I finally realized I was killing my sourdough starter with tap water

Honestly, I spent like 6 months wondering why my starter was always sluggish and never really bubbly. I'm in Phoenix so the water here is pretty hard, but I never thought much about it. Then I went to a friend's place in Flagstaff and used her filtered water for a batch, and the dough rose like crazy. Turns out the chlorine in my tap water was messing with the yeast the whole time. Now I leave a jug of water out overnight before I use it, and my loaves are way better. Has anyone else dealt with city water ruining their fermentation?

2 comments

2 Comments

phoenixb666d ago

Oh man, that's rough, but honestly it makes so much sense once you think about it. I feel your pain, I had the same struggle with my starter for months and it's so frustrating when you're putting in the effort and not seeing results. Yeah, dakota160 is right about chloramine being a beast to deal with too, I switched to a cheap Brita pitcher and it helped a ton for me. It's wild how much the water chemistry can throw off something that seems so simple like bread. Hope your starter perks up soon now that you know what's going on!

dakota1606d ago

Wait, is the chlorine actually the culprit here? I thought most municipal water systems use chloramine now (which doesn't off-gas the same way chlorine does), so leaving the water out overnight might not actually fix it if you have chloramine. I'm no expert, just someone who also dealt with sad starters in Phoenix until I started using bottled spring water from the grocery store. The hardness (calcium and magnesium) could be throwing things off too, not just the chlorine thing.