Using starter out of the fridge
HI all,
I feel pretty confident that the question I am going to ask has been asked, and answered, maybe even many times, and I have probably read the answer somewhere on this forum but for some reason my brain is not comprehending, so I am going to ask you all to bear with me, and pretty pretty please answer me again. So, I have a good starter. It smells nice and tangy, and even now, after taking it from the fridge where it has been for the last week to 10 days, left to its own little devices, it has nice bubbles and that lovely sourdough tangy smell. Tomorrow I want to try again to work with my recipe, but I am trying to figure out the proper (perhaps best is the better word) to get the starter ready. What I THINK I should do is: take one TBSP starter, mix with 1 cup water and some weight of flour...and whisk it all together, let it get all good air and then let it rise/double, get active. Now, the recipe calls for 1 cup of starter. As I think about this again, I think, no, that will give me MORE starter than I need. Part of what is throwing me is that the recipe is in volume (which I now know is not the best way to measure for bread, but there you go, it is what it is)but I have sort of set my mind to weight...so trying to figure out how to get 1 cup of starter from 1 TBSP of starter is just driving me crazy. It seems to me that the 1 cup of water will be absorbed by the 1 cup of flour and still be one cup..yet. there is a little teensy part of my brain that says I am crazy for thinking this, yet can't find a reason why I am wrong. Honestly, I do not really need to know WHY I am wrong, just IF I am wrong. Our Central Air is still out, and it is only supposed to be in the low 80s this weekend, so I want to bake some bread while there is a chance that I will not cause the members of my family to have a heat stroke by remaining in the house while I bake bread!
Also, for some reason, when I was getting my starter going, I was convinced I read that I should use 1:1:1 ratios by weight of starter, water and flour at each feeding, and discarding half of the starter before mixing. This, I believed would give me a starter that was 100% hydration. Did my mind make up these figures? Did I actually read something like this? ( I spent so many days reading through all the information, and also looking at some other sites, I forget where I saw what information!) Thank you in advance for all of you lovely people who know this stuff like- well, like I know how to talk to a demented old lady who thinks she has rubber bands tying up her intestines!
Sandy