Ask Allie!

Ask Allie is our advice column, where you can ask all your food-related questions to get digestible answers! No question is off limits!

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I bought the French sour dough starter off of you through Amazon. It fermented for a couple days then seemly died. Is it Guaranteed? Help please.

— Karen

I asked for all the details, which were:

I put warm water in the starter until it was all dissolved...for lack of a better word. I then added 1/4 cup water and flour. It bubbled after 24 hours. Then I added 1/2 cup of water and flour....white flour.... it bubbled then I added a cup of each flour and water and the water rose to the top and no bubbles.

Yeah, you’re going too fast with it; the microbes in your starter can’t multiply as quickly as you’re asking them to. If you’d get a 50g portion of what you’ve got out and then pull up the activation instructions and start with day 2, you’ll do a much better job of activating it strongly. It’s just not old enough to be able to handle that much food. Alternately, you can let it sit tight for a few days to deal with all the food it’s got. I probably would do a jar with the 50g in accordance with the instructions AND let the rest try to catch up. It could take as long as a week for it to do so.

I just made my first batch of Skyr yogurt. It turned out pretty well (more like Kefir) and I would like to start another batch to see if it will thicken a bit more. I have a full quart of the more liquid Skyr. Can I freeze that quart that's a bit too liquid-y? Thanks!

— Jacqueline

You can, but I tend to use it for mashed potatoes. Your batches are too big, though, for the activation period and you may weaken the culture if you don’t do at least 3 batches with 1 cup of milk or less.

First of all, I just want to say that you have a very nice website and interesting products!

I'm very excited about your assortment of milk cultures, especially since you have some cultures from Seeden, my home country. I'm just really curious, though - I've tried to find heirloom filmjölk cultures in Sweden but i seems impossible - just for curiousity, where have you gotten yours from? Since it's not commercially avilablenin Sweden, I figured they were long gone but then I find them in a foreign web shop, which is so cool! So, I just wonder, is it an old traditional culture from Sweden or is it a newer one made somewhere else but in the same style as traditional Swedish filmjölk? Somehow, I just can't imagine that you've gotten your filmjölk culture from an old Swedish grandma...

— Max

Thank you!! I know our fil does really come from Sweden, but I’m not sure if grannies are involved or if it’s from one of the Swedish companies.