I have some ww starter, that I haven't fed in almost a year. It was in the fridge and was looking kind of... Well, ugly. The liquid was on top and was all dark and the body didn't look that hot either.  Finally, I decided to see if I can revive it. So I opened the lid and was very surprised when it didn't smell bad. It actually smelled kind of yeasty and sweet. Almost like honey without any of the rotten smell that I expected to find. So I fed it with some King Arthur ww flour and it doubled in size in approximately 2 hours (at room temperature). Can I use this starter? Does it matter that it has been neglected for so long? Thanks for your advice!

Hi - beginning sourdough baker - though quite a bit of commercial yeast experience

If I am trying to listen and observe my starter, for when to feed, do I feed it when it has doubled and seems fresh and alive?  Or wait until sometime later, when it apparently will fall and/or get hooch on top?  My question is regarding regular feeding, either to keep it going, or to rebuild it to then use it to inoculate leaven.

Thanks for any information.

I'm doing the best I can to follow Richard Bertinet's sourdough method set out in "Crust." One thing I'm quite confused about is the volume of ferment. I bake about once per week. Bertinet suggests you should have 800g ferment; take out 400g for two loaves, and then refresh with an equal mass of water (i.e., 400g) and twice the mass of white bread flour (i.e., 800g). So after taking out the 400g and feeding the ferment, I have 1200g of mixture. If I kept this pattern up, the ferment would just keep getting larger and larger.

Is there an undocumented assumption that you will be throwing out 400g every week in addition to the 400g that you take out to bake with? Or is the mass supposed to magically decrease? Or are Bertinet's measurements just wrong in the book? I'm wondering if I'm missing something obvious here.

Thanks in advance for any tips/suggestions/advice!

Hi

Im new to the forum and bread making, but I worked for a guy at the weekend making pizzas and he gave me the left over dough. He said feed it tonight and every few days with flour and sugar or honey and it'll survive as long as you want it, just break off bits when you want it.

So far its lasted a week and it seems fine (made pizza bases with it yesterday and they were lovely), but he didn't mention ammounts or anything else, just pretty much what i've written here. I am fascinated by this idea and want my dough to live as long as possible. So any advise or tips would be grateful. Also advise on what to look for if it dies?

Many thanks

Sam

OK, all you experienced people --

Why is there such a big difference between sourdough starters in old school, home cook cookbooks and starters in books and on sites for "prosumer" bakers (i.e. dang serious hobbyists)? In particular, why do the old school instructions for maintaining a starter most often recommend using (or discarding) at least one cup a week, and feeding once a week (or after use). (The starter's left out 24 hours after feeding, but then refrigerated.) The prosumer version is, as I understand it, to discard about a cup and do feedings every day? About one sourdough loaf a week would be just perfect for my needs, so I'm interested in methods that fit that schedule, and minimize waste.

Also, what's the advantage of a 100% hydration (i.e. measured by weight) versus a 166% hydration (i.e. measured by volume). Don't they both work?

Thanks for your help.

P. S. I'm in the midst of trying culturing wild yeast, but I'm going to see if it will work "old school" -- feeding and using/discarding (at least) one cup a week. (The old fashioned cook books always include directions to start with commercial yeast. I'm trying to see if the methods will maintain wild yeast, too.) The only discard I've done is getting rid of half on the third day during the initial growing process. So far, it seems to be going well -- a nice assortment of bubbles, a brief stinky period, but now mildly sour. (This may have something to do with this being August in California's Gold Country. Sourdough is "in the air" around here.)

I have a starter going, but I think I'm going to goof it up so here's my question.

All the discussions on firm starters and 100 hydration starters etc got me thinking....

In order to create enough starter to do something with, I added equal grams of water/flour to the starter, but I didn't weigh the starter that I was adding to before I fed it.

I have lots of bubbles and it's quite obvious that it's working  well, but I just added 100g of water and 100g of flour to it to increase the quantity.  Having not weighed the original starter (which I believe to be at least 2x the amount of added flour/water - what am I doing to the life expectancy ond/or hydration - if anything?

I believe I understand that if I had 100g of starter and then added 100g flour/100gwater - I would have 200g of a 100% hydration starter.  But if I had 100g of starter and added 200g of flour/water - it might be too much and have a negative effect or change the hydration?.

Conversely  by adding to the starter at a  ratio of 100g(starter) to 50g water and 50g flour - will I be starving the starter?

I guess my question - in summary is - to get more starter at 100% - do I always need to be adding a minimum of 1:1:1 which if beginning with  100 grams, then feeding with 100g would then be 200 to which I would then again add 1:1:1 resulting in 400g?

Am I on the right track or am I overthinking this again?

Aside from this - my starter looks good and smells good.  I'd like to use it but now I have to research out how to determine at what point I can do that and what hydration I have.  If it's not the 100% - how do I fix it?  Just measure out the total amount of starter and add equal parts of flour/water to that..

I'm leaving it out on the counter.  At what point can I refrigerate it so I don't have to feed it twice a day?

I've divided it into 2 containers so that I can experiment with them.  I'm feeding them both.

The topic has been discussed about how often to feed starters,(refrigerated or not)  but I hadn't seen anything on the minimum amount required to feed them.  It's probably here somewhere, but so far I haven't found it.

I really appreciate all of you putting up with my never ending questions. 

-Susie

Hi everyone. I'm new here and I want to start out by saying thanks for all the terrific information on this site. Thanks to you I am now sourdough-obsessed. lol. I wonder if all you sourdough experts could help me with a question I have.

I'm trying to figure out a feeding schedule and ratio for my 6-week-old starter that isn't too inconvenient for me or too unhealthy for the starter. I'd like to maintain a once-a-day feeding schedule at 75% hydration - once a day because that fits my schedule best, and 75% hydration because that's the level at which I feel I can best tell what shape my starter is in (I get a nice rise and fall at 75% - too thin and it doesn't rise, too thick and I'm afraid I won't be able to tell when it's overripe).

My question is, what is the smallest amount of starter I can get away with to inoculate my maintenance starter? In bwraith's blog post "Maintaining a 100% Hydration White Flour Starter," he says that he uses 5 grams of old starter to inoculate 20 grams of water and 25 grams of flour. Judging from the pictures of the bread he bakes, that seems to work just fine. But how much lower is it possible to go? 2 grams? 1 gram? 1/2 gram? At some point, if I remember correctly from biology 101 more years ago than I care to admit, the number of critters in the old starter will be so small that they might not contain whatever particular variant of yeast/bacteria that's responsible for making the starter taste like it does. As I rather like the taste of the bread I'm getting from my starter right now, I'd hate to inoculate with so small an amount that I risk having it change on me just because I used 1 gram of old starter instead of 4 or 5.

I'm no microbiologist, and I know some here are, so please correct me if I'm wrong about that. Or maybe there are so many zillions of organisms in a gram of starter that there's nothing to worry about. At any rate, has anyone tried using tiny amounts like 1 gram or even less for any length of time? If so, what were the results, both for the health and the distinctive flavor characteristics of the starter? I'm tempted to split my starter into several batches and compare the results doing 1/2, 1, and 2-gram inoculations for a week or so, but I don't know if I could sustain having to coddle 3 starters for that long.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi,

I have been maintaining my starter in a bit of a different way than the 1:2:2 formula usually suggested.

Instead of discarding when I haven't used some starter, I just add equal amounts of flour/water to the starter.  This is usually ~4 oz. each.   Since I usually refresh the starter and use recipes with large amounts of preferment, I haven't run into the problem of the ever-growing starter.  It still maintains well in my 1L jar.  

However, I was wondering if this would cause a problem with balance of organisms or some other issues like that.  

So far, it always performs very well and the taste is good, if a little on the not-so-sour side (my preference).  BTW, I keep a 100% hydration starter since it's easiest to calculate from if other hydration levels are needed.

Any comments are very welcome.

Thanks,

MommaT

I had a couple of questions about working with the starter from SourdoLady's post on this page:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/233/wild-yeast-sourdough-starter