I'm hoping that some of you experience sourdough-ers will be able to help
me:

For the first time this week-end, I tried creating a starter the "real
way", using the method outlined in the FAQ. I used organic unbleached
flour and warm water to the consistency of thick mud and let it sit in the
oven with the light turned on. After 24 hours, the starter had doubled in
volume, but smelled kind of "off" -- not yeasty or alchol-y but kind of
like garbage. I refrigerated the starter because it looked good to me
(even if it smelled bad.)

To see if the starter was healthy, last night I took a TB of it and added
warm water and flour (to the consistency of mud) and let it sit again in
the oven. This morning, it was bubbly (after about 12 hours) but smelled
even worse --like garbage or maybe vomit (sorry, but that's the best way
that I can think of to describe the smell.) Now, it's at room temperature
(73F) and I'm going to see what it's like tonight, after 24 hours.

This horrible smell can't be a good thing -- I would never want to bake
bread with something that smelled that bad. But why would it smell so bad
and yet look like a healthy starter? Should I just assume that something
wen't wrong and try again? I saw one recipe in the FAQ that said a stinky
smell could be because of a too warm temperature -- should I just leave
the starter at room temperature? The house is 73F during the day and 68F
at night (I was worried that it would be too cold at night, hence the
oven.)

I was surprised when the starter had doubled after 24 hours -- the FAQ
made it seem like it would take a week. Was I just lucky or is this
related to the stinky smell?

Thanks,
Jen

Forget the oven. Starter does not go in the oven except in cookbooks.
Starter also does not get put in the refrigerator unless it's been fed
at most an hour or two beforehand. And starter does not go into bread
until it's been refreshed at least 6 times (for some value of 6).

David

Jennifer Johnston wrote:



I was surprised when the starter had doubled after 24 hours -- the FAQ
made it seem like it would take a week. Was I just lucky or is this
related to the stinky smell?

Try just running it at room temperature for a week or so. And check the part(s) of the FAQ about 'cleaning' a starter.


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Carl West wrote:

Try just running it at room temperature for a week or so. And check the part(s) of the FAQ about 'cleaning' a starter.


Forget "cleaning". the starter's 2 days old!

David

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 09:48:57 -0500, Jennifer Johnston
wrote:

I'm hoping that some of you experience sourdough-ers will be able to help
me:

LOL. The only experience people have around here is being trolls.

it was bubbly (after about 12 hours) but smelled
even worse --like garbage or maybe vomit

I used to make my own beer - did it for 7 1/2 years straight. I used
malt extract in the beginning but then developed the skills necessary
to mash grain.

I remember the very first batch I made - it smelled just like you
describe. So I went back to the brewshop and asked what had happened.
In a word, the problem was Sanitation. Beer making demands high
standards of sanitation or the results will be disastrous.

From that time on I would wash all the equipment, including spoons, in
a sanitizing product called B-Brite (others would use diluted
household bleach but it is very difficult to rinse the residue away).
Everything was done to prevent or reduce the risks of contamination,
especially by airborne pathenogens. From that time on I made good beer
- only had one more bad batch in the remaining years.

Here we are engaged in basically the same kind of microbiological
experiments, yet there is rarely, if ever, any mention of sanitation
in the millions of words on this subject. That's, I suspect, because
of the belief that sourdough starters are activated by organisms in
the atmosphere and therefore you do not want to be so sanitary as to
preclude them. However, even if it is true that starters activate from
atmospheric mircoorganisms, that is not justification for ignoring the
need for strict sanitation.

I am not skilled enough at this to tell you what to do. But if it were
my starter and it smelled like that, I would not hesitate to toss it
in the sewer because that's exactly where it belongs IMO. Those two
bad batches of beer smelled *exactly* as you described and I had no
choice but to toss them. Another clue was the scum floating on the top
- something starters obscure.

I never studied biology except for developmental anatomy and what
chemistry I had I have forgotten over these 40 years. But I do
remember two things from chemistry: 1) How to use litmus paper; 2) How
to clean a test tube. To clean a test tube properly you first clean it
as usual with soap and water and then you rinse it thoroughly with tap
water. Nothing new there. But then you take a rinse bottle (a squirt
bottle) filled with distilled water and you rinse the test tube three
times more.

The idea is that if there is 1 cc of contaminant left, like a drop of
tap water from the main rinse, and you add 100 cc of DW, then you have
diluted the contaminant by 1 factor of 100. After you do the same
thing two more times, the contaminant is now reduced to the part per
million range. So, after I cleaned by beer making equipment with
sterilizer, I would rinse it three times out of habit. It seemed to
work.

Each time I use a spoon to stir my starter, I wash it with a small
squirt of dish soap, rinse it thoroughly with tap water and then rinse
it 3 times with filtered water from my GE activated charcoal
filtration system. That might seem a bit fussy, but as I said it is
old habit - and you know what they say about old habits.

Recommendation from a non-expert: Toss that pond scum you have
festering away in that container and start over - and adopt the
strictest sanitation procedures possible.

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 14:57:49 GMT, Carl West
wrote:

I was surprised when the starter had doubled after 24 hours -- the FAQ
made it seem like it would take a week. Was I just lucky or is this
related to the stinky smell?

Try just running it at room temperature for a week or so. And check the part(s) of the FAQ about 'cleaning' a starter.

With all possible deference to experience of the experts, I would toss
that crap and start over. It reminds me of contaminated beer wort. The
stinky scum present is obscured by the flour water mix.

As I understand the procedure for "cleaning" a starter as it is
described in Ed Wood's book "Classic Sourdoughs", the purpose is not
to convert pond scum into sourdough. It is to refresh a viable culture
that has not been active for a while which might have a few stray
organisms in it.

Flour is cheap, so start over. You will spend more time and effort
trying to recoup a failed starter than you will just beginning anew.

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 17:38:56 -0500, Don Hellen
wrote:

So don't toss it until you test it.

I have to disagree - but then I am prejudiced from making rotten beer
a couple of times.

It's so much easier to toss it and start over - then there are no
hidden variables. Even if you manage to rescue it, you will never be
able to duplicate it. I would rather have a known procedure I can
count on each time.

But as you said, this is just my opinion - one that is extrapolated
from considerable beer making experience.

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 23:34:13 GMT, (Bob) wrote:

So don't toss it until you test it.

I have to disagree - but then I am prejudiced from making rotten beer
a couple of times.

It's so much easier to toss it and start over - then there are no
hidden variables. Even if you manage to rescue it, you will never be
able to duplicate it. I would rather have a known procedure I can
count on each time.

But as you said, this is just my opinion - one that is extrapolated
from considerable beer making experience.

The other day I prepared some meat for BBQ and although I am usually
pretty good about bagging the scraps in a plastic grocery sack that I
tie off the end in a knot, every once in a while something goes wrong
and the garbage pail ends up smelling like vomit.

This causes me to think of how dangerous it could be fooling around
with contaminated starter. What if it has a dangerous organism in it
which got there from, for example, meat contamination? Even if you
manage to clean it up to the point where the odor goes away, one or
more pathenogenic organism could still be present in non-trivial
numbers.

I say toss it - for sanitation reasons. It is not worth the risk. The
flour is masking whatever is there - if it were visible it might look
disgusting enough to motivate tossing it without a moment's
hesitation.

I sure would not want to be the person on this forum who advises a
newcomer to infect herself and her family. It's just not worth it over
a couple cents of flour and a day or two of idle time.

Bob wrote:

I say toss it - for sanitation reasons. It is not worth the risk. The
flour is masking whatever is there - if it were visible it might look
disgusting enough to motivate tossing it without a moment's
hesitation.

I sure would not want to be the person on this forum who advises a
newcomer to infect herself and her family. It's just not worth it over
a couple cents of flour and a day or two of idle time.

Bob, you are a ****ing idiot. Since you don't know anything about
the actual safety issues involved in sourdough, why don't you shut
up about them?

David
Note: A starter kept through 14 quadruplings will be diluted
by a factor of 4^14=16^7= over 268 million to one. If these
feedings happen in the course of one week, pathogenic and toxic
organisms will be inhibited by acetic & lactic acid, so the starter
will most certainly be safe, even if it initially contained really
nasty bacteria.

Bob wrote:

I have to disagree - but then I am prejudiced from making rotten beer
a couple of times.

It is apparent that you are drinking too much rotten beer before
posting here. I would suggest that you give up making beer as well
as posting to this newsgroup.

David

On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 02:22:51 -0500, Feuer wrote:

Bob, you are a ****ing idiot. Since you don't know anything about
the actual safety issues involved in sourdough, why don't you shut
up about them?

How utterly professional of you.

Cretin.

Note: A starter kept through 14 quadruplings will be diluted
by a factor of 4^14=16^7= over 268 million to one. If these
feedings happen in the course of one week, pathogenic and toxic
organisms will be inhibited by acetic & lactic acid, so the starter
will most certainly be safe, even if it initially contained really
nasty bacteria.

Go ahead, idiot - poison your family. That way they can't propagate
your stupid genes.

Moron.

On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 02:23:59 -0500, Feuer wrote:

It is apparent that you are drinking too much rotten beer before
posting here.

It is apparent you would not know good beer from rotten beer.

I would suggest that you give up making beer as well
as posting to this newsgroup.

What's the matter, ****wit - your delete key broken? Or don't you know
how to use it.

Go ahead, jerk - rejuvinate sewage if you want. But don't advise
others to do it just because you are a psychopath.

On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 02:22:51 -0500, Feuer wrote:

A starter kept through 14 quadruplings will be diluted
by a factor of 4^14=16^7= over 268 million to one. If these
feedings happen in the course of one week, pathogenic and toxic
organisms will be inhibited by acetic & lactic acid, so the starter
will most certainly be safe, even if it initially contained really
nasty bacteria.

I can just see it now. David Feuer (DF) is having a dinner party and
one of his guests asks:

Guest: This bread tastes a bit funny - where did you get it?

DF: I made it myself.

Guest: How did you make it?

DF: Well, I had this really terrible starter full of really nasty
bacteria. It reminded me of raw sewage because it smelled just like
vomit. But after 14 quadruplings, the pathogenic and toxic organisms
were inhibited.

Guest: BARF

Hi Jenny,
I am using a pretty stable starter I made myself some 10-11
months ago. I made it with the "rye flour/water chuck half/feed/wean
on white flour" method. I currently feed it on quaker oats, as I
inherited a large amount of them. Which is quite off topic here ...
I remember when I started I got that very same horrible
baby-vomit smell, when using white flour and water. I even managed a
burnt-gunpowder smell which was an efficient emetic...I
chucked/retried until I hit the rye flour method which worked for me.
UNTIL about two weeks ago. There was a thread here about
starters and catching bacteria from the air and other crap. So I
decided to experiment.
I took a 100 g instant coffee jar, with a plastic lid. Well
washed, Added about three soup spoons of white wheat flour, and beat
in mineral water until I got a very thin batter. This was done in the
garden shed, so no chance of contamination by my "pet" starters. And
just left it,with the lid loosely on, no mixing, no feeding, nothing,
except every day I examined it, and smelt it.
day one ... no activity ....smells of batter
day two ... bubbles, few. Not smelling good at all
day three ... bubbles ... smells of baby vomit
day four .... fermentation stopped ...separated into a layer
of flour and one of liquid.... smells of baby vomit
day five .... quite dead ? baby vomit ... I would have chucked
it.
day six ... suddenly "exploded". Climbed right up jar,
overflowed, had a different smell.
day seven ... subsided ... but has a fruity smell.

Took a spoonful of that, mixed it with a cup of flour and half
a cup of water. Next day, when it was at its zenith, made some really
good tasting bread.
Moral .... it seems that the sourdough organisms have a
tendency to dominate flour/water mixtures. There is however, a lot of
activity by non-sourdough organisms at the beginning. I am sure that
by day seven they were quite dead, but the toxins they produced
probably were still present. So when you get a nice smelling mixture,
DO dilute it in a lot of flour/water, so you get a pure culture, with
few toxins. Of course, every subsequent use will make it more pure.
Advice ... if it smells of baby puke .... just let it be. Do
not feed. Do not prod with finger !!! If it goes green/red/mouldy
chuck it. If it eventually smells better, use it. Don't feed it too
much. You will favor non-sourdough organisms. Sourdough bugs actually
like that acid environment !!!

Ambient temperature here .... 29c
Hope this helps

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 09:48:57 -0500, Jennifer Johnston
wrote:

I'm hoping that some of you experience sourdough-ers will be able to help
me:

For the first time this week-end, I tried creating a starter the "real
way", using the method outlined in the FAQ. I used organic unbleached
flour and warm water to the consistency of thick mud and let it sit in the
oven with the light turned on. After 24 hours, the starter had doubled in
volume, but smelled kind of "off" -- not yeasty or alchol-y but kind of
like garbage. I refrigerated the starter because it looked good to me
(even if it smelled bad.)

To see if the starter was healthy, last night I took a TB of it and added
warm water and flour (to the consistency of mud) and let it sit again in
the oven. This morning, it was bubbly (after about 12 hours) but smelled
even worse --like garbage or maybe vomit (sorry, but that's the best way
that I can think of to describe the smell.) Now, it's at room temperature
(73F) and I'm going to see what it's like tonight, after 24 hours.

This horrible smell can't be a good thing -- I would never want to bake
bread with something that smelled that bad. But why would it smell so bad
and yet look like a healthy starter? Should I just assume that something
wen't wrong and try again? I saw one recipe in the FAQ that said a stinky
smell could be because of a too warm temperature -- should I just leave
the starter at room temperature? The house is 73F during the day and 68F
at night (I was worried that it would be too cold at night, hence the
oven.)

I was surprised when the starter had doubled after 24 hours -- the FAQ
made it seem like it would take a week. Was I just lucky or is this
related to the stinky smell?

Thanks,
Jen

On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 09:30:03 -0200, amateur amateur@home wrote:

smells of baby vomit

Maybe the problem here is the meaning of the term "vomit". My reaction
to something like that is conditioned heavily from my beer making
experiences - as I explained in earlier posts.

I have just begun to make "natural starters" so my experience is very
limited. Perhaps I have already experienced this "vomit" smell and did
not characterize it as such.

Nevertheless, I am going to play it safe and only accept starters that
smell "fresh". Flour is so cheap and the risk of getting something
that has "emetic" qualities, as you pointed out, are not worth it. It
is no big deal for me to toss a "bad" starter and begin a new one.

And I am in no big hurry. As soon as I get a starter established that
I like - which will be in a few more days - I will have all the time
in the world to experiment with other starters - and toss those I do
not like.

Perhaps it's part of the cult nature of the starter mystic that
compels people to abandon common sense and fool around with starters
that are likely contaminated but can otherwise be recovered. I do not
care to become a member of that cult.