Why Can’t I Keep My Sourdough Starter Alive?

I don’t know what my problem is.

Over the span of about 2 years I have created, maintained, used... and then killed 5 different sourdough starters (I think... I lost count).

It usually begins the same: I’m amped about baking a loaf of sourdough bread. I can't explain how satisfying it is to pull a loaf out of the oven, crust crackling as it hits the cool air, house smelling like a bakery, and cut off that first slice. I always picture that moment when I create a new starter.

But after a few days of feeding, that vision wears off a bit. Three days in, the jar gets REALLY stinky—not good stinky, like room-temperature-can-of-puke stinky. Push through a few more days, though, and the smell levels out and you start to get some consistent activity after each feed. A week or so after that, and it's ready to go.

So I use it to mix up some dough, work with it over the span of a morning/afternoon, and eventually pop it in the oven.

SUCCESS!

“So good! OMG! I’m gonna do this every weekend!”

Fast-forward a week or two, et voilà! A moldy jar of sourdough starter.

Between the moment of indulgent sourdough bliss and the frustration of dumping that poor infested colony of yeast and bacteria in the trash, things happen. Life happens. And I know it’s cliché to lean on the “kids, amiright?” narrative, but that’s often how my mind fills that in-between space. The truth is, the busy and wild kid-stuff is not why those starters die (after all, the feed was always scheduled late at night, long after the kids go to bed).

A few years ago, I remember reading a blog post about cast iron by Shelby Vittek. (I know, this is not about cast iron, this is about bread. Stay with me.) The author talked about the ever-changing process of using and caring for her skillet as both an allegory for, and a physical means of working through, depression. Consistent use made a big difference, and sometimes that use stripped the seasoning on the pan, but with a bit of oil + heat and a few days-worth of use, the pan was in good shape again. You can usually see the evidence of those meals that destroyed some of that coating (or, frankly, not having the energy or desire to wash it until the next day... looking at you, Steve), even once it’s re-seasoned. But it works, and it works well.

Sourdough starters, for me, tend to fill that same allegory/coping mechanism role as her skillets. You may have seen those viral tweets about your friends who have started baking a lot of bread—”check-in with them, they’re depressed!”—and honestly... they’re funny because they’re true.

The feeling of creating something, working with and adjusting to its changes/needs based on the particular conditions, is cathartic. When it results in something sustaining for yourself and those around you, it adds a whole other level of fulfillment.

BUT... it’s a process. And here we run into the classic depression conundrum: the things that help sustain wellness the most are also the things that can be hardest to just. do. And then when you can’t get yourself in the headspace to do it, it sits there and marinates, and the longer it sits undone the harder it gets to just. do.

I hate even writing that process out. So frustrating.

And it’s here that I find some actual, productive ways of thinking about both my bread and my health. Answering the question that frames this entire post, “Why can’t I keep my sourdough starter alive?,” is not actually about the starter at all.

The care work needed to keep myself well is often just so hard. Failing to do those things is both too common and fodder for digging myself deeper into that hole. The care work needed to sustain a sourdough starter, as it turns out, is a kind of proxy for the care work needed to sustain myself. When I’m on top of it, having that physical reminder—outside myself—of how I am fulfilling those needs can be an important thing. When I’m not on top of it, when the starter gets loose and stinky with that layer of hooch on top typical of a colony that needs to be fed, even seeing it there on the counter is too much.

The care work needed to sustain a sourdough starter, as it turns out, is a kind of proxy for the care work needed to sustain myself.

So I “put it on the shelf,” as it were, where I don’t have to be reminded of every time I walk through the kitchen. As we all know though, putting it on the shelf doesn’t actually help—but it does help deal with the right-nowness of it.

I don’t have some kind of self-affirming, influencer-blogger kind of ending for this post, with a “this one mental hack can get you (and your starter) unstuck!” lesson to leave us all feeling better. That’s not how mental health works.

In the end, I’m OK with letting the starter go. It’s not a child (stop getting babysitters for your starter, it’s ridiculous), and it’s not irreplaceable (2 weeks, it’ll take. 2 weeks and you’ll have a workable starter from scratch). It also doesn’t actually represent me. So while having that thing, that something that helps ground me and remind me that the spiral of self-narrated paralysis can itself be “set on the shelf,” its survival and/or death isn’t actually tied to my own.