When it looks dead but isn't
This one probably belonged earlier in the course. It saves more starters than anything else I teach.
A starter can look completely dead and be perfectly fine. Flat top, no bubbles, grayish liquid pooled on it, a smell like nail polish remover. Your first thought is that you've killed it. You almost certainly haven't.
The liquid on top
That gray or brownish liquid is hooch. It's alcohol the yeast made after it ran out of food. Nothing more sinister than a hungry starter. Not mold, not bacteria gone wrong — just a jar telling you it's been a few too many days since its last meal.
Two options: pour it off, or stir it back in. I stir it in. Some people don't care for the sharper smell that leaves behind, so if that bothers you, pour it off before you feed. Either way, feed it right after. That's the whole fix. Not a new jar, not a funeral. Food.
The flat, no-bubble look
This one fools people, because they expect the jar to look like it did in week three — domed, bubbly, obviously alive. But a starter that's been fed and is sitting quiet can look completely flat and still be full of yeast. It's resting, not dying.
Feed it on schedule. Wait. Watch what it does over the next six to eight hours. If it's not rising at all after two or three feeds in a row, that's a different conversation. One flat jar is not a crisis.
The smell test, again
We covered smell a couple of lessons back, but it earns a second mention here. A hungry starter can smell rough — sharp, boozy, faintly like acetone. That's normal for one that's gone too long between feeds. What you're actually watching for is anything that smells like rot, or any pink or orange or fuzzy spots. That's mold, and it's the one situation where I'll tell you to start over. Not because sourdough is fragile. Because guessing games with mold aren't worth it.
Hooch, a rough smell, a flat top — that's just hunger. Feed it and wait.
What "give it time" actually looks like
The practical version:
- Pour off or stir in the hooch.
- Feed at your normal ratio, the small one we talked about.
- Mark the day and time in your notebook.
- Wait 6-8 hours and check it. Opening the jar every twenty minutes does nothing.
- If it's still flat, feed again. Same size, no panic-feeding a huge batch.
- Give it two, maybe three feeding cycles before you decide anything's wrong.
Same opinion I've had since lesson one: sourdough is forgiving, not fussy. People treat a flat jar like a failed science experiment. It's flour and water. If it's genuinely dead, you make another one. Low stakes. I threw my first one out on day four in a panic, sure I'd killed sourdough forever. Turns out you just start over.
Why I write this stuff down
This is exactly why I keep a notebook by the flour instead of trusting my memory or my phone. A spiral notebook, same kind as my genealogy binder — feed times, what the jar looked like, what it smelled like. So when it looks dead, I can flip back three days and see that I skipped a feed on Tuesday, and there's the answer. Without it, you're just staring at a jar asking "is this bad?" with no way to answer yourself.
There's an app for it, I'm sure. I write it down anyway. Seeing it on paper in my own handwriting makes it stick differently. Same reason I don't trust my memory with family dates. Write it down, then you know.
The one real caution here
If you genuinely see mold — colored spots, fuzz, any of it — don't try to save the jar by scooping around it. Toss the whole thing and wash the jar well. That's not drama, that's just not risking it over flour and water you can replace in a week.
Before next time
Feed your starter on your normal schedule, and if it looks flat or smells rough, leave it be. Write down what you see, feed it again, and check back in six hours before you decide anything.
- J