Dark layer of dough on top

Hello Tali

I have had this sort of thing ages ago.  Not sure what causes it, but somebody else might.  I'd suggest pour off the 'hooch' and remove the dark layer as best you can and then feed the beast.

Give it a couple of feeds and provided that it is good and active and smells right then 'Bob's your uncle' and back to baking.

Regards

Farinam

I stirred it back in, kept it out of the fridge, and fed it a couple of days morning and night.

It's 99.99% likely mold. Give a quick whiff and see if it stinks and has mold spores. If so, throw it out!

I usually freeze a couple sourdough starters in my freezer just in case if my mother sourdough starter goes bad.

I found this:

Your sourdough starter may grow mold if it is not cared for properly. If you open your starter container and it is covered with mold, scrape off the mold on the surface, expose the clean, mold-free starter, and with a clean spoon, get a little scoop of untainted starter. Throw out the rest of your starter, and clean your container thoroughly. You may want to even pour boiling water in it to make sure the mold does not survive. Put the salvaged sourdough starter in the clean container and feed it. The smallest amount of sourdough starter still has growing bacteria, and will soon "eat" the new flour, and you will have your sourdough starter again.

here:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4715668_care-sourdough-starter.html

Seems as though it shouldn't be life threatening, probably safer than E-Coli

Tali it's safe to eat, and I agree with you it's not mold.   I cannot remember who it was here on the forum went on vacation for a month and his starter wasn't fed all the time he was gone.. He came home fed it a couple of times and made some wonderful bread.   I am doing the same, I've made 6 loaves of bread already, and I'm not dead. 

I wouldn't worry about it, make some bread and enjoy it.....

Hope

Just stir it back in and feed it - the hooch is a sign that the creatures are starving and haven't moved around in the culture sufficiently to keep it mixed. You do need to keep the culture covered, whether in or out of the fridge, to minimise mould spores and insect visits and so forth - the yeast and bacteria in the culture don't actually need a lot of oxygen so you don't have to worry about them suffocating or anything. I'm not sure what the hooch is, but given how it smells it's probably various alcohol byproducts and possibly some dead yeast and bacteria cells. No worse than lees in a bottle of wine.

It shouldn't matter - the colonies will win out in the end. If you're worried, you could just leave it a couple more feed cycles before you use it for baking, to make sure you have a healthy population of desirables. The dark dough was probably just a layer of oxidated dough with a high population of dead yeast and dead bacteria, so all you need is a sufficient population of live ones to have a working culture.

Tali

As long as it is active and smells good (as distinct from really rotten) then there should be no problems.

Look forward to your continued success.

Farinam