Starter - My First Sourdough Loaf and Maintenance Questions
Hi All:
Thanks for several members on here in a previous post I was able to rehabilitate a start that wasn't taking off. It eventually looked as if it were taking off and I decided to bake my first loaf with it. Pic attached. Interesting experience, I have some troubleshooting to do on it ... as you can see the loaf spread wider than rose. But that's all OK for now. The taste was pretty good and the texture seemed very good. It will improve as I continue to feed my starters and learn more about my recipes, I am sure.
So, now that I have an active starter - at room temperature - and I am feeding each day. Basically, the routine goes like this: In the morning I scoop of discard leaving about 40g of starter. I then add 80g flour and 80g water to it. Let it sit at about 82*F for the day. It will rise throughout the day and by evening but quite frothy and risen. Actually, last evening it blew the top off the glass jar.
Anyway, my main question is how do I maintain this starter? Do I just keep doing what I am doing and bake with it as needed? I guess my concern is, there isn't very much starter I am maintaining. If I want to bake a loaf that uses a significant portion of starter - how do I multiply? Do I simply save and feed the discard, say, weekly? Or can I pull out a small portion of starter (20g) and feed that without discarding over and over again until it multiplies and is properly active? What are the rules! Ha.
Thanks all.
Anthony, nice looking loaf. If you ask 1,000 bakers, you will get 2,000 answers on how to properly maintain a starter - so there are no rules. One truth is that there is a ton of activity in 1 gram of starter ( yes I said 1 gram - I have gotten down to that little, and still built it up to a usable amount in a few feedings). I deplore waste, so the size of my normal starter is around 10 to 15 grams, though sometimes even smaller.
Yes you can feed without discarding, which is sometimes also referred to as refreshing a starter. For some recipes, I determine the amount I need for the final dough, then divide by 3, assuming I am using a 1:1:1 ( starter, water, flour ) for the refresh, and that tells me that the night before I need that much on hand. Using numbers just for example, say I am using 100 grams of starter in my final dough on Wednesday morning, that means that Tuesday night , I need about 35 grams of starter ( because my last refresh with be 35 starter, 35 water , 35 flour, so that Wed morning I will have the 100 I need, and a little left over to refresh and go back in the fridge. ) If I wanted to refresh twice before baking, then I need 13 grams of starter on Tuesday morning, which will yield 35 plus a little left over on Tuesday night. If I wanted to refresh 3 times, that means I need 5 grams of starter on Mon night. Hope that was clear enough.
I have a fairly dependable starter. What I do is that if I leave it on the counter, I feed it 1:1:1 BY WEIGHT 2x a day.
So if I have 50g of starter, I'll feed it 50g flour and 50g water twice a day. When I feed, I scoop out the mature starter until i have 50g left, then feed the given amounts.
Generally though, I keep my starter in the fridge until I want to bake.
This is my routine:
*It may be helpful to read this all the way through, because it sort of circles around in its process.
Take starter out of the fridge the day BEFORE I want to bake. Let it warm up and do its thing. Time your baking schedule out so that you have 12 hours for your starter to sit at room temperature, then feed it, then bake.
About 10-12 hours I want to begin to form my dough, I'll feed my starter. I usually go with a dough calling for 200g starter, and for my starter at least, I can feed it about any amount GREATER than 1:1:1 (Such as 1:2:2 for example) and in 12 hours, it will have turned the flour and water into mature, ripe starter.
What I mean is, if I only have 30g of starter, but I need 200g for my dough, I'll do some simple math:
200-30=170; BUT I also need some starter to have left over after I mix my dough. So I'll feed with a new amount of flour/water GREATER than 170g---there is no rule here as long as the feed isn't too much. I'd say 1:4:4 would be too much, not impossible but you risk not creating as ripe a starter in 10-12 hours.
Let's just make it easy--if I have 30g ripe starter and I need 200g starter, I'll just add 100g each of flour/water, and that will yield 230g starter.
I'll mix it up, wait 10-12 hours, use my 200g and have 30g left over.
With my 30g left over, I will feed it a healthy feed, usually 1:1:1.
I feed it 1:1:1 (now I have 90g starter--write this on my jar for next time).
This is where I make it easy: I let that freshly fed starter sit out on the counter for 1 hour, then pop it in the fridge.
After 1 hour, the yeast will have had a good chance to get active and do its thing. I may see no rise, but I know its living.
Once in the fridge, it can stay for a long time; 1 week is the general rule, though you'll see people who say it'll live for months. I believe them.
When I want to bake again, I remove it form the fridge, let it sit for the 12 hours I stated above; it doesn't need feeding at this moment-it has fresh food.
Scroll up, and follow directions again...