Starter Scent Stages

It’s important to familiarize yourself with the stages of your starter through smell.

Stage One: When your starter has been freshly fed, it should smell like wet flour. Basically not much.

Stage Two: After three or four hours, you’ll see bubbles. You should be able to smell yeasty, floral notes. Nothing will smell sour at this stage. That comes later. This is the stage when I prefer to use my starter.

Stage Three: After anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours, if you remove the lid and smell your starter, you’ll get a burst of carbon dioxide, like opening a carbonated beverage. It will have a boozy, beer-ish, sour smell, which means it has run out of food and stopped reproducing. That’s what a healthy starter smells like.