Well, it happened and I guess I was warned. I fed the sourdough starter a few days ago and it looked a little off, not the uniform ivory color that it usually expresses. Initially, I thought it might be due to my kickstarting it with a little rye flour a few weeks back to give it a bit more vim and vigor as the goo seemed to languish. Last night, there was a certain faint smell in the kitchen and I refrained from feeding it, thinking that some things are inevitable and it would only be a waste of good all-purpose flour if things were to turn bad.

Things are inevitable. Things do turn bad. But not always. Always there is hope. As a species, or maybe it is a personality type, we hope a slight bit of legerdemain will magically fix things while we sleep. And sometimes it does! Luck really is the intersection where preparation meets opportunity. If you are looking for magic, you are looking in the wrong direction most of the time.

Yep. The pink death descended in the night and covered my starter. It wasn’t the original one from early covid days. Actually, it was; I’d somehow saved a batch of discard in the refrigerator and was able to get it going again last year or whenever it happened before. This time, I don’t have a backup, so it all went into the trash.  Sorry that I didn’t take a photo to share, but you have a good imagination and can guess what bubbly pink brownish slime looks like.

Oh well. Maybe I will take a break from making all my own sandwich bread? Maybe I will try to make a new starter from scratch? I don’t know, a break sounds nice. And there are quite a few lovely looking loaves out there in the world.