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!

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.

It is SOOOOOO good to hear a intelligent truthful practicioner speak!!! I soo appreciate your honesty! Am not a doc or a practicioner...just a mom of autistic kiddos who has been run thru the wringer a few thousand times. Docs were never much of an answer for us.....we usually had to research and listen to other folks experience.… I did want to mention that many folks get herxheimer effect when doing probiotics as a result of yeast die off. We also got it when starting any kind of yeast protocol. Histiamine response is a real pain in the rear....have on in the family who has it pretty bad and is allergic to antihistamines!!!! The uniqueness of the human body!!!! lol We appreciate your site and your input.

— Ronni

This submission is referencing The Problem with Ferments, for those of you who’ve forgotten that post.

Thank you so much for the positive feedback! And yes, lots of people get hit by Herxheimer effect, which is why we actively discourage people from jumping in with both feet and eating as many ferments as possible in the early days. Slow and steady wins the race, for sure! Some people actively court it, which they definitely can do, but I will never understand it. Human bodies are so interesting, aren’t they? I’m endlessly fascinated by the mechanisms through which people have such varied physical responses to the same things!

Thanks again for your feedback. ❤

Hi Allie. Just got my cultures, yogurt piima and creme fraiche. I sent them to a friend of mine in US who came to visit here in Israel but she didnt see the cultures should be frozen. Its about 3 weeks now since it’s not, shall I even try to activate?

— Lena

Definitely! It should take 3-6 months before a room temperature yogurt or sour cream goes bad without freezing. I would be shocked if it didn’t culture after 3 weeks.

I just purchased your einkorn sourdough culture. I have tried to make my own einkorn sourdough starter but I end up with a very dense ball of dough that doesn't spread out or bubble. I don't want to ruin this culture, so my question is do I use einkorn flour to feed? I want to learn to use mostly only einkorn flour for bread making. I should also mention I am very much a novice at bread making. I have read that einkorn is a very wet sticky dough and that as it sits the flour absorbs more of the liquid. So, if I use einkorn flour to feed the starter, do I still use the measurements you provide or do I add more water? I have followed Jovial's sourdough starter instructions and I have ended up with a very dense ball of dough that does nothing. Thank you.

— Christina

I looked at their site, and yeah this type of starter can be tricky, and would be trickier with einkorn and also without much experience. For the one you bought from us, this is a vigorous starter, but it will need a few days to wake up and recover from its jetlag as you’re following along with the activation instructions. You can definitely still use the same measurements, but what you’re really looking for is a mixture of flour and water added each day that resembles a thicker style of pancake batter. Not a lump of dough, and not something runny like crepe batter. If you look in the activation instructions on our site, there’s a picture somewhere in there of what starter ideally will look like. I personally only use half of the packet and tuck the rest in the freezer as my first backup, and I really don’t measure like we tell people to. I cover the half packet of culture with water plus a bit, let it sit, then add in some flour until it’s that texture, then rinse and repeat with each feeding. If you follow the activation instructions and just focus more strongly on the texture (it should be exactly like the picture), you’ll hit that perfect ratio. This will grow quickly, and faster than you expect, so use a bigger jar than you think you need. Somewhere around day 4-5, you can start baking with it. I sometimes start on day 3, but since you’ve already had a bad experience, you’ll want to give it that extra day or two. When you go to prove your loaves, you will want to only let them rise to 50% of the original volume (I draw a line on the outside of my bowl in Sharpie if I think I’ll forget how much dough was there), and this will also be true of the second rise. Einkorn gets a little spready and your loaves won’t rise correctly if you do it like it was common wheat by waiting for it to double in volume.

Hope that helps, and please let me know if any of this is confusing,