How To: Revive Sourdough Starter

Don’t throw away that neglected starter sitting in your fridge, revive your sourdough starter and bring it back to bubbly, active life with this simple feeding schedule and troubleshooting guide. Even starters forgotten for months can be brought back from the brink.

Watch Me Revive My Starter!

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar…

You’re cleaning the fridge mid-September and you come across the sourdough starter you haven’t seen since May when the sunshine was calling and the shorts came out.

“Oh my god. FRED!”

Don’t worry, you can revive a sourdough starter that’s been long neglected in the fridge! Even if you neglected it as long as I did…

May 12, 2021 and September 15, 2021:

• 126 days
• … or 18 weeks
• … or 4 months & 3 days

So don’t throw out that old sourdough starter just yet!

This guide to reviving sourdough starter is dedicated to shorts season.

Moldy Sourdough Starter

While almost any starter can be revived, I don’t play with mold. Fermenting foods takes a little bit of intuition and a little bit of ruthlessness. If something looks, smells, feels, or just could be bad – it finds the garbage quickly!

Look:

If your old starter has any kind of mold, toss that bad boy, start fresh with my 24-hour starter recipe, and you’ll be just fine! After the mold, look at the hooch – if it has grey or black-ish looking hooch, we’re in business! If the starter or hooch is pink-tinged, it’s gotta go!

Smell:

If the starter smells tangy, like vinegar, alcohol or even nail polish remover, it’s safe to use. If it has a musty or moldy smell, toss and start over!

Feel:

After a long fridge nap, your starter should be thin and liquid. If it’s thick or chunky, toss it and start over!

Read More: How To Tell If Your Sourdough Starter Is Bad

Reviving Sourdough Starter

1. Remove the unfed sourdough starter from the fridge and allow it to rest at room temperature for 3-4 hours.
2. Look closely at the starter, discard immediately if your starter has mold, a pink tinge, or smells musty. These are signs that bacteria have overtaken the yeasts. If the starter passes the test, stir in the hooch, or pour it off. I prefer to stir it back in to keep my hydration levels correct, but it can be poured off too.
3. In a clean jar or container, mix 50g of the unfed starter with 50g warm water, stir until combined, then add in 50g flour.
4. Set aside the fed starter for 12 hours, then feed it again using a fresh clean jar, combine 50g starter, 50g water and 50g flour. Mark the side of your jar with the height of the starter. Watch the starter for signs of activity. It may be a little bit sluggish, but you should start to see a few bubbles here and there.
5. If the starter is close to doubling within 12 hours, wait 24 hours before feeding again. If the starter is not close to doubling by 12 hours later, feed it again – and repeat until the starter doubles within 12 hours, then reduce to a 24 hour feeding period.
6. Once the starter is revived and doubling regularly, it should be maintained on the counter and fed every 24 hours for 4-5 days. This will help get your starter healthy again before it’s placed back in the fridge.
7. Ensure to feed your starter weekly or bi-weekly once it’s in the fridge to keep it healthy and active and ready for sourdough baking!

It’s Not Just You!

Other people have accidentally neglected their sourdough starter too! Here is what they had to say after saving their fermenty friends:

Sourdough Starter Feeding + Maintenance

There’s a lot to sourdough, but there’s also not a lot to sourdough! One of the things you’ll have to decide is how often you’ll be baking. For me, in the fall and winter months, I bake much much more frequently. So I actually use different sourdough feeding and maintenance methods depending on the time of year.

Daily to Bi-weekly Baker

• you’ll want to keep your starter at room temperature and feed it daily. This will keep it warm and active whenever you’re ready for it!
• feed it around every 24 hours. You can play with the feeding schedule a bit, once you get to know your starter and how hungry it is. The starter should be fed after the culture doubles in size and deflates.

Weekly or Less Frequent

• keep your sourdough in the fridge! This slows down the fermentation time considerably and allows you to feed your sourdough only once a week.
• simply remove it from the fridge, then stir and feed, and rest for 12-24 hours at room temperature before starting with your recipe. Once the fed starter doubles, it is ready to use!

Put That Sourdough Starter To Work!

Long-Term Sourdough Storage

If I had been smart, I would have used the remainder of my sourdough from the fridge and revived a backup I saved much earlier last year. But I’m always up for a challenge, so I decided to revive my starter. If that’s not for you, check read my post about long-term sourdough starter storage.

Freeze it:

• Freezing a sourdough starter is a quick and easy way to take a break from your starter.
• It’s quick and easy to do.
• Requires no feeding until thawed.

To revive the frozen starter simply allow it to thaw at room temperature before feeding it with equal parts of starter, flour, and water.

Dry it:

• Dehydrating sourdough starter is bit more involved than freezing, but kinder to the yeast in the starter.
• Requires no special tools.
• May take a bit longer to revive than a frozen starter.

To revive the dried sourdough starter, mix equal parts, by weight, of the dried starter and warm water. Allow it to completely re-hydrate the starter and then feed it with equal parts of starter, flour, and water.