reducing waste for sourdough

Welcome to the club. You have recognized the most common complaint about Ken Forkish’s methods, posted here by many novice loafers in the past.

Forget his quantities. Just prepare only as much levain at every stage of your process as you need to inoculate the next stage, including the final stage where what’s left over will seed the series of starter refreshments that will precede your next bake.

Of course dozens of loafers have devised, posted and enjoyed a variety of uses for left over levain. But judicious starter management avoids most or all (in the case of NMNF starters) waste. 

All that said, there is a theoretical benefit to large levain volumes in terms of ultimate bread flavor. But the benefit realized justifies the cost to only the very few capable of discerning such subtle nuances. 

Happy baking,

Tom

I'm a novice and I was in your shoes some three short months ago. I still haven't gotten my bread exactly right either, but I have learned a few things...

Scrapings method: First, check out this video of Bake with Jack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6YpNCUYYQ

That's your end goal—only using the scrapings in the jar to create your levain. That said, you're probably going to have extra even if you do your best to go no-waste. This is not a bad thing, because you could make a mistake and have to redo a levain and if you used up all your starter...what then? So. Wait till things are solidly underway before discarding any starter/levain, and don't be afraid of a little extra. It just doesn't have to be so very much as in the Flour, etc. book.

Dehydrated Starter: To be on the super safe side, you should use some of that extra—when mature and at it's best—to make some dehydrated starter. Store away the dehydrated stuff. Then you can easily remake your starter if you do run out—or if the starter you have become contaminated and has to go. You can also send this dehydrated starter to friends. 

https://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2015/05/01/putting-sourdough-starter-hold/

This doesn't solve the problem of waste, but it solves it for one of those times. Other ways to get rid of extra starter...pancakes or brownies. 

https://www.bakefromscratch.com/sourdough-discard-brownies/

Refrigerate Starter: I assume you know this (especially if you just watched the "Bake with Jack" video), but unless you're planning on making daily loaves of bread, you might as well refrigerate your starter—that is, your mature and ready to make bread starter. Just follow Jack's advice up there. 

Starter: One of the most important things I learned is that starters and levain and often bread have ratios. 1:1:1 means that whatever the amount of starter, you add the same amount flour and water. So, 30g starter, 30g flour, 30g water. 

Turns out, this 1:1:1 ratio is great for starters. Especially in the early stages. And, in fact, you can use that ratio and only that ratio to feed your starter always if you want (like if you're not putting it into the refrigerator). Works great, especially if you use half rye, half bread flour (starters love rye).  

Levain: Levain is super starter. It's starter that says "Shazam!" and bulks up, usually with a half-bread, half-wheat flour mix.  Why? The levain has to carry a heavy load for several hours; half wheat, half bread = lots of protein. 

For this reason (that it has to be superpowered) I would recommend avoiding recipes with levains that are 1:2:2 or 1:4:4, especially if they're 5-6 hour levains (make in the morning, create bread in the afternoon type things). I learned this the hard way. I made levains that way and they barely bubbled up. I got better results (pretty amazing levain-success-wise) with Chad Robertson's overnight levain: 1:10:10. Make evening before and you'll have a bubbly, beautiful levain in the morning.

Make enough of that 1:10:10 to take care of what's needed in the bread recipe, yet leave you enough for the next go around in the scrapings. Into the refrigerator...repeat as necessary. 

Jars and containers: Weigh all jars and containers and have a list of those weights. So after you dump out the levain, you'll know how much you have left in the jar—just subtract its weight. Same if you add something to a container but forgot to zero out the container's weight before you added it.

Flour Water Salt Yeast: FYI: I seem to really that most if not all the recipes in this book contain yeast. Technically, you shouldn't need yeast if your starter is lively and strong enough, and the idea of such artisanal breads is to use only starter...but honestly, I've had issues on that score, so maybe you should stick to adding the yeast :-\  

Stickiness: A short warning I learned the hard way...I don't know if you've had this problem, but I had an issue at the pre-shape stage. My dough was molten sticky, like glue. Stuck to everything. That's not good. Your dough will be sticky—but it should "release" from whatever it sticks to without leaving much behind. Like from your board or scraper. How to avoid this?At about hour 3 of bulk fermentation, touch your dough. If it's tacky and releases back from sticking to your finger, it's good. If it sticks and is like glue, it's not—presumably not ready. Give it a touch every 30 minutes or so. And check out this video on what it's supposed to look like when done (though I've yet to get dough this bubbly and fluffy).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nrASfyphpU 

Finally: I just finished baking bread-making-attempt #7 now...all the bread I've made was eatable, delicious even, but none have been exactly right yet. This latest is close. The hardest part is getting it to be bubbly enough in bulk fermentation to really puff up the bread. Be prepared to use up a lot of flour as you try, try again. And watch lots of "how to" videos. 

:-D

Hope that helps! And I hope that, eventually, we both get the breads "right." 

The yeast and bacteria in the starter are not that particular: they need a source of food and can live in a wide range of temperatures, working faster as the temperature gets warmer.  They only really know what is within a couple nanometers of where they end up after you finish stirring/mixing.  They aren't aware of you or each other or how much starter is in the jar.  When I got started I was really anxious to do everything possible to keep them alive.  As I got to know them better and had many cycles of bread making under my belt, I came to realize they are actually quite hard to kill.

I wouldn't label myself an expert, but I've been making sourdough for years now.  I can say that you can pretty easily get to a point where you have no waste. 

First of all, you can keep small quantities of starter.  I keep less than 100g.  I was at one point keeping about 40g, which is about the smallest quantity I could work with for the container size I use (1/2 pint jars).

Second, you can cut waste by keeping the starter cooler.. If you keep it in the fridge, you only need to feed every 5 days or so.  Other ways to control temperature are too keep it in a cool place in your house, or to buy a wine cooler.

Third, you can refine your technique so that every time you do feed, all the starter you would have discarded goes to bread.  This means the bread-making itself has to fit your schedule and lifestyle.  As opposed to being a special event for which you have to put everything else on hold for several hours.  This is achievable: It requires managing the temperature of your dough and starter and adopting techniques that make the process more efficient. 

My example: I make bread almost daily.  For me this requires 10 to 20 minutes of focused time each day I bake, to shape dough from the day before, to mix dough for the next day, and to feed the starter.  After that a couple minutes here and there to come back to start the oven, to put the bread in the oven, to adjust temperature, and to remove the bread from the oven. 

While the dough is fermenting in a wine cooler overnight and through the next day, I do no stretching, folding, slapping, kneading, etc.

Another way to find efficiency is to get away from weighing all your ingredients.  Early on as you're learning, weighing is critical, but you can transition to measuring by volume after you've gotten to know your ingredients and how the properly hydrated dough is supposed to behave.  You just have to measure in a consistent way and to judge by look/feel/taste whether something needs to be adjusted.

While I wouldn't recommend you try to go with all these ideas at once, I hope it encourages you to experiment.  It took me a couple years of learning a standard process and then messing around with before I found a method I like.