The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Small starter?

JessicaW3's picture
JessicaW3

Small starter?

So this whole idea of throwing so much flour away as I try to build my starter is just really hard for me. I keep trying to use up the discard (I have made and frozen about 35 full size sourdough waffles in the past 36 hours), but this is just getting ridiculous. 

Is is there a drawback to building up a much smaller starter? I already cut my starter in half once from the instructions I'm using (57g starter, 170g flour, 127g water). Can I reduce that farther as long as I keep the ratios the same without negatively affecting the "health" (not sure what the right term is) of the starter? Or should I just buck up and deal with the waste?

baybakin's picture
baybakin

many people on here keep a small amount of mother starter, so there is little waste.

I keep about 20-50g of mother starter at any given time when I'm not baking a bread. When I remove the starter from the fridge, I feed it 3 times over about 24 hours, without any throw away, then use the resulting levian for bread (this is a 100% hydration starter), I usually calculate this out so that what remains after the final dough mix is about 20-50g, this goes back in the fridge for storage.

JessicaW3's picture
JessicaW3

Okay, thanks! When you were building your starter was it that small or have you reduced it down after you had it established? Mine is only about 10 days old. 

David Esq.'s picture
David Esq.

Jessica, I don't think it should matter whether people started small and stayed small, or started large and reduced it down after it was established. 

By this, I mean, since you've already started started with a larger quantity, you can easily reduce it when you are ready to maintain a smaller amount of starter.

I am sure some people have successfully started with a smaller quantity of flour and water and stuck with maintaining a small quantity of starter without ever having produced anything for discard. But, in the overall scheme of things if you are only creating the starter over the course of a few weeks and then reducing and using the reduced starter for years to come, you've not really discarded all that much, especially if you used that discard for pancakes. :)

cranbo's picture
cranbo

I usually maintain about 100g of starter (works out to ~ 1/3 cup of flour per feed), then build successively as suggested by babybakin and others on TFL. 

Once your starter is healthy and strong, you can reduce it to maintaining a small amount. Is your starter healthy and strong at 10 days? It depends.

Some others on TFL have reported problems maintaining less than 25g of starter; IMO you're better off maintaining a slightly larger amount. 

 

 

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

schedule.  It stays in the fridge foe up to 6 weeks or more and i use some of it each week to make a levain for that weeks bake.  If I'm only baking one loaf a week i use the smaller amount if I bake two loaves then I use the larger amount.   When  it gets down ta small amount I use what is left to build the starter back.

The key is to use the 3 stage build where the first 2 stages are 5 hours and if the starter can't double after the 2nd 4 hour stage you toss the 2nd feeding and do it again.  Then once you make the 3rd feeding you refrigerate it after it rises 25%. You only want to do this after your starter is mature - say a month old,

Hppy baking

Feeding1st 1st 2nd2nd 3rd3rd  
seedflourwatertotalflourwatertotalflourwatertotalhyd
10101030202070401612665.7%
88824161656321310166.1%
6661812124224107666.7%
bikeprof's picture
bikeprof

40g of 100% hydration starter is what I keep (in a wide mouth 1/2 pint mason jar and plastic lid).

to refresh, I discard all but what is probably around 1 tsp clinging to bottom of the jar (I never measure or worry much about it), add 20g flour and 20g water.

to use a lively, mature starter (say for a batch of Tartine country loaves), I take out the required tbsp of starter and add it to the levain, toss all but  ~tsp of what remains of the starter, and again add 20g flour and 20g water

*as a number of folks will do, you can keep all discards for a while and use them to make crackers too, if you really want to eliminate waste (or go down to 20-30g total).

barryvabeach's picture
barryvabeach

I am stingier than most, when I refresh my starter, I keep 5 grams of starter, and add 10 grams water and 10 grams flour if it is going into the fridge to rest for the week.   For pizza, I only need about 6 grams of starter, so this works out for me.  If you are making loaves, the only downside is that you need to include enough feedings to build up to the size you need for the next loaf. 

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

The only reason I keep more is to make sure I have enough starter properly fed to get 6-8 weeks of storage out of it even as I bake with it every week.  36 F promotes LAB over yeast 3 to 1 but,  the reproductive rates are so slow at 36 F, it takes a long time to get substantially more LAB than yeast in the starter to promote sour over rise .

There are many folks that don't keep a starter at all per se.  They just hold back a small portion of this weeks bake and use the old dough for next weeks bake.

Happy Baking

DavidEF's picture
DavidEF

During the summer (as it is now) I can literally scrape out my bowl, leaving no measurable amount, then add 50g each of flour and water and it will peak in about 12 hours at room temperature. Warmer temps make starter more active. That's why I refrigerate my starter.

If I feed 1:2:2 like you do, and leave it out at room temp, I would have to feed about every 3 or 4 hours. If I didn't discard, I could make 5g into 25g, which would become 125g, then after 9-12 hours, 625g of starter. I could stop at the 125g amount, take 120g of it to make bread, and feed the 5g again. I could have two loaves of bread baked by the end of the same day.

Funny thing is, if I take 300g of starter out of the fridge and mix it into dough right away, it still takes 9-12 hours to have two loaves of baked bread! So, the only benefit I get from keeping larger amounts of starter around is to not have to go through the build cycle every 3 or 4 hours. However, sometimes that is a huge benefit, because I may need to let dough rise all day while I'm at work, so I can bake in the evening. Therefore, I do keep hundreds of grams of starter in the fridge, but it only gets fed when I bake, so there is still no waste.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

this whole idea of throwing so much flour away as I try to build my starter is just really hard for me

It's very wasteful. Discarding immature starter just as the microorganisms are trying to colonize and diluting your starter with fresh flour is insane, especially before the starter has matured.

I don't "feed" my starter per se. Eight hours before baking I use my refrigerated, mature starter to inoculate a flour-and-water slurry. No starter is discarded in the process. The inoculated slurry is ready to bake after 8 hours of inoculation time, ideally at 86° F. The unused portion is added to the old starter and refrigerated until next time. It works great.

Think of it this way: big sourdough bakeries deal in batches weighing hundreds of pounds. They can't afford to throw flour away. Flour costs money. It would be too labor intensive to "feed" their starter (known as a "mother sponge") 2, 3 or 4 times per day, and they can't make hundreds of pounds of sourdough pancakes every day.

So learn from the pros. It is possible to avoid all that waste if starter is properly managed. Refreshing starter multiple times per day whether you bake or not is not the way.

David Esq.'s picture
David Esq.

I agree, that throwing away flour is a waste.

I disagree that that professional bakers can't feed their starters multiple times a day. They can certainly feed them frequently and not discard (or make pancakes) because they are baking bread with their fed starter, no?

ElPanadero's picture
ElPanadero

As per other comments. When first building/creating a new starter discard does not matter and I personally would use the discard at that stage for any baking as at that stage there is still a mix of various bacteria and organisms in the mix. Once the starter is stable, mature, smells right and is rising correctly then I would just keep a tiny amount like 30g-50g as my mother and then use preferments any time I wanted to bake.

doughooker's picture
doughooker

I disagree that that professional bakers can't feed their starters multiple times a day. They can certainly feed them frequently and not discard (or make pancakes) because they are baking bread with their fed starter, no?

It's not that they can't; they don't for the reasons I gave. Not just "professional bakers", big bakeries dealing in 500-pound batches and which turn out over 1,000 loaves per day. This is documented on TFL.

JessicaW3's picture
JessicaW3

Thanks for all the input.  I will keep trying to figure out what to do with the discard until it's nice and stable and then reduce it down :).

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

or with the next feeding reducing to about 20g starter to feed.  Keeping it covered prevents it from drying out.  You can do other things with the starter other than food.  You can dilute it and pour it down the drain or into a compost bin or container.  The bacteria and yeast can work on making your pipes cleaner or your compost more active.  

Your starter is at an age where it should have a routine to fit your baking schedule.  How often do you plan to bake with it and about how much bread do you bake?  What is your climate?

valereee's picture
valereee

This is exactly what I was wondering -- why the heck are we maintaining 150+ grams of starter when we seldom need anywhere near that much to start a recipe and we're throwing out 100 grams of it every time we feed it? It's so easy to increase your starter from 50 grams to 150 grams in a single feeding. Then you can use up to 100 grams, stick the remaining 50 back in the fridge, and you've got no waste. Why are we not all doing this? There must be some reason.