Video Transcript: 50 Ways to Kill Your Starter

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Video Transcript: 50 Ways to Kill Your Starter

This is an auto-generated transcript of the video: “50 Ways to Kill Your Starter” from The Sourdough Journey.  Copyright 2020.  All Rights Reserved

The video can be found at https://youtu.be/lDjBWNmNBl4

hi I’m Tom coming to you from Cleveland Ohio thank you for selecting my video
this video is another in the series of the sourdough journey if you’re
interested in baking sourdough bread please check out my other videos on YouTube so today we are going to focus on one of
the things that absolutely haunts sourdough bread bakers and that is the
fear that you may accidentally kill your starter the reason that people are so
attached to their starter and they fear so much about killing their starter is
because it takes a long time to get a good starter going if you build your own starter from scratch it can take months
to get it going so and some people have starters that have been passed down through generations there are some
people in the u.s. who have starters from the California Gold Rush and the Klondike Gold Rush of the mid 1800s and
those have been passed down through generations and people are still baking bread with that today there are some
people in Europe who have starters going back 250 or 300 years it’s incredible so
there is an obligation if you have a starter to take good care of it particularly if it’s one of these legacy
starters that’s been passed down from one generation to another the reason
that I can tell this is an issue that really haunts sourdough bread bakers is
because I participate in a lot of social media groups of sourdough bread bakers
both beginners and experts and everyday you see multiple posts from people
starting with the sentence I think I killed my starter so I decided to make
this video to explore what are the most common and uncommon ways that people
accidentally kill their starter or think they kill their starter and we’re going to do a series of experiments to see is
it really possible to kill the starter using those methods is it possible to save your starter if you get it into a
compromised situation so the purpose of this video is to run a number of experiments and that’s
why I’ve called this video 50 ways to kill your starter now to keep your
starter alive it requires for many people daily feeding so this just becomes part of your routine when you
make coffee in the morning you feed your starter and a lot of people get kind of attached to their starter pump some
people think of it as their pet some people have names for their starters like Jane Doe Bradley Cooper
or my favorite the yeastie boys so people are very attached to their starter and they definitely don’t try to
kill it intentionally in this video we’re gonna try to kill it intentionally only in the interest of science so
before we get started a few things that you should know about sourdough starter the sourdough starter contains two
primary microbes yeast and lactic acid bacteria an important thing to know is
that these two microbes have been on the earth for 1.5 billion years these are
survivors and these are difficult to kill so we’re gonna try our best to do
it but I’m kind of betting on the starter just because it’s been around a lot longer than I have
so before we start the experiments like to cover a concept that is very helpful when you have a mishap with your
starter and you accidentally put something into the starter you realize it too late and then you’re thinking how
the heck can I get this out of my starter there’s a trick called the five feeding rule so I’ll show you how this
works let’s say you fed your starter on Sunday and you put the wrong type of
flour in your starter by accident you put in gluten-free flour you put in rye flour instead of whole wheat flour or
something that wasn’t supposed to be in there and you’re trying to figure out how can I get this flour out of my starter now the way the five feeding
rule works is it’s based on a daily feeding of the one-one-one ratio that
means equal parts existing starter equal parts water equal parts flour a lot of
people do 50 grams of each of those per day that’s what I typically do and you discard two-thirds of your prior day
starter you keep one-third and you do that each day so the five feeding rule
demonstrates mathematically how this works if I put the wrong thing in my
starter on Sunday and I discard two thirds of it on Monday I’m down to 33%
of what was in my Sunday starter I discard two thirds of that on Tuesday I’m down to 11% I discard two thirds of
that on Wednesday I’m down to four percent I discard two thirds of that on Thursday I’m down to about one percent
and I discard two thirds of it on Friday and I’m down to less than one percent of
what was in my Sunday starter it’s hard to believe but that’s just how the math actually works for the disbelievers
we’re gonna do an example here where I took my Sunday example and I filled this
up a hundred percent with blue food coloring in the water and we’re gonna show this each day what happens when he
discards two thirds and add two thirds of fresh material so on Monday I discard
two thirds I keep 1/3 and I add fresh water and flour this is
just an example on Tuesday morning I keep one third of
Monday I add equal parts flour on water
on Wednesday I keep one third of Tuesday
I add equal parts flour on water on
Thursday I keep one third of Wednesday I
add equal parts flour on water and on
Friday I keep one third of Thursday so 5
feedings later I had 2/3 flour and water I have less than 1% really a third of 1%
of what was in the sundae starter is left over on Friday so I I’ve taken out
ninety-nine point seven percent of what I started with five days ago let’s
compare this to my control sample which is a jar of virtually clean water is
there a hint of blue still in there possibly almost imperceptible if there
is and you think I don’t really want to use this in my bread baking yet because there still might be a little bit of my
sundae material in here that I’m trying to get rid of do it for another week or five more days and now I’ve gone from
99.7 reduction of the sundae material to ninety-nine point nine seven reduction
of the material that was in here on Sunday so if you add the wrong type of water if you add the wrong type of flour
if you accidentally put something in your starter that’s not supposed to be there five days it’s almost gone ten
days there’s a imperceptibly small percentage of it left
so today we are going to do an experiment where we are going to take all the typical ways that people
accidentally kill their starter or think they can kill their starter and we’re
going to replicate those experiments here in the kitchen to see how it works my starter discard which I’m looking at
here I’ve been collecting this for one month to save this up so that we could do this experiment my starter has
willfully volunteered to participate in this experiment in the interest of
science and education I’m ready to go with the experiment my starter is ready
to go this starter says lets get ready
to rhumble one of the most common ways
people kill their starter is by preheating the oven preheating the oven you say how is it possible so what a lot
of people do is their countertop is too cool for their starter so they’ll keep
it inside their oven with the light on to create a little bit warmer environment particularly in the winter so that your starter can have a little
warm place to live generally recommended for your starter to be in the range of 76 to 80 degrees or so so a lot of
people will just store their starter in the in the oven with the light I so I’m going to do that I’ll take my starter
everything’s good I know it’s in there I put a little post-it note on there that says don’t touch the oven don’t preheat
the oven my starters in the oven people put all kinds of signs on there then
what happens you have to run an errand so you quickly pack up you run out to
the store to buy some bread flour and while you’re gone one of your kids comes
home from school and they were homage around in the freezer and they want to
make some hot pockets so they go over to the oven they ignore your post-it note
on and they set the oven to preheat to 450
degrees so now you get back from the store you’re ready to bake your bread
and it’s like what’s that smell you see
the hot pockets oh no that is really not
good so that preheated at 450 degrees for
about 15 minutes so what do we do take a temperature it’s a hundred and twenty
degrees kind of in the middle the bottom and the sides are a gonner
I mean it’s 210 degrees around the edges so in this case because that middle is
still not baked we’re gonna try to extract that soft uncooked third from
the middle because it takes 130 degrees to kill the yeast at least so I’m just
trying to get the unbaked portion out of there see if I can get the temperature
are just on that it’s about a hundred and ten degrees that this probably lived
so that’s not good I have a very small
amount so now I have about I don’t know 10 or 15 grams in here I’m just gonna
treat this like it was a fresh start er I’m gonna add 10 or 15 grams of flour 10 or 15 grams of of water and see if we
can get this to come back to life
that looks pretty good that I think that’s gonna be a save so that one looks okay I’m gonna label that one pre-heat
salvage we’re gonna come back and check that tomorrow this one got baked but
just for the heck of it let’s see if we could recover this – I’m not going to take anything out and this is still really hot there are like huge chunks
and lumps of smoking starter in there
give it a little something to eat overnight 20 20 this kind of smells like
burnt oatmeal I’m gonna transfer this into a fresh jar not sure about that one
we’ll give it a try see how it looks tomorrow
so this is day two of our starter that we accidentally preheated we preheated this for up to 450 degrees we split it
into two the first one was the gooey Center that we dug out of there and we added flour and water that starter is
back to normal perfectly bubbly and frothy that is a good starter good to go this
starter says try the broiler next time
the second sample this was the crusty darkest burnt part
that we preheated this is not looking good I’m not seeing a lot of activity
here we’re gonna give that one another day
it’s day 3 this is our starter that we accidentally preheated and this was the
darkest most burnt part that we tried to reactivate this starter is alive this is
back to life look how beautiful that is full of bubbles frothy this starter made
a comeback the starter says Hot Pockets seriously make the kid a loaf of bread
okay we tried preheating to 450 degrees I think we went a little easy on the
starter with that so now we’re gonna try to burn it with a torch I want this burnt to a crisp
okay that’s a burnt starter I’m out of fuel and I’m about to set off the smoke alarm so I think that’s good I don’t
think we could get a temperature reading on this but I’ll give it a try
185 degrees 175 175 so this should have
killed everything in there generally these microbes will burn up at 130 degrees Fahrenheit so this one is baked
but I’m optimistic let’s give it a try see if we can save it okay I’m gonna use
a small spatula and try to scrape off [Music]
like a pancake I don’t know that side still looks pretty good let me hit that
again
okay even though this side doesn’t know what black all the sugars came out on the other side that’s why that sides
black this one is burnt I can’t get it to do anything else so if we want to
save this we’re looking for a few Hardy microbes in here that didn’t die under that intense direct flame so what I
would recommend is we’re gonna chop this up into some small pieces hydrated a
little flour and see what happens
okay I’ve chopped that up it’s about 16
grams we added about 18 grams of water
this one I’m gonna put the lid on and shake it just to try to agitate that a little bit rather than stirring okay if
there was any starter left in there at least made contact with the water now we
add a little new food that’s pretty dry
like the other one when you cook these you cook a lot of the liquid out so you
might have to add more than the equal parts flour and water we’ll see what happens I don’t have high hopes for this
guy this is the starter that I
with a torch yesterday this is dark brown smells like burnt oatmeal and
shows no signs of life right now maybe one or two bubbles in here it’s unlikely
this one’s gonna make it this guy is definitely hanging by a thread in the burn unit I want to add a little bit of
flour and water to this just because it’s so dense and burnt to see if I can
try to revive that a little bit but this guy’s not looking good
day three this is our starter sample that I burned with a blowtorch this was looking horrible yesterday
today I can’t believe what I’m looking at the this starter is back to life
bubbly frothy it’s still a little brown we need to mix this down using the
five-day rule but this starter is absolutely 100% alive amazing I burned
this with a torch front and back the starter says if you can’t take the heat
get out of the kitchen
another common way people think they kill their starter is by adding too much water so when you think about your daily
feeding you pour off 2/3 of your starter as discard and then you’re gonna add 1/3
water and 1/3 flour so I have my starter here I already port I already took out
2/3 of it so now I’m getting ready to add my equal ratio of water so I start
pouring this in and then all of a sudden the telephone rings the dogs barking
something’s happening oh I’ve really done it I just added about seven or
eight times more water to my starter than what I was supposed to so now what
do I do there are two options one is they’re still most your starter is still in the
bottom down there so I could probably pour the water off and get back down to my original starter but that would make
things too easy what we’re gonna do is actually stir this in so we can’t pour
it off we’re gonna make a starter milkshake there’s no way I can get that
seven times more water than I intended out of my starter what do I do now so
what do we have here we basically have a diluted version of our starter we still
have our yeast in here we still have our lactic acid bacteria in here but we have way too much water so one option would
be just to match this amount of water with the equal amount of flour so if I
have I added about 200 grams of water I could just add 200 grams of flour and
I’m almost a hundred percent certain this would work because that’s essentially what you do when you make
eleven which is you bulk up your starter you take a small amount of starter you add a huge amount of water yeah a huge
amount of flour so I don’t even need to test that so what we’re gonna do is say
what if I just pour it off one day’s worth this so I’m gonna go back down to 30
grams of this water starter mix and add that to 30 grams of my flour to see how
much can you actually dilute your starter to see if it’ll actually recover so this is about a seven to eight times
solution so I have my diluted starter I
have a fresh jar that’s about 50 grams
of the water starter solution I’m gonna go with 50 and I’m just going to match that with 50 grams of flour stir that up
so I just mixed up equal parts flour with that slurry of my existing starter
and water which was diluted I calculated it it was actually eight times dilution
of the starter now I’m just gonna put this on top of my refrigerator with my
other starter I’m gonna label this as our potential drowning victim and see
what happens tomorrow
day two this was our starter we tried to drown we added eight times
more water to this than we normally would that is a perfect looking starter
this starter looks just like my normal starter smells good it’s frothy it’s
alive this starter says I was born when
the earth was covered with water you think you can drown me
another common way people think they kill their starter is by using water that’s too hot so some people will use
tap water and they might you know by accident turn the tap water on as hot as
it can get so I’m going to do an experiment here where I’m going to run my tap water and get it as hot as possible and then we’re going to put
that in the starter and see if we can kill it with scalding water from my tap
okay that’s as hot as my tap water gets and it is 128 degrees really close to
the point where you could kill your microbes typically 1:30 we’re gonna go
with 128 see if we could kill this okay
that’s the hottest tap water I can get out of my tap just under 130 degrees Fahrenheit we’re gonna label this one
scalding and see if we can kill that starter
this starter we tried to kill by scalding it yesterday I ran the tap water as how does it would run out of my
sink 128 degrees and normally if you get up to 130 the starter is a goner but I’m
looking in here I see a little bit of activity this does it doesn’t look great but this is definitely not dead
so as scalding water may have taken out some portion of the population but this
is showing signs of life we’re going to let this one go one more day to see if it can make a comeback
day three this is our starter that we tried to kill with scalding tap water I ran my tap water as hot as possible on
day three the starter is alive this one is back in business bubbling
frothy wouldn’t know anything happen to it the starter says like they say in
Louisiana mohara mo bettah
so when you’re maintaining your starter it’s recommended that you keep your jar loosely covered but not entirely sealed
airtight so what happens a lot of times as people say I sealed my jar airtight I
sealed it tightly by accident did I kill my starter so we’re gonna try to kill this starter through suffocation so what
I’m gonna do is seal this as tightly as possible I’m going to add another layer
to make sure no air gets in here that is
completely airtight and just in case I’m gonna put this inside another airtight
container there’s no way any air can get in here for that starter we’re gonna see
if this starter will die from suffocation
day two we tried to kill this starter through suffocation I’ve put this in two
airtight containers one inside the other there is no way there could be any oxygen in here we’re gonna release Harry
Houdini from his asphyxiation chamber
this starter lived this starter is thriving the starter is alive and well
if you didn’t know a sourdough starter is an anaerobic reaction which means it
actually thrives in an oxygen-free environment so this was an easy one I knew this one was going to be fine this
starter says I haven’t needed oxygen for 1.5 billion years I sure as hell don’t
need it now
okay another very common way that people typically think they kill their starter
is through neglect and starvation so this is where people have a starter up
and running they get busy for a while they put it in the refrigerator they forget about it and you come back one two three months
later and you see what that starter looks like coming out of the refrigerator and you say oh my gosh I
think I’ve killed my starter here’s what it looks like I put this guy in the refrigerator three months ago I haven’t
touched it it’s disgusting you get this liquid on the top that’s
called hooch it smells like pure alcohol wow that’s strong there is you know
still starter down below that and then some people look at this and like oh my god this can’t be saved it can usually
be saved some people stir the hooch in that gives the starter a little bit more
sour flavor some people say don’t stir the hooch in or you’ll kill your starter
if you do that so we’re gonna do it both ways I’m gonna pour off the hooch and
save that so now I have my three month old Wow three month old boozy starter so
if we want to recover this just like anything else we’re gonna take and
that’s that’s even kind of got a brown crust on the top from the color of that huge as long as it’s not mold there’s no
green pink black in there it’s okay and you rarely will get mold on this if it’s in the refrigerator especially with all
that alcohol sitting on top of it so I’ve put about 30 grams of disgusting
old starter and that jar 30 grams of disgusting old
neglected starter in that jar now we have two ways to recover this one is
with the hooch and one is without some people say it’s during the hooch in I’m
gonna do it both ways in this example I’m not just gonna stir the hooch in so
if you imagine the hooch that was on the top of this is about one let’s say
one-fifth of the total size of that so that would be like stirring 20% of it
back in I’m gonna use a hundred percent of this just to test it to see if we can kill this by stirring the hooch in I’m
gonna do the full 30 grams I’m not gonna add any water to this I’m adding pure
alcohol 30 grams no water
thirty grams of flour stir it up so
here’s my neglected starving starter recovered with a hundred percent hooch that smells like moonshine we’re gonna
see what happens this one give him a
little better treatment we pour it off the hooch we’re just using that old
worn-out starving starter add 30 grams
of water 30 grams of flour this one
pretty high odds this won’t come back a lot of people do this you can keep your starter in the refrigerator for a very
long time some people have said they’ve kept it in the refrigerator for a year or more this is pretty Hardy stuff when
you put any of this starter or your dough in the refrigerator the cold temperature really slows down all the
fermentation activity it kind of puts it into suspended animation so we’ll see if
this one recovers that one sat for three months untouched
this starter we tried to death by leaving it unfed in the refrigerator for three months when I
took this thing out of the fridge in a half an inch of hooch on the top which was pure alcohol the stuff looked
lifeless we split it into two separate versions the first one we poured off the
hooch and I added fresh water on flour to bring this one back to life the second one I didn’t add any water to
this I used a hundred percent of that alcohol the hooch that was on top of it to bring this guy back so let’s see where we are
this starter looks perfect that this looks like my normal starter so this spent 90 days in solitary
confinement came back we fed it one meal and this is back in business
the starter says 90 days in the hole you
can’t break me that guy’s ready to go one meal he’s back in business
his brother here he spent 90 days in the hole and now he’s in the drunk tank this
guy still reeks of alcohol I don’t see much activity here at all so we didn’t
add any fresh water to this this is basically old starter fresh flour and
pure alcohol we’re gonna leave his brother in the drunk tank overnight and
see what happens this is our second sample of our
neglected starved starter that we left in the refrigerator for three months and this had a half an inch or more of hooch
on the top of it and on this sample instead of feeding at water and flour I fed this only hooch 100% ethanol is all
it’s in here for the liquid this guy spent two nights in the drunk tank and
he is back in business this starter is frothy bubbly still reeks of booze but this guy is back in
action the starter says I have a massive hangover but I’m back
another way people try to kill their starter is they start adding other
fermented liquids to it I don’t know why people do this everything you need to
make a starter is in the flour and water you don’t need to add anything else people get impatient and they say what
if I added kombucha what I play add a key for what if I added yogurt culture
what if I added sauerkraut juice so they look for all these other ferments and try to add those to their starter to see
what will happen I don’t know why I don’t agree with any of that but we’re gonna try it and I’m gonna add all of
them we’re gonna add some pickle juice we’re gonna add some cultured yogurt
we’re gonna add some wave from some cottage cheese and we’re gonna add some kombucha we’re gonna put it all in here
and see if we can kill our starter by putting four types of other ferments in
it so here we go I have my existing starter I added equal parts flour and
now I need equal parts liquid so I’m gonna pick from all these any crazy liquid I can find a little pickle juice
this isn’t actually fermented it’s really just vinegar but we’re gonna use that anyways and I need to get 30 grams
in here of all these different things to be able to equal my flour okay so we put
some cold juice we’re gonna add a little bit of way from my cottage cheese so I’m
just gonna skim we’re gonna add a little
yogurt culture and then we’re gonna top
this off with a little kombucha which is fermented green tea here we are I have
30 grams of various completely unnecessary ferments that I’m going to
add to my perfectly good starter I have
my starter and my flower this smells disgusting
okay we’ve added four types of foreign bacteria to the starter to see if we can
kill it I don’t know if we can I’ve never tried this one before I don’t think I’ll ever try it again perfectly good starter had
everything it needed we’re going to label this one foreign invasion
so this is day two of our foreign invasion starter this is where we added
way yogurt pickle juice and kombucha four different ferments into this to try
to mess up this fermentation this starter looks great this starter looks
like a normal starter smells a little bit like dill pickles but that’s a good-looking starter this starter says
all ferments are welcome here you got to do a little better than that
some people are afraid that they have killed their starter because they’ve stirred it too aggressively so some
people might say I asked my husband to take care of my starter for a day and you know like he was stirring it like
this you know did he kill my starter or
if somebody says I want to mail some starter across country to my sister or my brother
we’ll be okay in the mail if it’s gonna be bounced around and shaken up and all that kind of stuff so we’re gonna try to
kill this starter by makeover mixing it so now I’m going to use a stick blender
okay I really mix that up we’re gonna see how this starter does after being
mixed with a stick blender
day two we tried to kill this starter through extreme agitation I stirred this
with a mechanical stick blender this
starter is alive and well no impact at all that’s a good looking starter this
starter says I prefer to be shaken not stirred
another way people accidentally killed our starter is they add the wrong flower
you say how does this happen how do you add the wrong flower you know it’s morning you haven’t had your coffee you’re a little groggy you grab
something out of the pantry that kind of looks like flower it’s like I don’t know what time it is I put my flower and I
stir it up and then I say okay Oh gluten-free flour
this is millet flour rice flour tapioca
starch and xantham gum I think I killed
my starter I don’t believe it I think we can save this one will do the five-day
feeding if you remember if you feed this five times by the fifth day one percent of this remains so let’s see how this
one looks we’ll check on this one each day
it’s day 2 this is the starter we fed the wrong flour I accidentally put in
gluten-free flour which was a combination of tapioca starch millet
flour rice flour and xantham gum this
starter looks pretty good it’s bubbling it’s definitely alive so we would mix
this down over the five days using the five-day rule by the fifth day there
will be less than 1% of the gluten-free flour in the starter so this one is a
keeper this definitely worked this starter says xantham gum seriously
you fed me xanthan gum
so one of the common ways people kill their starter is by microwaving
microwaving you say how is that possible how can you microwave a starter starter by accident some people keep their
starter in the back of their microwave with the door ajar so that it turns the light on in the microwave or provides a
little heated chamber to get the temperature up which some people use as a little proofing chamber for their
starter it’s not uncommon so you put your starter in the back of your microwave then you go out to get
groceries or run an errand and one of your kids comes home from school and decides they want to make a burrito
so this microwave for two minutes so your kid has a microwave burrito and you
now have a microwave sourdough starter that’s pretty hot that does not look too
good first thing you want to do is take the temperature and see what the internal temperature of your starter got
up to 203 degrees that’s now looking
good a hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit will generally kill yeast and
other microbes so just based on the heat this looks like it might be a goner I’m just gonna check this back corner
where there’s a little more liquid Oh down in the back corner it’s 132 degrees
it’s right right at the point 129 degrees it’s right in the ballpark where
this might be salvageable so I need to cool this down I’m gonna put this into the river into the freezer and try to
cool it as quickly as possible and while I wait for that to cool I’m going to eat a burrito
so this was so hot coming out of microwave I put it in the freezer to try to rapidly cool it down because the
small back corner of this was still around 130 degrees so it might be
salvageable that’s really the point where the yeast gets killed by heat so
I’m going to try to get this out okay so
what do I look for there’s a tiny bit of dough still in that bottom corner that
looks okay it didn’t turn brown it looks somewhat liquid and there’s a little bit of starter around the bottom here it
looks like it didn’t fully cook it’s a tiny amount so we’re gonna perform a little surgery here and see if
this patient can be saved the first
thing I want to do is try to scrape whatever looks like it didn’t burn out of the bottom of this jar there’s a
little bit in here that’s the good stuff that we need to save right about there
it’s not much it’s probably 3 grams or so I’m gonna move that into a fresh cup
that’s partially cooked I can just tell about the consistency of it but there’s still some liquidity to it I’m
optimistic this guy’s a fighter ok then I look at
what’s left here and on the bottom there’s some of this is still a little liquidy I’m gonna try to take that
portion off so I got a little bit of
semi gelatinous starter off the bottom of that one I could try to take some
more of this off and do that little chunk that’s it I don’t want to mess with this so what did we get we have 11
grams of starter that’s not bad that’s enough to salvage the starter so if we
have 11 grams we need to figure out how are we going to feed this to try to get it back up to strength and I’m gonna
recommend that we due to times of the flour and water
ratio to the starter so that would be 22 grams of flour and 22 grams of water
just because they’re so little in here I think we got to give it a little kick start so first I’m going to zero this
out and add 22 grams of water so that’s 2 times the amount of starter so this
would be the equivalent of a 1 to 2 feeding and then I’m bigger asleep
during this I tried it to solve all the
starter ends of the liquid and if you look in that jar there are bubbles in there that’s a great sign that means
it’s alive this patient can be saved so
now we add 22 grams of flour 22 that
looks pretty good and we’ll check that tomorrow and then just for kicks
I’m gonna try to save this this is the remaining portion that was over 210
degrees in the microwave so let’s say I hadn’t pulled it out quickly enough this
is what the whole thing could have looked like so it’s worth an experiment here so I’m just gonna take a
cross-section I’m not going to try to take the good part or the bad part I’m gonna take a little bit of everything
this is baten is baked those cooked then
I’m just chopping this up with a knife it’s kind of like rubber this looks
horrible but there are some small patches of semi
liquid starter there put this on a jar
fresh jar okay we have 30 grams of
recovered microwaved starter in here i warm this water up a little bit this
water is about 80 degrees just to try to
break up a little bit of that hard material 30 grams of warm water try to
stir this up this is really tough 30
grams of flour so because I have 30 grams of the remaining starter I added 30 grams of water 30 grams of flour I’m
just trying to keep one 1:1 ratio in general with whatever we’re able to
salvage now this looks really dry so I have to add more water because a lot of
that water boiled off in the microwave so you get a sense for if you have to
add a little bit more to get it back up to the pasty consistency my starter when
I do a one one one feeding ratio it’s pretty thick it you can turn upside down
it won’t come out that’s that’s the test I use for the consistency that I want
okay this was microwave badly I’m going to mark that one and we’ll check on that
tomorrow
so it’s day 2 we have our two samples that we microwaved let’s take a look at these the first one if you recall this
was the one where we dug out a little bit of what was in the corner of the jar was still fairly liquidy it was about
129 degrees that’s a perfectly good starter that came back in one day we
didn’t even make a dent in that one this starter says I survived a nuclear blast
you think you can burn me up in your little microwave let’s check out the
second one this was the gelatinous ball that boiled in the microwave this one
does not look good this does not look a lot different than it looked yesterday I’m not optimistic
about this patient let’s give that another day and see what happens
day three we have our seriously microwaves sample here this was the one that was a
gelatinous ball they’re practically boiled in the microwave take a look at
this on day three this one is back in business this starter survived in the microwave the
starter says I hope you enjoyed the burrito I did
another way people try to kill their starter is by freezing it so it goes
like this some people keep threw their starter on the countertop some people keep it in the refrigerator if the
refrigerator is good the freezer must be better so I’m going out of town for a week I’m just going to freeze it see
what happens so yesterday would put this starter in
the freezer this froze overnight my freezer temperature is -5 degrees Fahrenheit I
took this out of the freezer a few hours ago it was an ice cube frozen absolutely
solid overnight I take a look at this one no signs of life in here right now
not sure if this one’s gonna make it back or not when you freeze things like this it can burst the cell walls like
when you try to freeze lettuce or something like that and it comes out of the freezer limp the same thing happens
with these microbes they’re not really they can’t really stand up to being frozen and the cell wall will burst so
they don’t like to be frozen we’ll see what happens with this guy I’m gonna give him a little more time
so day three this was our sample that would put in the freezer this was a solid ice cube this starter is back in
business 100% bubbly frothy smells good this one
came back to life the starter says yeast
and bacteria has been found under the polar icecaps FYI
some people say you need to keep your starter in a dark place and keep it out of direct sunlight because UV rays can
kill the microbes in your starter so we’re gonna try to kill this starter by
putting it in direct sunlight for about 14 hours today
you day two we tried to kill this starter
with ultraviolet light I put this starter in direct sunlight for 14 hours yesterday but see if we could kill it
this starter is alive and well the starter says UV rays
another way people kill their starter is by letting mold grow in it now mold is
not something you can mess around with if you have your starter going and you
see anything growing that is green pink black and fuzzy that’s mold and it is
game over there is no way to salvage that some people will see a little spot of mold on the top of their starter and
they think they could scoop it out with a spoon and everything will be fine you can go on the internet and learn about this when you see that mold on the
top of your starter there are roots or tendrils from that mold they go all the way down into the bottom of your starter
so do not try to scoop it off don’t try to scrape it off if you visibly see or just smell mold in
your starter it’s all over pitch it so what happens people say oh
my gosh I think I killed my starter I let it get moldy if you maintain your
starter properly it won’t grow mold in it because the chemicals that are
created in the lactic acid bacteria and the yeast will resist the creation of
mold this is why these things have been on earth for 1.5 billion years they create an environment that keeps other
bacteria and other fungus and other microbes out of it so a perfectly balanced starter should not grow mold in
it even if you’re in a it’s a mold rich environment it naturally repels it but
what people do is they don’t keep a clean jar they let all kinds of garbage
accumulate all around the edges and then the strength of that symbiotic
relationship with lactic acid bacteria and the yeast starts to break down because it’s all crusty and old and then
starts gets dehydrated and that’s where the mold will attach itself and start so we’re gonna try to grow mold in these
three jars and try to kill this starter the first thing I’ll do is I’m going to create a control test so this one will
be a clean Christine starter that I’m going to put in the same location as the other ones but this one theoretically
should not grow a mold if this is a strong starter so for my control test how do
you not grow mold in your starter you use the appropriate ratio of ingredients so it’s not too wet it’s not too dry you
scrape down the sides as well as you can try to get all that stuff off the inside
edges of the jar because that’s where the mold will attach itself you want
everything down there in that swimming pool of your lactic acid bacteria and
yeasts because the mold can’t live down there then you want to really clean the
rim of your glass jar because the mold will also like that and then we’re gonna
store this covered loosely so I put the cover on then I back it off one half
turn like this so put it on back it off so it still allows oxygen in and out but
if there is mold kind of descending from above it won’t fall directly in here doesn’t mean that mold can’t get in
there but again that that environment that’s created in the starter should
kill off the mold if it gets in here so loosely sealed jar that’s our control test number two this one’s going to be
our dirty jar so with this one I’m
creating a dirty jar I’m not scraping the sides down I’m scraping the sides up
I’m putting a little starter around the collar here because this is what some
people’s jars look like and then they say oh my gosh how did my starter get
mold in it this is basically a way to attract mold so this is going to be
dirty jar number two
and then number three in addition to being a dirty jar some people also do
something else which can attract mold and that is they add sugar to their East
so for some reason no starter recipes call for sugar but some people think the
yeast likes sugar it’s eating the sugars in the flour I mean you’re basically adding sugar when you’re adding flour maybe I could just
add some more sugar to it which will make it go faster and make the yeast happier so some people will say you know
just add a little bit of sugar to your yeast it’s your starter to give it a little boost you know what likes sugar more
than yeast mold this is a formula for creating mold so I’m gonna add sugar I
leave the sides of my jar a sloppy mess I leave the rim of my jar crusty and you
know what even though the people say you shouldn’t you need to cover your starter
I’m not gonna cover it I’m just gonna leave these as is I’m not gonna worry about covering them and we’ll see what
happens so I have my one pristine jar flour and water with a loose-fitting lid
I have my dirty jar gunked-up on the sides no lid and I have my dirty jar
gunked-up on the sides with no lid and a little sugar just in case the mold
wouldn’t go into this one we’re gonna try to get it to go into this one I’m gonna then put these in my basement
which is a dark cool place moist
that’s probably already has mold down there so I’m going to put my container in a place that might be moldy to begin
with and then I’ll try not to be surprised if these grow mold in them
you
so it took a little while but we finally got some mold growth my first jar this
is my control jar clean pristine jar with the cover no mold this is still perfectly fine starter the
second one my dirty jar it has a few mold specks in it this one is going to
be a goner third one the dirty jar with a little added sugar just to attract
more mold is covered with mold this is disgusting we gotta throw that out when
you get mold in your starter you have to get rid of it there’s no way to save it don’t try to scoop off the mold don’t
think that you can do anything with it once the mold is in that culture it’s gone and you absolutely do not want to
use that anymore so it took a little longer than expected but we did have the
predictable outcome that it is possible to grow mold in a dirty jar especially
when you add sugar and once you get mold in your Easter it is a goner for human
consumption the starter is actually still alive I mean I’d actually didn’t kill this the
yeast is still in here the lactic acid bacteria is still in here we just can’t eat it because it now has a new neighbor
mr. mold so even with this we couldn’t kill it we just can’t use it
so this starter says you had to bring
another 1.5 billion year old microbe to help you win this fight you are weak and
that’s cheating and that starter is right
another common way that people think they kill their starter is by using chlorinated tap water now I do not
recommend using chlorinated tap water in your starter or your bread dough because it can definitely slow down the growth
of your microbes and the microbial activity but I’m not aware of anybody who’s actually killed their starter
completely by using chlorinated tap water so we’re gonna try two things here I’m going to add 20 grams of chlorinated
tap water we have chlorine in our water or municipal water I always use filtered
water when I’m baking but this time I took it right out of the tap I’m going to add this to my starter we’ll mix that
up that’s chlorinated tap water we’ll see if that kills it I don’t think it will so we’re gonna push the envelope a
little further I mixed up a batch of 10% chlorine bleach so I have 90 grams of
water and 10 grams of bleach I’m gonna combine those this should really kill
anything this if you are working in a hospital or a food service or whatever I
believe they recommend 5% dilution of chlorine bleach will kill any common
household germs we’re gonna go with 10%
and see if we can kill that
that smells like bleach that’s stronger than like swimming pool water I don’t
think that guy is gonna make it but we’ll see bleach and tap water
okay it’s day two this is our starter that we tried to kill through chlorination first sample we use tap
water which has chlorine in it from my municipality the second one we added a
10% bleach solution to this to try to kill it with chlorination higher chlorination than you would have in any
household tap water the first sample let’s see what this guy looks like perfectly fine I don’t
recommend using chlorinated tap water in your starter or in your bread but it certainly didn’t kill it it didn’t even
slow this one down so this tap water with the chlorine no issue this starter
says stop feeding me pool water second
one this is the one that we added a 10% bleach solution to there’s nothing going
on here this is not looking promising yeah we got to give this one another day
but that one’s now looking good
day three this is our starter that we added bleach to we added a 10% bleach
solution let’s take a look at this one I can’t really believe what I’m seeing
with my eyes here the starter is live we put a 10% bleach solution in here the
Center for Disease Control recommends a 2% bleach solution to kill household
germs we did five times that and the starter is still alive and thriving it’s
frothy I added 10% of a concentrated
chlorine bleach that kills 99.9% of common household germs and this starter
lived this starter says common household
germ are you talking to me are you talking to me are you talking to me
so we haven’t made it to 50 yet I’m out I’m done I
you can’t kill this thing I we tried so many different I tried every way I could think of to kill this stuff I did 20
different samples I burned this with a blowtorch I added bleach to it I don’t know what else I can do I mean seriously I don’t
know how to kill this starter I’m done I’m tapping out I’m throwing in the
towel it’s over he wins I’m done that’s it
so the last topic is how do you make sure that you never kill your starter so
we’ve proven that it’s difficult to kill your starter but not impossible so if you want to make sure that you can
never kill your starter there is a way to do that and that is through cloning
with starter the reason that these microbes have been on earth for 1.5
billion years is because they figured out how to clone themselves how to make an exact replica of themselves so you
can make an unlimited number of backup copies of your starter by dehydrating it
so the way you do this this is my actual starter so I’m getting ready to feed it today instead of discarding my starter I
pour this out my 2/3 I pour out its a parchment paper then I spread this as
thinly as possible and then I just leave
this out on the counter and it will dry out in about two days completely dry you
don’t have to put it in up and you don’t have to put in a food dehydrator you certainly could do that I just leave mine on the counter because it’s
relatively dry here in the winter this will dry out in two days here’s an example of a copy I made yesterday so
now I have two exact replicas I have two backup copies this student still needs to dry out a little bit more but you can
see it starts to get flaky and completely dry this is an exact copy of
my starter and then after this is completely dried up then it looks like
this I made this copy of my starter on January 17th so that was about three and
a half months ago I keep this in my pantry this is an exact replica of my starter this will keep for a very long
time you might ask how long is a very long time I don’t know the exact answer
to that but what I can tell you is that they recently found some dried star
in Egypt that was 4,500 years old they added water to it rehydrated it and
baked bread from 4,500 year old starter will this starter last 4,500
years I’m not sure but that’s why I put the date on it in case somebody finds this they’ll know how old it is so I
highly recommend make a copy of your starter saving in a separate place and then you can never actually kill your
starter because you’ve just mortalized
so when I had the idea for this video project I really thought it was going to
be easy to kill maybe a half dozen of these based on the different methods that I had had heard people talk about
or things that I expected I had absolutely zero expectation that I would
not have been able to kill any of these stars if you had asked me to put odds on that I would have said it would be
impossible for all of these stars to live through what we put them through so this has been an educational fun
fascinating and humbling experience to learn that these little microbes are
actually pretty Hardy and that’s the reason they’ve been around as long as they have so I’m gonna thank my little
starter guys they did a great job I’ll thank their mother this is where they all came from and actually the
grandmother which is my original starter that I’ll make hundreds and hundreds of loaves of bread out of so I’m going to
try to save as many of these as I can the good ones that I didn’t add anything funky to I can dehydrate those like we
showed in the video and I could share those with other people the ones that have some odd additives in them I could
either blend those down using the five feeding rule but things like the moldy ones the bleach things that I definitely
you know can’t use going forward I’m going to add those to my garden compost bin where they will thrive and survive
out in the wild and they won’t die either literally all of these starters
are essentially immortalized one way or another through dehydration use or adding them out into the compost and
releasing them into the wild so thank you for watching this video I had a
blast making it let me just see if the starter has any final comments the
starter says I’d like to thank the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Picture of Tom Cucuzza

Tom Cucuzza

Video Transcript: 50 Ways to Kill Your Starter

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