I thought I killed my sourdough. After years of taking care of it, it got wedged in the back of the fridge and I neglected it. When I finally took it out it had a weird chemical smell and I dumped it.
Later I found out it was fine and with a couple of good feedings it would be good as new. Or good as old. You only have to throw it out if it gets mold or weird stuff growing in it.
When I was in California in February Auntie gave me some more starter and I fed it this weekend. I decided to bake a loaf of bread. I’ve done this a lot. I use the regular no-knead recipe and throw in a dollop of sourdough.
This time my sourdough feeding was more liquidy than I usually do. I fed the sourdough in my bread mixing bowl and I was too lazy to wash it. Honestly it occurred to me that this was a terrible idea as I was doing it but I did it anyway. I just scraped out most of the sourdough for the fridge and made the bread in the bowl with the remaining sourdough.
Within a few hours I had a bowl filled with bubbling “dough.” I left it overnight and in the morning tried to shape my loaf with what was actually a wonderful sourdough batter. When I took that baking class the teacher managed to make a loaf with really wet dough so I thought I could do it. But mostly I just swirled sticky batter all over my kitchen counter until I got mad and scraped it into the trash.
I’m sure when we get home tonight it will have taken over the trash can.
This reminds me of the time my no-knead bread grew so big it bent the racks on my oven. It scared Harold. I was afraid he’d never eat bread again.