Ask Allie!
What is Ask Allie?
Ask Allie is our food-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!
Most of you will receive an emailed reply prior to your question hitting the blog, since I frequently think you need a more immediate answer. You should anticipate 1-2 weeks between submitting your question and its appearance on blog. Although emailed replies normally take between 1-3 days, it can take up to a week.
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! Please also take advantage of our Facebook group for troubleshooting, conversation, and getting to know more members of our community!
I am the one who used 10 times too much water last week with my starter and additionally I am trying to do it with cassava flour. Some of the bits on the side of the jar were moldy within a day or two or mixing. I cleaned those off but in about 5 days of feedings there was a layer of liquid with floating black mold patty on top. I think I have failed on this attempt, but will order some more starter and try again perhaps with more normal flour.
I LOVE the yogurt starters and have had wonderful success!
Thank you so much for the communication!
— Brenda
Ohhhhhh you’re the water lady, okay! Yeah, I don’t even measure when I’m activating starters (or anything else, most of the time). I go purely by the consistency. If I add too much water, more flour goes in. Too much flour, add some water. It’s like a little dance where I’m pretending I don’t know the steps even though I do, and I’m pretending I don’t solely so I can wash fewer dishes.
What kind of jar are you using? In my experience, SD only goes moldy if one+ of the following happen:
Sides of jar aren’t scraped down (you’ve already discovered that),
The jar isn’t sealed properly,
Jar isn’t sealed and has been left at room temp for way too long.
Mold is also more likely to happen with GF starters, and I don’t know why that is. While it’s rare for this to happen no matter the flour type, 9 out of 10 moldy jars I hear about from people are unsealed GF starters. Most people still keep their starters in unsealed jars without problems, but if there is going to be a problem it’s most likely going to have happened to a GF-based starter. I’m assuming you’re using a mason either with a “soft” lid (coffee filter, muslin, t-shirt scraps, whatever, with a ring or rubber bands to hold that on. Alternately a proper lid that is left deliberately loose), since that is usually what people do (and normally that’s fine).
For some reason, and always early on, the GF flours just seem to have a bit of a harder time establishing with aerobic fermentation (unsealed). It has, however, been a few months since I’ve seen this happen, so I just updated activation page today asking people to us a sealed jar like a Fido or Weck if they’re doing GF. My years spent as a professor tell me that more people must be experiencing this problem and aren’t reporting it. I use Weck for mine, if you wanted to know that; Sabrina uses Fido, but I think she leaves the gasket off. She does all the production and distribution, so it’s less of an issue for her to have something unsealed since she doesn’t interact with the starters (unless she’s baking) the way the rest of us do. I use all our cultures exactly the same way customers do, except that I’m way more haphazard about it than our customers tend to be.
Hopefully no one else will have this happen now. We get really upset when someone loses their baby and are always trying to make sure we’re always updating our literature when there’s new information we know people need to help them keep theirs safe.
Technically, a jar doesn’t have to be sealed for and sourdough (or dairy culture), but a sealed sourdough is a sourdough that, in my experience, should never go moldy. I have a starter in my fridge right now that’s waiting for me to rehab it. The reason it needs to be rehabbed is because I put it in a bag with a bunch of flours early in the pandemic because I was going to give all of it to Child Tester’s teacher. We never ended up doing that, I forgot it was in my closet while waiting for us to arrange a time to drop it, and I found it 3-4 months later while looking for something else entirely.
Starter DEFINITELY did not smell good, but no mold. Sealed jar (this was a tightly closed Mason jar rather than a fermenting jar or Weck; I clamped that lid down pretty tightly because I was worried it might knock over and spill in my closet). This jar was a wheat starter, and those will be more stable no matter what, but it still should have had mold. Instead, it’s living its worst life EVER in my fridge because I still haven’t dealt with it.
The actual reason I keep my starters in sealed jars isn’t mold prevention, though with the type of neglectful ferment parent I am, this benefits me. I keep them sealed to avoid cross-contamination. I haven’t worked through all of our starters yet (we have so many and I started this job in January), so I usually have multiple starters in some stage of haphazard activation going on, and it’s a real problem in terms of updating product descriptions accurately if they start getting friendly with one another. Sabrina doesn’t have to worry about that, because she has the space to keep them separated. My apartment is 900 square feet, so not tons of space to place physical distance between cultures.
My assumption is that once you removed the visible mold that was on the sides (which is exactly what I would have done, too), there were still enough spores in there that it took over the culture. That’s what happened to the 30-ish year old wheat starter I lost during hurricane Ike. I still am upset about that starter, but nothing to do about it but start over.
When you activate your new starter, only activate half of the packet. You’re going to use half the packet as though it was the full one, though. Like, you’ll follow the exact same instructions and simply pretend all of the packet is in there. The rest of the packet goes into the freezer as a backup. When it’s up and running, take another sample and freeze it. It’s up to you if you dry it or freeze it fresh, but fresh is simpler to use later because you thaw and feed without having to repeat the activation process. You can, so you know, do this with all the yogurts and sourdoughs, where you only use half the packet.
Lastly, if you aren’t in our Facebook group but do use that platform, please join it. We have a ton of GF bakers in there, including one who had this happen with one of her GF starters (I don’t remember which one it was), but it’s a congenial group of pretty helpful and inquisitive people. I find I often learn a lot of really cool stuff in there from our members.
Hi! I'm looking to purchase your vegan coconut yoghurt kit but I was having trouble understanding step 4. It says 'Cover with a tight weave breathable cloth and secure with a rubber band. (Not cheesecloth) Alternatively you can use a tight fitting lid' however I'm unsure what a 'tight weave breathable cloth' is. Can I equivalently use just a lid? Or does it have to have some breathability for air to get in?
Thanks!
— Julia
I always use a lid. Soft breathable can be coffee filters, multiple layers of muslin, or whatever. This just feels like too much work to me, so lid it is! Yogurts are fine for both aerobic and anaerobic fermentation, so it doesn’t matter to them if they have breathability. It’s mainly just kombucha, jun, and vinegar you need to worry about aeration for. All the rest you can pick what you like, but I always pick lids.
Hi, I'm a relative newbie to making my own yogurt and a recent customer of yours. I'm presently activating my 2nd thermophilic starter in my Instant Pot (1st went great!) and am wondering, when the activation batch is set, can I move directly into making a full batch without letting it sit 2 hrs / subsequently refrigerating? I.e. my timer dings at 5 hrs, activation batch is set, I could then pour milk on top of it / whisk it in & begin the full batch incubation? Thanks!
— Jill
The wait period is actually so it can cool properly instead of being shocked by the rapid temperature change. Rapid temp changes can make the resultant yogurt grainy, which most people aren’t into. If you literally just mean that you want to make back-to-back batches, it’s really hard for me to see why it wouldn’t work. Just in case I’m wrong, though, do a small batch to test before moving straight to the larger one.
