It's Sourdough Time!!!

Fall is in the air - I can feel it!  The leaves on the trees are starting to turn their pretty shades of burnt orange and gold.  Even though the calendar still shows August, I can feel Autumn coming.  And with the coming of the Fall season, my heart turns to baking and baking means bringing out my sourdough containers from hibernation in the refrigerator.  Wake up sleepy heads . . . time to go to work!!

You open up your mason jar and look in dismay at some brownish liquid floating atop of your starter - OH NO!!

How can this be??  What have I done?  All is lost!!  Oh despair!! 

First of all, all this means that you need to feed your starter - it is hungry -VERY hungry.  So feed the poor dear.  There are two schools of thought - one says to stir the hooch back into the starter and the other school says to pour it off.  I have tried both - I have seen no difference in my starters.  So it is up to you how you want to proceed.

NOW if your starter looks pinkish or orange - sorry folks, it is going bad and you need to throw it out and start fresh.

So this afternoon, I took my four jars of starters out of the refrigerator - hello children!!  Two of the jars had hooch and the other two didn't.  What I did is to discard about half of the starter in each of the jars and feed them my usual feeding ration - 4 T of all purpose flour and 3 T water.  I am going to leave the jars out on my kitchen counter and feed them twice a day to make sure they are alive and kicking.  I should see bubbles within the next 24 to 36 hours.  Here's hoping for signs of life!!  Stay tuned!