Thanks for your insights.

I will go into more detail: I had 2 starters, 1 that I have had now for
about 8 years (very sad to have to lose it), and another that my husband
started about 6 months ago. My husband's went mouldy about a month ago, and
mine a few weeks later. Note, I am careful not to let them contaminate each
other. We alternate, each gets used once every week or two. I feed them
all-purpose flour and rainwater.

I store my starter in jars in the fridge. They seal well as far as I know,
but maybe not well enough? I DO have blue cheese in the fridge, so you may
be right.I had actually thought that the mould spores might be in the flour
itself.

In the past I have had the occasional mouldy spot on the edge of the jar,
but they did not touch the starter and it was fine (I just put the starter
into a new clean sterilised jar). This time the starter itself is mouldy,
I tried to revive the starters several times before tossing them, but seems
that I was cultivating mould as well. And it makes the bread taste mouldy.

With my new starter, I think I might try sterilising the flour and water
before feeding (thanks again for the tip in a previous message, Samartha).

What I wanted to do was to store a sample (dried? frozen?) of good starter
that I could revive if all else failed.

Thanks

Jenny

"Samartha Deva" > wrote in message
...
> Maria wrote:
> >
> > I live in Australia, where we have warm and humid summers. Lately I
have
> > found that every time I perfect a starter, after a few months it gets
mouldy
> > and needs to be thrown out, and a new one started.
>
> Getting moldy is not perfect and probably not the starter's fault
> either. Since it seems to be a repeatable affair, the cause could
> probably be narrowed down.
>
> >
> > Does anyone have tips for storing a sample of starter at its peak, to
revive
> > when the others have gone "off"?
> >
>
> I would not recommend to store a starter "at it's peak", but way before
> that.
>
> To clarify "peak": The number of total organisms possible alive in a
> particular media, also called "ripe".
>
> Note, that this is different from vitality or vigor i. e. the high
> ability of organisms to grow and multiply rapidly. You definitely want
> to have a starter with high vitality. To peak under this aspect is
> desirable.
>
> Putting a live starter into "storage", the best stage is probably right
> in phase 2:
>
> http://samartha.net/SD/SourdoughDefinition.html#GC
>
> That way, there is lots of food and growth potential left to be "used
> up" during storage.
>
> You don't disclose any more details, how you store your starter, so
> there are many possibilities - useless speculation is one.
>
> Just for simplification, let's assume you had a good starter and left it
> out, uncovered for a few month and it grew mold. I'd say, this is normal
> and not very exciting at all.
>
> As for your starter mold. That's not a reason to toss it and start over
> from scratch. At least you could give it a try and see if it can be
> rescued.
>
> I recently had nice gray mold growing. I took some from the starter
> underneath the mold, grew it and made bread from it. It was fine. Reason
> for my mold was probably spores leaking through a contaminated lid seal,
> drying out of starter surface and with that, the mold could probably get
> a hold. That's a guess at this point.
>
> Just out of curiosity - did you put your starter in the fridge with a
> leaking lid and had some blue cheese in your fridge as well?
>
> If you have a fridge, I am sure there is a way to keep a starter
> sleeping healthy, even if in hot and humid Australian climate.
>
> Samartha
>
>
>
>
> --
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