This is one of the most common questions people have about the sourdough starter. And the reason for this is that most starters tend to have a powerful and slightly unpleasant smell.
A healthy sourdough starter will develop a wide range of pungent smells, ranging from sweet, to vinegar-like, to nail polish. This smell is caused by the acid produced by the bacteria that live in the starter. The intense smell is also a sign that your starter needs to be fed more often, or fed with a different type of flour.
While most of the smells produced by a sourdough starter are not pleasant, they are a good sign, it means that your sourdough starter is active. But at the same time, it means that your starter is hungry so you need to adjust your feeding schedule. So let’s see how you should be feeding your starter to get rid of the unpleasant smells.
How to Feed Your Sourdough Starter to Get Rid of the Bad Smell
There are two main things that you can change in your feeding schedule to get rid of the strange smells. You can either change how often you feed your starter or the flour that you are using to feed your starter.
Changing the Flour That You Are Using
When you are making a starter from scratch it’s recommended to use whole grain flour instead of white flour, because white flour has considerably fewer nutrients than whole grain. So the bacteria in the starter will have a harder time multiplying and they won’t have as many things to eat.
But after your starter has fully developed feeding it only whole grain flour will make it too active, and one side effect of this is the bad smell.
Basically, if you feed your starter only whole grain it will make it too active and it will run out of food and it will start producing strong smells, and when it gets really hungry liquid will appear on top of the starter.
This is why most people after one or two weeks start feeding their starter with all-purpose white flour.
When changing the flour, the starter will need a few days, sometimes an entire week, to get adjusted to the new flour, during this time the starter won’t be as active as it used to be.
So my advice is this. If you want to make some bread soon simply feed your starter more often with the flour that you are using. If you won’t be making bread any time soon, switch the flour to all-purpose white, and a week or two before baking switch back to whole wheat and feed it more often.
Feeding Your Starter More Often
The second thing that you can do to get rid of the smell is to feed your starter more often. I usually feed my starter in the morning and at night before going to bed.
If your schedule allows you should feed your starter every 12 hours, but if you can’t, feeding it once in the morning and once at night will work as well.
One thing to keep in mind is that you can’t make your starter odorless, no matter how often you feed it. Like all things, starters have a smell and it’s impossible to get rid of it completely.
A healthy starter will have a smell, a hungry one will have a very strong smell.
The Different Smells of a Sourdough Starter
Over the years I’ve made quite a few different starters and most of them smelled like vinegar or nail polish, and a few of them smelled sweet. But those are not the only possible smells that a sourdough starter can have.
The smell of the starter is usually determined by the flour used. Rye and whole wheat tend to have a sharp, nail polish-like smell, while white flour has a yeasty smell.
But the flour that you use is not the only thing that matters, the smell can be influenced by the water that you are using, the humidity, and the temperature. All of those things can make your starter slightly different from the rest.
The Smell Will Tone Down Over Time
If your starter is not even 2 weeks old, then it’s quite normal for it to have a strong smell.
The good bacteria that live in the starter create acid when they feed on the starch and sugar of the flour. This acid is what keeps the bad bacteria out of the starter, and until the good bacteria have managed to stabilize everything, they will produce a more powerful smell than they would usually have.
From my experience, the smell should tone down in one or two weeks, if your starter is brand new.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if your starter is new and the smell is very sharp you shouldn’t use it for baking yet, while there is nothing dangerous for you, there is a good chance that the bread will have a very sour taste, or it won’t rise properly.
So wait a few more days until the smell has toned down.
When You Should Worry About the Smell of Your Starter
In general, if a sourdough starter has a strange smell you shouldn’t worry, as I’ve said this is something perfectly normal, especially during the first weeks.
The only smell that you should worry about is the smell of mold. Most mold tends to have an earthy smell, stale and musty. Those are not smells that a sourdough starter will normally have.
But this smell will usually come from the mold itself, so it should be quite easy to spot, so you won’t have to rely on the smell to tell if your sourdough has gone bad.
Here are some common things that you will see if your sourdough has gone bad:
- Mold. If you see mold on your sourdough starter, or on your sourdough bread, it’s time to throw it away.
- Bread Not Rising. No sourdough bread will rise if the starter has gone bad.
- A Pink or Orange Tint. If your starter has a pink or orange tint to it, it has definitely gone bad and is time to throw it away.
- No Bubbles in the Starter. If you regularly feed your starter but you don’t see any bubbles it means that the good bacteria, the probiotics, have disappeared and the only things that can be found in the starter are now harmful.
I would suggest you take a look at this article: Is Homemade Sourdough Bread Safe? (The Final Verdict), where I cover more things that you should be careful about when making sourdough bread, as well as some fake signs that people often misunderstand and throw away perfectly fine sourdough, one of those fake signs is the strange smells that sourdough can have.
Final Thoughts
It’s perfectly fine for a sourdough starter to smell somewhat strange, or to have a sharp smell. The sourdough is in a continuous fermentation process and during this process, strange smells will come out.
If your starter is fairly new, the smell will calm down on its own after a while. When a starter is new it needs some time to balance things out.
If your starter keeps producing intense smells even after a few weeks then you might need to increase how often you feed it or, feed it with flour that won’t make it as active.
One other thing that you should be careful about is temperature, if your starter sits in a place with a high temperature it will be more active than it usually is and it will eat more, so you will need to feed it more often, and if you don’t it will start to give off a powerful smell.
Common Questions
What should I do if my starter has very few bubbles? Bubbles are created by the good bacteria that live in the starter when they eat. Having just a few bubbles means that the starter needs more food, so it requires more flour.
My starter was really active on days 2 and 3, and then there was zero activity. Is this bad? This is a very common thing. Most starters have a surge in activity during the first few days then scale down the activity. After a period it will regulate its activity.
Why is my sourdough starter so sticky? Depending on the amount of flour and water used, sometimes sourdough can become sticky, but this is usually common for starters that have more flour than water.
What is a 100% hydration starter? A 100% Hydration starter is a starter that contains equal parts of flour and water. As the name implies, for every gram of flour there is one gram of water to hydrate it, thus it’s named 100% hydration.
My starter doesn’t rise enough, what should I do? The most common cause for a starter that isn’t rising enough is excessive discarding. If you discard too much of the starter it won’t have enough resources to rise properly.
What is a feeding ratio? Feeding ratios are usually written like this: 1:1:1, 1:2:2, 3:1:1. And they refer to the amount of starter left, the amount of flour added to the starter, and the amount of water added to the starter. Here are a few examples:
- 1:1:1 – equal amounts of starter, flour, and water – 100 grams of starter, 100 grams of flour, and 100 grams of water
- 2:1:1 – 200 grams of starter, 100 grams of flour, and 100 grams of water
- 1:2:2 – 100 grams of starter, 200 grams of flour, and 200 grams of water
When can I start using a different type of flour? While there isn’t an exact amount of time specified anywhere, I would advise you to at least wait two weeks after you made your starter. At this point, the starter should have a good balance that will allow it to successfully accommodate the new flour.
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