How much starter to keep?
I want to get a handle on my new starter. This was begun on April 1 2010 (1 month ago). My current starter is ~2 cups or so and I'm realizing I am throwing out a LOT of flour. I've seen some videos where folks pull out what look like 1 quart jars of starter (that seems like a Huge amount!).
On the opposite side of the quantity scale, I just read one page where the author described a 1:5:5 (Starter:water:flour) method she uses. That sounded reasonable, so I decided to follow her advice. Reading further, she said she discards all but 10grams of starter, then adds 50g each of water and flour. Since I just got my scale, and have never used metric weights, this sounded fine till I weighed out 10 g of starter.
10 grams looks like a very sad little puddle to start with so I didn't discard anything yet.
My two questions to you good folks, are...
1) How much starter should I keep on hand? I'm single and -most likely- will only be baking a 1-2 loaf recipe once or twice a week, if that.
2) What ratio is "best" 1:1:1, the 1:5:5 mentioned above or.....?