The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Sourdough Starters (Troubleshooting Your Starter)

This is the fourth video in our sourdough "From Starter to Finish" series. If you have yet to see those videos, make sure that you do. You can find the posts here: part 1, part 2, part 3.

So, before we get to our next recipe post on how to bake some of the best, simplest bread in the world, let's first talk about how to keep this starter for the long-term. When I first started baking with sourdough over two years ago, I had no idea how versatile it could be or how easy it was to take care of it. I simultaneously stressed over and forgot about my poor first starter, resulting in a myriad of problems. From mold, nasty odors, lack of activity, and weird acetone-smells, I sometimes felt like a mad scientist with an experiment out of control!

But I'm glad for those initial hiccups. Because of my fumbles, I eventually learned how to care for my starter and understand its changes. No better teacher than experience, right? And as a result of keeping a starter, I have totally, self-sustainably created my own constant source of leavening. I haven't bought storebought yeast for two years (especially since I discovered it's a lab-created substance! It's only been around since the 1860's. More on that later.), and I am so happy to never go back to it.

So I hope this video is both help and encouragement to the intrepid novice at sourdough starter. You will probably kill your starter once or twice. It's okay. Just clean out the jar, take a deep breath, and go back to the beginning. It's easy to start over, and you'll be rewarded in the end with bread and the satisfaction that you have knowledge that everyone used to have.

Also, if you have any questions about your sourdough starter, let me know in the comments below! When this video lived on YouTube, we got constant questions about how to help ailing and failing starters, and in most circumstances, we were able to help folks get their starter and bread back on the right track. I'm not an expert, but I do use this stuff pretty much every day and understand it pretty well now! And I love helping people troubleshoot. If I don't know the answer, I can at least point you in the right direction.