IT LIVES!

[madbaker]

I've been having problems with my sourdough starter. The culprit seems to be an overly-cool fridge; like most living organisms, too much cold puts the beasties in hibernation mode.

Since I'm planning to use the starter this weekend, I innocently decided to keep the container out on the counter, refreshing with flour and water daily. This should get the sourdough all nice and active for its use in a few days.

That turned out to be an understatement.

The starter turned out to be very much alive. The wife caught it trying to make a run for it - the starter had created a trail down to the floor and was moving towards the back door.

(Click on pictures for larger views)

Floor Schlorping		Close-up of the Great Escape

She tried to clean it up, but the wily starter had barricaded itself in its ceramic container. She had to pry the lid off with a knife, then pour out half the beasties and refresh with flour and water to slow it down. However, being sensible, she also put it on a pie plate in case it tried another escape.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille

Sigh. I'm glad it's active, but couldn't it have chosen a less... vigorous way to demonstrate it?

Comments

Visions of The Blob...

[callistotoni.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else remember that movie?

BTW, this post didn't show up on my Friends page. Weird.

[thalionar.livejournal.com]

*laugh* in a mad attemtpt to make sourdough pancakes for a friend, I did a sourdough starter at a friend's house (past experience has shown that my cat will eat sourdough starter if he can get to it at all-and he apparently tries *hard* to get to it, even on top of the fridge).

Since she doesn't bake, I had to do the starter the easy way... with packaged yeast. So, we went to the store and bought packaged yeast, and started the starter. This was during an impromptu party, mind you... so, the starter is in a great honking big jar on the top of the fridge and it starts to *expand.* One of the partygoers notices that it has overflowed and gone down the side of the refrigerator!!!

I take what remains of it out of the honking big jar and put it in my even bigger "rising bowl" which is big enough for a 2 loaf batch of bread and put it on the counter and cover with a new cloth (the other being coated in sourdough slime ^_~). A couple of hours later, and it has tried to escape *again* but has been absorbed by the cloth (I have no idea why it didn't do that the first time, except for maybe the relativly narrow mouth of the jar).

so, after stirring it again, it settled down enough for the rest of the week that the next week I put it back in the honking big jar with feed and stuck it in the fridge...

it has been an interesting ride... after making the pancakes 2 weeks later (tasty, but odd... I'd never had sourdough pancakes before!), I fed it again... it then sat on the top of the fridge in a covered bowl for about 2 weeks (said friend is not so good about checking these things ^_^), I looked at it, and it was all kinds of dried out... all sludgie instead of liquid-y... I added a cup of water to it, stired it up real good and added 1/2 cup of flour to it and left it on the counter for a couple of hours... it perked right back up and got to bubbling... so I put it in a new container, covered it and put it back in the fridge... I'm pretty much spending the weekend at her place, so there may be more experiments with it :)