Sourdough disaster

[shewhomust]

While I am away on holiday, my sourdough starter hibernates - which is to say, I freeze it. When I'm ready to resume baking, I thaw it out and use it. The first loaf is sometimes a bit heavy, a bit sour, but that's OK.

I my have pushed my luck, this time.

I added the last of the pumpkin: this, too, I have done before, with excellent results. But I may have been too generous with the pumpkin, and I certainly didn't reduce the liquid enough to compensate. The dough was as sticky as I could handle, and then a bit more. But that's good, right? A wet dough is hard work, but it makes for a good rise. The first loaf after freezing needs all the help it can get, but there did seem to be some spring in the dough. The final rise, in the tin, wasn't spectacular, but it rose a bit...

But - and I didn't know this was possible - it actually fell in the oven. And what came out was a slab of something dense and moist. Possibly it needed longer in the oven, but that might have made it even more solid, which I don't think I could have handled. As it is, I can slice it, and I can toast it, and I can spread things on it and eat it for breakfast.

For a dreadful day or so, I thought I'd killed the starter, it was so sluggish. It still doesn't look very happy, but it isn't dead. So tomorrow, I think, I need to coax it to make a very plain and simple loaf, to ease it back into the way of it...

Comments

[athenais]

I've never used a sourdough starter, though I love sourdough bread very much, because my husband does not like sourdough at all and there's no point making a loaf of bread for one.

[shewhomust]

I cut the new loaf in half. Half of it goes in the freezer for later; the other half provides me with two slices of toast each morning for my breakfast. The effort may be disproportionate for ine person, but I'm worth it!

(And the loaf I baked yesterday worked fine, thank goodness!)

[cellio]

Oh dear. I'm glad it seems to be on a path to recovery (per your comment).

My starter holidays in the fridge, not the freezer, though I usually feed it weekly and I don't think it's ever gone more than about 2.5 weeks. I froze some once because I'd heard you could, but when I thawed it out I couldn't get it to do anything so I gave up. Now I'm wondering if I did something wrong.

One thing I've learned with starter is that if I'm going to try anything experimental, start by separating out some as a backup plan.

[shewhomust]

That's interesting: I think the longest I've ever left it in the fridge os 8 or 9 days...

Freezing it is certainly an option: the first barch post-thaw is usually not brilliant - but you could always just discard that, if you preferred.