On Mar 25, 11:22 pm, "Dick Adams" wrote:
Although I'd like not to think so, I could
quite easily assume you are attempting to frustrate his lofty effort. via the
modus of ad absurdum logical development. And now you have
have got ol' TG going (and me, of course).

Well my tale goes like this... it's cold in Wisconsin. In the winter
my house runs at 55 F during the day and 47 F at night. It's an old
house and everything is plaster so ripping it apart to install
insulation would be a real headache. I'd probably have to move, it
might take a while. So I did the windows and then I opted for sweater-
living. My neighbors are all in the same boat, old houses converted to
NG from coal years ago. I suppose the difference is I know what's
coming with respect to energy and they don't. Anyway, I've gotten used
to it. My starters love it. They sit on the counter and mostly rest.
When I want to make bread, which is often, I'll throw a piece of
starter into a crock-pot with a bit of water and start the refreshment
process. Sometimes I forget the pot is going. And then I have the
problem. I've since moved to a big yogurt fermenter. It's a lot slower
so if I forget completely the temp goes to about 110 F. Which is still
too hot but I don't usually get distracted for that long. In the crock
pot the temperature window is roughly 15 minutes. At 20 minutes you're
hosed. Fortunately, despite lazy ways, I have gotten sharper. Working
backwards, which is to say, heating water + flour + various cracked
grains and then adding the starter during the cooling phase is much
less error prone. That's what I do now. If I remember...

In Kenneth's situation it looks like he ran the starter too long at 80
F. Could have been a feeding thing. His starter was more depleted than
he realized at the beginning. Or maybe he didn't run it at 80 F. he
ran it at 95 F. perhaps his thermostat is bad, or it might be a
balance thing where he refreshed successfully over the last umpteen
bake cycles but chilled his reserve before the populations rebalanced.
Who knows?

The soft dough ball thing has recovered my starter a few times. It's
hard to kill a starter. Billions of critters and all. At least a few
thousand survive underfeeding and over heating. Starter glop can be
notoriously uneven in temperature distribution. And temperature drives
critter cycles. So... I pull a little of the "endangered" material,
make my dough ball, put it in the cellar where it's 50 F. and leave it
alone. It usually self-restores. It seems to work a bit better if I
add a bit of cooked cereal, like oatmeal or barley to buffer it. And
no, you don't have to add cooked meal, you can add the raw stuff...
but in Kenneth's case, we have a pedigreed starter, so de-crittered
material: white flour and boiled cereal, are important
considerations.

If I could do it over, Dickie, I would have never been a Republican in
my youth (arrrgh!) and I'd have a straw-bale house. Less energy,
probably less sweater coverage too, but then I'd have to learn
different starter sh*t and... we'd have yet another longish, rambling
post. But I figured what the heck, it's been quiet here at RFS. The
posts, for the most part, have been stupid lately (Viince excepted).
Might as well burn a little bandwidth this morning. :-)

Will