Mother/Starter?
I've been watching (way too many!) You Tubes on sourdough, and am coming to the conclusion that "starter" is used interchangeably with "mother". But I'm thinking there is a dif.
For the most part I see mainly references to starter - where a "master copy" is kept in the fridge (mother?) and for each bake a small amount is used and fed flour and water to make the amount needed for the recipe. This is allowed to raise to its peak, then used in the bread.
If there should be any (now starter) left - is this is saved - does it then become part of the existing "mother"?
I like the idea of not creating an endless flow of water/flour - discard - rinse - repeat... And just having the mother culture from which a portion is used to make a new batch of starter.
Am I close to 'getting' it? :-)
Yes! In the interest of efficiency and economy, I only keep about 1 or 2 tbsp of the mother culture. It lives in the fridge most of the time. When I want to make a larger volume of starter for baking, I pull it out of the fridge, add flour and water to the mother culture, let it ripen, take what I need to bake and stow the rest back into the fridge. So the mother is fed/refreshed and starter culture ripened all at the same time with little to no discard.
So anything leftover from the bake starter becomes part of the mother?
I guess by keeping such a small amount of mother you could just do the feed for the needed starter in that container and when used for the bake there will be enough left to keep the mother alive. Does make things much easier!
Yep, you got it!
I think the major You Tube teacher/providers need to do a little clarification video. The constant blurring and generalization of the word "starter" is bringing a lot of false ideas to the new bakers reading/viewing (and clinging to every word!) these (otherwise) very informative and helpful teachers.
We need to get a movement afoot to ban the concept of "discard"!
If one makes a batch of starter for a bake - a SMALL portion of that is saved in the fridge. It has all the current culture and growth. Next bake - take that small portion and feed to size as needed - and put in the mix. There will be a starter left - this is now the "mother" as it contains the "latest" growth of yeast - which can 'doze' in the fridge - ready to be fed next time and have the next generation of "yeasties" added to the brew.
Jack Sturgess (https://www.bakewithjack.co.uk/) of "Bake with Jack" fame is a great proponent of this concept and has vid on this (think it is No. 71).
I agree Alan856, I don't see much reason for discard at all. Granted, there are some useful things that can be done with the discard, but for a lazy baker like me, I don't usually bother with those projects. I doubt people in ye olde days wasted pounds of flour to keep their starter going. A pinched off portion of yesterday's dough became today's bread starter. I don't see a reason to mess with that approach. :)
I wholeheartedly agree. For me, discarding is silly and seems to be one of those bits of sourdough mythology that gets passed down and it has become accepted principle, but there's really no need for this to be the case.
Sure, if you're motivated enough to come up with recipes to use the discard, more power to you. But I'm lazy and like to be more intentional with what I'm baking. Fundamentally, I refuse to be a slave to a pile of flour, water and all the goodies that are growing in that mix.
There's any number of ways out there to not discard starter, but mostly they're all based on not needing to feed a counter-kept starter every day. Avoid the explosion in starter volume, keep only what you need to get the next batch going.