Hi! Just found this website. Looking forward to exploring it! I have made my first batch of yeast using a recipe from another site. Potato water, adding sugar, and adding enough flour to stiffen. It took two full days to ferment and get bubbly on my counter with a cloth over my bowl. The instructions then stated I could take that mixture spread it thinly on a cookie sheet and let it dry out. My questions are....when I transferred the yeast onto the cookie sheet part of it was so watery and I let some of it drain into my sink. Also, it has a strong unattractive smell that I know must be the fermenting process! My daughter says it smells like old cheese! Lol Is it still safe to use with such a strong smell? It looks like the pictures I compared it to. Thanks for any help. I asked the same questions to the blogger who wrote about this recipe and drying it out then. No responses. I'm obsessed with this now and looking forward to experimenting in the future. Glad I found this site then. My main concern is that it is safe to use and for my family when I bake the bread!
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Hello Shawnee1707,
Welcome to the site. Hope your experience is a good one.
Not familiar with the method you started following but it sounds a little strange to me. And two days seems to be very short time to have anything like what might be a stable culture going. Usually you can count on it going through several phases of varying activity (and, sometimes, smell) before it stabilises and needing anything up to two weeks to be sure of a robust and relaible system.
I would recommend that you read and follow the SourDom Beginners Blog on this site - there is a link at the top right of the page.
However, with what you have, the first thing you might try is to see if your dried 'substance' reactivates when you add back flour and water. If it does thrive, then I would proceed with the SourDom method to get it stabilised. If it doesn't reactivate, then press on regardless and follow SourDom but it might take a bit longer to get going.
Let us know how you go and good luck with your projects.
Farinam