Oh Glorious Sourdough Starter!!!

First of all, Nursing sourdough starter is like babysitting. It never fucking ends. Since I had bought starter (Thanks King Arthur!) for My and Tim's tanked pizza adventure, I finally decided to try to nurse it back to health after letting it dry out in my fridge for damn close to 2 years.















"Classic"

That's the jar it came out of. Notice it says in fairly obvious lettering:
"PLEASE FEED ME"
Hmmm, that's funny, because when I read that I got:
"Please dump me in your refrigerator and fucking forget about me for 2 years until you actually try to do something with me."
So I decided to revive it.

After doing my usual half assed half interested, not really paying attention search on the interblog thingy, I decided that I had read enough to devise an acceptable method for reviving said starter. Here's how it goes. '
Basically add warm water to starter.
Dump starter in big ass bowl, and add flour and water every 6-8 hrs for several days until the starter quadruples in volume in under 8 hours.

THE RESULTS SO FAR.....

So I read on another interblognet page that somebody had been able to revive their starter after letting it sit unfed for 18 months. Being encouraged by the probably bullshit words of a total stranger, I decided to try it. So I added 1/2 cup of warm water to the 2 yr old starter, then transferred it to a big bowl, where I added one cup flour and let it sit for 12 hrs.

Nothing happened.

But, I soldiered on, refreshing with warm water and flour for going on 5 days now, and that starter is nowhere near quadrupling in volume.
Here are the results after a few days.















Nothing's happening


I let it sit out for a few days longer, and wouldn't you know it, it started to smell like vinegar! So I guess the lactobacilli that actually metabolize the gluten and produce acetic acid (vinegar, hence "sour" dough") were still alive and kicking. The yeast I'm not so sure about.
So after some more half assed "research" courtesy of the interblognet, I read that I should throw out most of it and keep feeding it. Well I did. And I left it to rot on the counter for 2 days.
But it rose a little! So I transferred it, minus crusty top, to a bowl it hadn't been festering in for 5 days.

So after going through a good portion of a 5 lb bag of flour and a week on the counter at room temp, here's what I get:















WOW!

So do I have a refreshed sourdough starter? Who the fuck knows? But I do have the warm sense of satisfaction that comes with a job kinda done. Or not. I'm not sure, because the dough won't rise. It rises a little, and it smells sour, so I'll keep it on the counter until:
A: I either get sick of throwing more flour at it and wasting my time with it. OR
B: Throw some yeast in there and see if I can come up with something. OR
C: My girlfriend tells me to throw the sour smelling ball of shit out.
We will see.



UPDATE: I gave up on the starter fiasco. I DID happen to keep a little that's still in the refrigator, so we'll see...