Newbie tutorials or videos for cultivating yeast/starters
Hi. I'm a little new here, and have been recently introduced to the joy of baking my own bread. So far I've done jalapeno cheese bread, french bread, and cinnamon rolls (which were 9 shades of yum).
As I fear I have become hopelessly addicted to amateur baking as a hobby, I'd like to start expanding on my basic skill set. I was interested in finding a tutorial about cultivating my own bread or cake yeasts. Unfortunately the tutorials I have found so far have been a bit lacking. They were written well and were informative, but when I'm a newbie at something I tend to gravitate towards 'hapless newbie' territory.
As I understand the cultivation process, to make my own renewable stock of yeast, I mix up flour sugar and water into a batter, and leave it to sit until the yeast forms. Then I take part of this batter and mix it in with my dough. What I'm wondering is as follows.
1.) Is there a reliable conversion chart to know how much of the batter or started to use as a substitution for store bought yeast?
2.) When I take out a portion of my batter, do I just fill the jar back up with a comparable amount of water, sugar and flour and just keep it growing? And where do I store it when not in use? Do I have to refrigerate, or do I keep it at room temperature? And how will I know if it goes bad?
Any helpful advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Also if there's a video series on youtube or an instructable or something that provides a comprehensive guide to this that would be great too. Thanks :)