My sourdough starter went flat and I spent a whole month fixing it

I followed a recipe from a book and my starter looked great for a week, then it just stopped rising. It smelled fine, but it was like soup. I tried feeding it different flours, changing the water, even moving it to a warmer spot in the kitchen. Nothing worked until I read about using pineapple juice for the first few feeds. Has anyone else had to go that far to save a starter?

4 comments

4 Comments

knight.dylan1mo ago

Pineapple juice? That's just extra work for no reason.

sage_green1mo ago

Pineapple juice is just a band-aid for bad baking habits. If your starter went flat for a whole month, the real issue was probably the feeding schedule or ratios from the start. A healthy starter shouldn't need weird hacks, it just needs regular care with basic flour and water. @knight.dylan is right that it's extra work, but it's worse than that, it's masking the real problem. You'll just end up with a starter that crashes again the second you go back to normal water.

wren6381mo ago

Sluggish starter" made me remember my first one. I named it Bob. Bob would just sit there like a sad pancake for days. I tried putting him on top of the fridge, then near the heater, even wrapped him in a towel once. Turns out my kitchen was just too cold. Moved him to the top of the dryer while I did laundry and he finally woke up. Sometimes it's not the food, it's the real estate.

wells.zara1mo ago

Actually, the pineapple juice trick is a legit science hack for a sluggish starter. It lowers the pH to make a better environment for the good yeast to beat out bad bacteria. It's not just extra work, it's fixing the root problem when a starter gets too acidic. I had to do it once when my starter went flat after using tap water. A couple feeds with it and my starter was back to doubling like normal. Sometimes you gotta give it that extra boost.