I tried to warm up my Sourdough Starter

Yesterday I worked on getting my Starter for Sourdough warmer. We only use the fireplace in the living room to heat, a space heater here or there for room that people are too cold in.

Winter is up and down where we live, I can’t breathe with blown heat (through the A/C system, heatpump+emergency electric heat) …. my sinuses clog up and it is awful.

I prefer to get warm with clothing and blankets.

Night have been below freezing this past week. It doesn’t take long for floors over crawl space or overhanging outside to become icy feeling.

Fireplace is nice, but a small area it deals with. Livingroom and Kitchen share the same floor, over the crawl space.

Overnight the kitchen gets very cold, and so the early days of my Starter, Dec 29, 2024 through to Jan 1, 2025 it wasn’t terribly cold, but following it has gotten colder and colder.

I used warm nearly hot water on a warming food mat to get it warmer yesterday afternoon. I got it up into very warm territory. I had put a lid ring for wide mouth mason jar in the ceramic dish of water and put my starter jar on top of that.

Took it off and wrapped it in a kitchen towel, then later that evening, I looked at it and decided to add more flour and water. Kept towel around it all night.

This am it looked a bit loose and sort of water around the edges, maybe it had risen a bit overnight, though it wasn’t risen at that point at all.

So I added 150g of flour, and less water, mixed it up, I started bubbling happily. 3+ hours later it had risen a bit … about 50ml …looking for at least 100ml more rising to make a record day. I’m hopeful with a niggling of doubt.

Today is 12th day. Very cold like 50 to 56 degrees F. at night in the kitchen. No one spot is warm enough.

My Sourdough Discard is really bubbly, I think it’s a pretty happy mix, and have used it to add to my Starter a couple times in the past few days.

I’m only using one jar to work on out of the fridge, and have a more whole spelt jar Discard in the fridge as well as my white spelt jar that is very happy.

Today I took both out one at a time and gave them some flour to thicken them, let them sit our awhile, then back to the fridge. Both appear to be decent backups in case something goes to wonky.

I had started the whole spelt from some of the white spelt discard to see if giving it half whole spelt would jump start it more. No, but it is more big bubbly now after some days.

I haven’t kept a journal, and this blog is too sparsely updated with this information to count as one very well.

At any rate, I’m trying to see about making a full sourdough active starter dinner rolls for tomorrow with the Stew I’m going to be making. I’ll also make a discard biscuit.

I feel like I need to double one of them. This is organization and I love that always loved that, but struggle due to ADHD stupid crap to stay on target.