If It All Goes Wrong

If you feel that your sourdough bread has become too sour in taste, try one of the following:

• Start pouring off the hooch daily, before feeding the starter, and see if this improves things.
• Take a cup of the old starter to make a new starter, as instructed below. Make sure that the new starter takes before pouring the old one away.

If your sourdough starts growing mould, or the hooch turns red/pink/orange, then it has gone bad, and you should pour it away and start afresh. For this reason, it is a good idea to have some frozen starter, from when the sourdough was good and working well.

I’ve been doing this with some success by freezing in single cup portions. It is worth having a couple of portions in the freezer, in case the first one doesn’t take.

However, I’ve recently read that a more reliable method is to dry the starter first, by spreading it out on a layer of cooking parchment or similar, then freezing it.

• To create a new starter from a frozen portion, defrost at room temperature for two days, and then follow the instructions below.