdough starter

Michael said:

I have some starter in a plastic container and punched 3 or 4 small holes in
the top of the lid.

I just made it from storebought yeast a few days ago.

I was wondering, if I feed it and stir it EVERY day and use 1/2 or so at
least once a week, will it store alright at room temperature?

Like I say, I have a tight lid on it with just enough small holes to let the
gas out.

I know you're "supposed" to store it in the refrig but?

Storing at room temp won't work, unless you feed it
every day and use most of it up. The higher temp
makes it grow at a really fast rate.

The only time I've ever done this is when I was
making a lot of sourdough, on the order of
20 loaves a day.

Another good place to ask is rec.food.sourdough

--
Reg email: RegForte (at) (that free MS email service) (dot) com

Michael said:

I have some starter in a plastic container and punched 3 or 4 small holes
in the top of the lid.

I just made it from storebought yeast a few days ago.

I was wondering, if I feed it and stir it EVERY day and use 1/2 or so at
least once a week, will it store alright at room temperature?

Like I say, I have a tight lid on it with just enough small holes to let
the gas out.

I know you're "supposed" to store it in the refrig but?

I'm not sure what you mean by "feed it" every day. Do you refresh it every
day, throwing half of it out? I don't think you can just keep adding to it
("feed it"😉 every day without tossing or using part of it. Dividing it just
once a week isn't going to do it, I don't think. Not out of the refrig, but
who knows.

I refresh the starter between once a week and once every three weeks, and
store it in the refrigerator. It depends when I get around to it, and what I
am doing with it. When I refresh mine, about a 1/4 cup goes into the
refreshed starter, and the rest goes into a recipe. A common thing I do with
the rest is put it in a very liquid mixture (poolish, biga, whatever?) of
the starter, flour and water overnight to ferment as the base for the next
day's bread baking. Or I use it early in the day to start a batch of pizza
dough.

I usually leave the refreshed starter out of the refrigerator and in various
places depending on season and temperature and let it ferment for about a
day, stirring it down a couple of times, until it looks right. Then I
refrigerate it.

I store my starter in a quart(?) stoneware crock with a wooden lid I made
for it. The lid is loose enough to vent it. I started it about two years ago
and it is still going strong in spite of the occassional three weeks between
refreshing. When I make that that poolish overnight, it ends up being quite
strong the next morning... if I stick my nose down in the bowl it is quite
overpowering... in a nice way.

The newsgroup rec.food.sourdough has quite a bit of information on the
topic. There's a faq that is periodically posted, and can also be found at:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/food/sourdough/faq/preamble.html

I think if you store it at room temperature and you neglect it for a little
too long (which is inevitable), you will end up with a very interesting
biology experiment on your kitchen counter. Shades of pink and such are not
a good sign! ;-)

--
( #wff_ng_7# at #verizon# period #net# )

"Michael" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I have some starter in a plastic container and punched 3 or 4 small holes
in the top of the lid.

I just made it from storebought yeast a few days ago.

I was wondering, if I feed it and stir it EVERY day and use 1/2 or so at
least once a week, will it store alright at room temperature?

Like I say, I have a tight lid on it with just enough small holes to let
the gas out.

I know you're "supposed" to store it in the refrig but?

Store-bought yeast is not the same as sourdough yeast, if you bought
something like Red Star or Fleishman's or whatever. For that to turn into
sourdough, the original yeast will have to die off and be replaced by
sourdough yeast. If you really want to grow sourdough, you would have been
better off starting with just flour and water and no commercial yeast.

If you meant that you bought some sort of sourdough starter, you should have
gotten some sort of directions. But I can't say that I've ever seen
sourdough starters at any store I've ever been to.

As others have suggested, go to the sourdough newsgroup for more detailed
information.

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 16:49:00 -0500, "Michael" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

I have some starter in a plastic container and punched 3 or 4 small holes in
the top of the lid.

I just made it from storebought yeast a few days ago.

I was wondering, if I feed it and stir it EVERY day and use 1/2 or so at
least once a week, will it store alright at room temperature?

Like I say, I have a tight lid on it with just enough small holes to let the
gas out.

I know you're "supposed" to store it in the refrig but?

Put it into a jar with NO holes and keep it in your frig.

"Reg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Michael said:

I have some starter in a plastic container and punched 3 or 4 small
holes in the top of the lid.

I just made it from storebought yeast a few days ago.

I was wondering, if I feed it and stir it EVERY day and use 1/2 or so
at least once a week, will it store alright at room temperature?

Like I say, I have a tight lid on it with just enough small holes to
let the gas out.

I know you're "supposed" to store it in the refrig but?

Storing at room temp won't work, unless you feed it
every day and use most of it up. The higher temp
makes it grow at a really fast rate.

The only time I've ever done this is when I was
making a lot of sourdough, on the order of
20 loaves a day.

Another good place to ask is rec.food.sourdough

If you do, DON'T mention you made it with regular yeast🙂 They will
have your socks off 🙂)

O

"Ophelia" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Reg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Michael said:

I have some starter in a plastic container and punched 3 or 4 small
holes in the top of the lid.

I just made it from storebought yeast a few days ago.

I was wondering, if I feed it and stir it EVERY day and use 1/2 or so at
least once a week, will it store alright at room temperature?

Like I say, I have a tight lid on it with just enough small holes to let
the gas out.

I know you're "supposed" to store it in the refrig but?

Storing at room temp won't work, unless you feed it
every day and use most of it up. The higher temp
makes it grow at a really fast rate.

The only time I've ever done this is when I was
making a lot of sourdough, on the order of
20 loaves a day.

Another good place to ask is rec.food.sourdough

If you do, DON'T mention you made it with regular yeast🙂 They will have
your socks off 🙂)

O

Hee hee -- indeed!
Dee Dee

"wff_ng_7" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:35Hof.1008$7f3.377@trnddc01...

Quoted message said:

I'm not sure what you mean by "feed it" every day. Do you refresh it every
day, throwing half of it out? I don't think you can just keep adding to it
("feed it"😉 every day without tossing or using part of it.

Well, of course you CAN, with the downside being that in short
order, you're going to wind up with the Starter That Ate Philadelphia...

Keeping it in the fridge does at least two things for you - it slows
down the action of the bacteria such that it doesn't go hog-wild
and consume everything too quickly (you're aiming for a usable
starter, not a giant mass of bacteria), and it also tends to inhibit
the addition and growth of other beasties that otherwise might
get into the mix (wild yeasts and such).

Bob M.

Bob Myers said:

Well, of course you CAN, with the downside being that in short
order, you're going to wind up with the Starter That Ate Philadelphia...

Keeping it in the fridge does at least two things for you - it slows
down the action of the bacteria such that it doesn't go hog-wild
and consume everything too quickly (you're aiming for a usable
starter, not a giant mass of bacteria), and it also tends to inhibit
the addition and growth of other beasties that otherwise might
get into the mix (wild yeasts and such).

What I was thinking is if you don't divide it and only reuse a small
portion, the beasties will take over at room temperature. I'm sure if you
only reuse a small portion and feed that every day, you can keep it at room
temperature indefinitely. But that's a tremendous waste, unless one has a
use for the tossed portion.

By the way, it doesn't take anywhere near as big to eat Philadelphia
anymore... it's a much smaller city than it used to be.

--
( #wff_ng_7# at #verizon# period #net# )

wff_ng_7 said:

What I was thinking is if you don't divide it and only reuse a small
portion, the beasties will take over at room temperature.

What will happen is the fermentation will proceed at a fast
rate increasing the acidity to the point where the organisms
can't survive. At some point the starter "dies".

Quoted message said:

I'm sure if you
only reuse a small portion and feed that every day, you can keep it at room
temperature indefinitely.

Here's the method I used when I was maintaining my starter at
room temperature.

- Refresh every 24 hours
- 72 F ambient temp
- 64 F water temp when refreshing

Under these conditions, the refresh ratio held
steady at 15:1.

Quoted message said:

But that's a tremendous waste, unless one has a
use for the tossed portion.

Yes, that's the issue. There are some that advocate doing this
for a few cycles in order to "strengthen" a weak starter, Nancy
Silverton being one of them.

--
Reg email: RegForte (at) (that free MS email service) (dot) com