I’m back from vacation, so I got my starter back to life! First, I took it out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter for a few hours to warm up. Then I threw away half and added a new 1:1 mixture of 50g water and 50g flour. I mixed it all together, cleaned up the sides, and let it out on the counter. That’s it for bringing it back to life!

When you do this process, the starter starts to leach out some of its liquid into a slightly-alcoholic mixture called hooch. It looks and smells and tastes gross, so don’t drink it! But it’s nothing to be worried about – you can either pour it off or mix it back into the starter before discarding and re-feeding.

One happy addition to my starter process is that I found a very inexpensive 10lbs bag of flour at the store today ($2!). I’m skeptical about why it was so cheap, so I’m leaving it somewhat sealed away from my other food at the moment in case there’s flour weevils. But I think I’m just being paranoid – and this saves me from using the expensive King Arthur flour for feeding my starter.

Keep an eye out here in the coming days as I finally start baking!