Sourdough starter troubleshooting: fix any starter problem

Most starter panic comes from reading a normal sign as a deadly one. Use this map to find your symptom, then follow the link to the full fix. The single most common mistake is giving up too early: a quiet starter usually just needs warmth and consistent feeding, not the bin.

A starter that won't rise is rarely broken. The big three causes are youth (a new starter often stalls around day 3 to 5 in a false-rise valley before the real yeast takes over), cold (below ~20C / 68F the yeast crawls), and underfeeding (it ran out of food before it could rise). The fix is almost always the same: keep it warm, feed it on a consistent schedule, and give it time. The full not-rising guide walks through each cause and exactly what to change.

Smell is the fastest read on what a starter needs. A pleasant tang or a yeasty, beery note is healthy. A sharp nail-polish-remover (acetone) or vinegar smell means it's overdue a feed and producing too much acid and alcohol: feed more often, ideally twice a day, and it sweetens up. A dark liquid layer on top is hooch, the alcohol of a hungry starter, and is completely normal. The smell that does mean trouble is pink or orange streaks or fuzzy mould, which is the one case where you start fresh. The smells guide and smell-by-stage cover every variant.

Before you bin a starter, run the rescue: discard down to a tablespoon, feed it warm with fresh flour twice a day, and watch for three to five days. Most "dead" starters come back within that window because they were only dormant or starving. Genuine death is rare and comes from heat (above ~50C / 120F kills the microbes) or mould, not from a few neglected weeks. The full dead-starter rescue and the reassurance piece I killed my starter walk you through it. If it sat in the fridge, it's just dormant, not gone.

Sometimes the starter rises beautifully and the loaf still disappoints. That's a different problem: a dense or gummy crumb is usually about fermentation timing and the bake, not the culture's health. Before you blame the starter, confirm it's actually at peak with the ready-to-bake signs, and check whether your hydration is the issue with the stiff vs liquid explainer.

The reason the same starter problem keeps recurring is that it's invisible: you can't see that the rise has been shrinking for three feeds, or that every stall happens when the kitchen drops below 20C. Logging each feed in Sourdough Tracker (rise height, smell, room temperature) turns a vague "it seems off" into a chart you can read. The verdict view even flags a slowing starter before it stalls, so you can feed it warmer before there's a problem at all.