Ask Allie!
Ask Allie is our normally-fermenting-related advice column, where you can ask all your fermenting, cooking, baking, and pantry-related questions to get digestible answers! No question about food is off limits!
Due to increased submissions during the Covid-19 pandemic, many of you will receive an emailed reply prior to your question hitting the blog if I think you need an immediate answer. I will also, as needed, answer way more questions per post than the non-pandemic 3-4 question columns do.
To have your question answered in Ask Allie posts, please use the form on our website. If you prefer to be anonymous, just say so in the form and we’ll leave your name out when we answer it in the blog! Note that some submissions may be edited for clarity.
For troubleshooting active issues with a culture you’re working with, please check the FAQs or write us at support@positivelyprobiotic.com - you’ll get your answer faster that way!
My yogurt or sourdough showed up non-refrigerated, even tho the label says it should be. Is it still good?
— Tons of you
It’s totally fine. It’s dehydrated, so it can stay room temp, but the active cultures will die off faster if it’s left room temp for a long time before activation. For sweet cream and crème fraiche, those do not fully dehydrate and so it’s important to make or freeze those straight away. They can only handle about a month at room temp before they can’t be used anymore.
I am a complete novice at this. I just did step (day) one and I'm clear on the next few days.
At some point when I'm ready to make bread, what do I add to the mixture to finish or is it the mixture that is the part I would bake. Thanks!
— Lots of you
When you’re getting into the zone of being ready to bake, you’re going to start feeding your starter larger amounts of food, though still with the 1:1:1 system we talk about in the activation page and FAQ. The difference is that you won’t be discarding, but rather will be feeding the whole. Once that’s done, you’ll add your recipe’s proscribed amount of starter at whatever stage it asks you to. Have you started looking for a recipe yet? We have several published on our blog, but there are millions on the internet if ours don’t suit your tastes. Lastly, if your loaves aren’t working right while you’re figuring this out, don’t throw them away! There’s tons of stuff to do with botched breads!
I have some kimchi a friend made - can i add some of that to my kraut as a kind of starter? I am wanting to include some of the kimchi flavor to my kraut and was wondering if I could add it, mix them together before fermenting the kraut.
— Julia
Yes, that’s not only fine, but a common practice in many culinary traditions! If you continue along the path, you should see development of flavors in your krauts over time.
My scoby partially froze in my refrigerator! Can I use it or discard?
— Michelle
I’d say try it, but please do not refrigerate SCOBYs. It tends to kill them even if it doesn’t freeze. That said, the starter tea is fine to refrigerate and the SCOBY is only (and I mean only) a byproduct of the fermentation process. So your starter tea should still ferment it. I once tried to brew kombucha using only the SCOBY (because it came from an overseas friend and the starter tea leaked out). It took several months to ferment the tea, as opposed to the 1-4 weeks (depending on taste preferences) starter tea (with or without SCOBY) takes. For me, SCOBYs are a bit of a hassle until I make jerky with them - then they’re awesome!
I'm making a new effort to get a sourdough starter going. I have tried several times without any added help without success. Followed a regimen very similar to the one you prescribe and got good smells and bubbles but no doubling. I am thinking the kitchen is too cool at 66 to 68F. Also think I may have given up too early. I've now bought some of your starter and want to do this right. Top of the fridge is not warm enough apparently. My oven light does not work though the oven certainly does. Any suggestions. I also do kombucha with some success and really good kefir...have some skills there. I was wondering about a kombucha mat in a cooler? I would prefer not to heat up the whole house for my sourdough.
— Adelia
I have starters that don’t double but are plenty active (at 70-78). They can just be kind of weird sometimes, like people. 66-68 IS cool, but all it means is that your microbes will eat a bit more slowly. Even in a refrigerator (but not freezer), fermentation (albeit VERY slow) still happens. I’d extend the time a little bit on feeding, maybe to 36-48 hours instead of 24 (start w/ 36), and it should be fine at those temps. My guess, based on home temp, is that your starter was simply overfull and wasn’t rising because of how much food there still was to eat.
I am new at this and do not quite understand all the instructions or lingo used in "How to activate your sourdough starter". We purchased the Italian Calmaldali to add in replace of store bought yeast for our homemade pizza dough. We followed the instructions as best as we could, we are on day 3 and our starter? yeast? (I'm not sure what to call it) is starting to get bubbles.
My questions are:
1) When it is ready, do I use the entire jar to make pizza dough? Or just a portion of it?
2) If I used just a portion what do I do with the remainder?
3) Do I need to buy another packer of Italian Calmaldali to keep it up?
4) What exactly is considered the "yeast" and what is considered the "starter".
You’ll use just a portion. If you use it all, there will be nothing left to build from! When you’re first ready to use your starter (I’d assume you can use it in a couple of days), take out a quarter cup of it and spread it thinly on a tray lined with parchment or wax paper, OR spread it thinly on a plastic bowl/plate/tray and let it air dry. It will lift up when it’s dry. I usually use plastic because it’s less waste (because I already have it; it’s not less waste if you have to go buy something) and the culture lifts up a bit better. Put all the flakes in a bag or container, label, and freeze. If anything goes wrong at any point, you now have a backup. There should never be a reason for you to purchase another sourdough starter outside simple desire. Like, ever. You should be able to share with friends, pass yours on when you die, so on. Starters will last hundreds of years if cared for at least decently, and you’ve got backups (including the people you shared with) if you DO somehow manage to kill yours and need to restart. But, generally you have to work at it, cook it, or not scrape the sides of your jar to kill it. Not scraping dramatically increases the likelihood of mold; the only people I’ve ever known to get mold, me included, did not scrape sides of the sourdough’s house!
When you’re ready to bake with it really will depend on when you stop discarding and start increasing the amount the starter is fed each day. Very few recipes (I believe Tartine style baking, and there are books for it as well as FB groups) use tiny amounts of starter (50g, or your average expected discard). Mostly, when searching for recipes (and ditto in our blog), you’ll see somewhere in the 100-300g range, and you can’t do that if you discard daily. To build your starter, you instead will find out how much starter you have (ideally by weighing it) and then you’ll add equal weights of flour and water. This is generally going to take 1-2 days to get the amount you need for the given recipe (though not always!), but other than increased amounts of water and flour it’s identical in process to a regular feed. If you’re doing it volumetrically, it’s generally considered that 1C starter (all-purpose flour) = 1 packet of yeast + 3/4C flour + 1/2C water. If baking by weight, you take half of the weight of the starter out of each the flour and water from the recipe you’re using. This formula is what you should use to substitute your starter for commercial yeast, if your recipe wasn’t created specifically for sourdough.
What differentiates sourdough starter from commercial yeast is that the yeast is isolated, whereas sourdough starters have yeast and bacteria. Thus, they properly ferment the dough rather than simply rising it (through yeast farts). Here’s a link where I explain all of this in the blog, in the event you’d like to read up on it a bit, as well as one on wheat, so you can better understand what all is going on with your grains, and one more, in case you want to read on how I make baking decisions and how certain methods might be useful learning skills.
It seems I gave you homework! Evidently you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but can’t take the classroom out of the teacher after all. Anyway, your starter is called a starter, and it has yeast in it.
For your Kimchi recipe, what volume container will I need if I use a 3 to 4 lb Nappa cabbage and add 1 Apple 1 Asian pear and 1 red onion? Also, do I cut the Apple, pear, and onion into matchsticks too? And how do those Fido jars “self burp” anyway? I looked on Amazon and couldn’t see how that happens automatically.
— Anna
I find it’s generally about 2 litres of kimchi. Yes, you do fruits in matchstick; I thinly slice the onions. The carrots I tend to cut into thicker matchsticks for more crunch. Some people prefer them thicker, some not. You’ll figure this all out as you go along.
The gasket seals the jar off, which allows pressure to build up as the microbes ferment your kraut, rather than releasing out into the ether as happens in open vessel fermenting. Once the jar has hit its max pressure load, the gasket will sort of lift a bit, dropping down and resealing once the pressure is stabilizing (but not completely released). Because it’s a pressure expulsion, there’s no ability for new air to get in the jar. This is actually the same issue that causes the respirator masks that have the valve widgets in them to not be recommended for wear, because it releases all your droplets (which is bad if you’re sick and don’t know it) even though it doesn’t let other people’s in! So if you wondered about those too, the answer is the same and comes down to the force of the release.
Put a plate under your jar(s), because sometimes they will also expel brine during a pressure release and it’s a nasty mess otherwise. Trust me on this; cleaning up kimchi is not fun and can stain floors, counters, walls, and ceilings. I guess you don’t have to ask me how I know, huh? This often sounds like hissing or a higher pitched whining when there’s a pressure release, whether brine is coming out with the gasses or not.
