This is what my 60% Hamelman sourdough starter looked like AFTER I refreshed it. Not a good sign.
My 60% Hamelman sourdough starter is no more. I had scooped up a wad (with the master’s permission) when I took the Wood Fired Oven class at King Arthur Flour back in 2012, nurtured it to a bubbly bloom, and used it regularly in my sourdough bakes. But I have way too many sourdough starters for no good reason and in recent years have gravitated toward just two of them, my San Francisco-to-Saratoga hybrid and the starter I got from Cheese Board in the Bay Area (definitely not with permission).
This is what was underneath the mold. Right texture, wrong color.
This week I decided it was time to feed and revive the 60% Hamelman sourdough starter, but when I opened the jar I found a crime scene. The healthy beasties had been overpowered by a foul smelling bunch and the starter, which should be off-white and sometimes gets some grey mold when you let it sit too long, was an angry orange with streaks of black and brown.
I carefully scraped off the top layer and the stuff on the sides of the jar. But what was underneath didn’t look good. It was still orange, though at least it had the stretchy texture of a healthy 60% starter. I took the cleanest glob I could find and tried feeding it with a formula of 100g all purpose flour to 60g water (which is why it’s called 60%, for the hydration).
The starter came to life in a couple of days, with shiny liquified patches rising up from what looked like dry flour, but the color was off—way too grey. Finally, after a week, I pulled it out of the container. And I got what you see here: the invaders had spawned themselves.
I am sure if Jeffrey Hamelman reads this he will have a hearty chuckle, because as any experienced baker knows there is no reason to keep more than one starter (or maybe two, the second one being rye…. Actually, a rye starter was the only one Hamelman used in his early years even if he was making white flour loaves). Given the same proportions and same ingredients (i.e. the flour), any starter will eventually take on the characteristics of the wild yeasts in its environment.
I’m hanging onto my ersho starter, made from teff and used for injera…. Actually I just reactivated it successfully after a two-year nap. But I’m afraid my Tartine starter, Larraburu starter and einkorn starter are on their way out. Sic transit gloria mundi.
