Vent: My sourdough starter almost made me quit last Thursday

I was in my kitchen at 5am trying to feed my starter before work and I knocked the whole jar off the counter. Glass everywhere, starter all over the floor, and I had exactly zero backup. I scooped up what I could from a clean corner of the linoleum and saved maybe two tablespoons of it. Took me three days of feeding it twice a day to get it bubbly again. Has anyone else had a starter disaster that almost made you throw in the towel?

2 comments

2 Comments

mila39516d agoMost Upvoted

I used to roll my eyes at people who acted like losing a starter was some huge tragedy, like just make a new one lol. But last month I had my jar crack from thermal shock when I poured in warm water too fast, and it literally took me a week to get it back to where it was. That two tablespoons of saved starter you scooped up is honestly impressive, I would have just cried on the floor for a solid ten minutes. Seeing how much work goes into reviving that tiny amount of bubbly goo really changed my perspective on the whole thing.

finleyfox16d ago

Dropped my own starter jar on the floor last spring and spent a good hour just staring at the glass shards and floury mess before I even thought about cleanup. It's not really about the starter itself being irreplaceable, it's the time you already put into feeding it and knowing exactly how that specific batch behaves. You can start a new one but it takes weeks to learn its quirks and get it reliably doubling on schedule. So yeah, saving two tablespoons of that original goo is actually a big deal if you don't want to start over from scratch with a wild guess at how long it'll take to mature.