activating a dehydrated starter ... gone green
Hi friends - I keep a small stash of dehydrated starters on hand ...haven't baked in a while. The other day I decided to activate 2 different starters ...both have been in storage for about 2 years. They both started beautifully.
The first starter is now at 60 hours and beginning to double in volume ...no problems.
The second starter, at 24 hours looked good ...a few tiny air bubbles showing signs of life. This morning, at 36 hours, it had a greenish swirly layer on top ...otherwise it looked ready to feed. I have never seen this before. Any thoughts? Some kind of contamination? It smelled normal. I did chuck it ...and started a new one from the same batch of dehydrated stock. I sanitized the jar - which I did not do previously ...in fact, have never done. I am wondering if whatever the greenish layer was ...if it would have worked itself out as the starter was feed & grew? But anyway - I threw it out & tried again with this particular stock ...wondering if the stock could somehow be contaminated? I guess I will see if this attempt goes funky on me.
I dehydrated good active starter and stored it airtight. Thanks for any ideas.
You did right to discard it. Throw away any leftover dried starter from that envelope and sanitise your recipient with bleach for 30 minutes. The rinse and wash with detergent, rinse really carefully and let dry.
thanks for the advice ...kind of a bummer as I have a fair amount of this starter stock dehydrated in several pouches ...I wonder how the contamination would have happened ...I suppose it doesn't really matter as long as I have strong viable starter going
would be beneficial in reviving dried starter in the same way it is in starting a new one?
thanks Antilope - good thought!