Discarding?!

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eekonuy on 19 May 2020 at 07:56

Hello,

I'm new here and actually new to baking breads, but my son LOVES sourdough bread (the one thing he'll actually eat) and I have FALLEN IN LOVE with the process of making and baking it.

I have a question that's been on my mind for a while now. I was gifted an amazing, active starter from a friend in late March/early April, and it's been really thriving, but I haven't been discarding it before every feed. The starter seems to be on the active side (bubbles and rise & fall), and at least I think the bread tastes and smells great, but I'm wondering if i might be doing something wrong?

My friend gave me 40g of starter and told me to use 30g bread flour + 10g whole wheat flour + 40g water to feed it, and that's what I've been doing twice a day, everyday (unless refrigerated) but i have only discarded about half when pulling the starter out of the refrigerator to feed.

My question is, do I have to discard the sourdough starter before EVERY feed, and if I choose not to, is my flour+water ratio enough for my starter to stay active? 

Now i'm beginning to think that maybe my bread could be better? but I want to make sure that I'm not missing something here and want to make sure I get the most out of my starter instead of doing things without really knowing what's right.

Thanks!

 

The reason we discard is that if we keep feeding and feeding, we'll eventually end up with a monstrous starter.  If you keep feeding the same amount, the feeding gets smaller and smaller in terms of how much each gram of starter gets to eat.  If you feed a ratio so that each gram of starter gets a consistent amount at each feeding, you are now dealing with exponential growth.  Either one of those scenarios will get out of hand very quickly.

However, if you are baking regularly, you are "discarding" every time you take some of your starter to bake with.  If you are keeping steady with about the same amount of starter instead of it slowly growing over time, and you are happy with the results of your baking, there is no need to change anything.  You can try any number of different starter maintenance routines, and you may or may not find they work better for you than what you are currently doing.

If you want to examine the issue more closely, you'll have to give us a bit more info about your feeding routine.  For example, you tell us you are feeding 40g flour & 40g water, but not how much starter gets fed with that.  It is the ratio, not the amount, that is important.  How much time does it spend in the fridge vs at room temperature?  How does it behave when you feed it?  Does it rise and fall predictably before you feed it again 12 hours later?  How does it look and smell just before you feed it?

You could also just look at an example starter maintenance routine, or several, and see if you think you'd like to try that style.  If you want suggestions for that, let us know.

Thank you so much for your response.

So i basically i feed the starter 40g flour and 40g water twice a day at around 7-8 AM and 7-8PM without discarding. I've just been feeding the starter that I originally had (i hope that makes sense)

I usually put the starter in the fridge if I have enough bread and dont bake for a while, but i'll bake and then take a break for about a week or two, and bake again, so I usually take it out of the fridge when I'm going to bake, discard around half, and feed it 40g fl + 40g water again. I haven't measured anything though. I just take out what looks like about half, and then feed it again the same 40g flour + 40g water.

I've attached a photo of my starter today.

I took it out of the fridge Sunday morning (today is Tuesday), discarded half, fed it and started to make the bread around 2PM Sunday afternoon. I fed the starter right after I used it to bake because I didn't have much left (i'm not sure if that's correct either), fed it again around 8PM, fed it twice yesterday, and I fed my starter at 7AM today (and posted a picture to show how much it has risen. it is 8:30 now)

I'm not sure how to rotate the image but here goes:

starter after feeding 1.5 hours ago

i really hope i explained it okay.

thank you so much!

At each feeding, you have 40 grams of water and 40 grams of flour.

Here is the question: How many grams of starter are you combining with that 40g flour and 40g water?

That would tell us the starter:flour:water ratio.

Right now, this is all we know. At each feeding, you have:

X grams starter:40 grams flour:40 grams water

What is X?

 

So my problem was/is X.

I measured my starter today and it was over 200g and I was feeding it twice daily the 40g flour and 40g water.

I ended up taking about 60g of the starter and starting a new starter. I fed it at 7:30PM today, and will see how that goes. I was feeding it twice daily, but a friend of mine told me that I only need to feed it once a day, so i'm going to try that too.

I also started a starter on my own to see how that works out. i just need to figure out how to maintain it. I keep reading so many different things and getting confused all over again. I'd appreciate it if you could share some tips and tricks (if you have any!) 

TIA~

No need to start new unless you want to for the fun of it. You have a mature starter, it's just very hungry! The minimum feeding is equal weights starter and flour (you can vary the water to suit your purpose.) the more mature and active the starter, the more flour it needs. For example 1:2 starter:flour is common but many folks seem to keep only a tiny bit of starter each time and feed it at 1:5.

If you keep it in the refrigerator you don't need to feed it as frequently, but you still need to feed it the right ratio when you feed it.

thank you!

so i discarded half of my starter today and fed it equal amounts of flour and water and hoping to grow an even better starter. Thanks for your help!!

OH Lastly, it isn't about making MORE starter correct? It's about keeping a healthy, thriving starter? I just always feel like I do not have enough for the recipes I make. Does that mean, when I feed, I can discard less than half, (lets say i discard 30% and keep 70%, i just feed it with the equal amounts flour and water correct?

Thanks so much!

I am just going to copy & paste something I wrote in another thread a day or two ago since it seems to apply to your question about making more starter:

"You can ramp it up (or down) as fits your needs.  The important thing is the ratios, not the amount.  If, for example, your normal routine is to feed 1:5:5 2x/day, and you usually do that with 5g starter: 25g water: 25g flour.  You'll have 55g starter on hand, but only 50g available to use in a recipe cuz you need to keep back 5g to keep your starter going.  If you want to bake a loaf that requires 100g starter, you can just do a feeding with 10g starter: 50g water: 50g flour when you do the feeding before you want to begin building your dough.  So 12 hrs later when it's time to feed again, you have 100g starter for your recipe, and 5g to continue your starter, and a tiny bit left over (which won't be quite as much as 5g because of loss to CO2 and evaporation and maybe some stuck to the container).  I haven't actually tracked how much weight I tend to lose, so having only 5g extra might be cutting it a bit tight but it at least illustrates my point.  If you need more than you can make in a single feeding (in this example 55g:275g:275g = 605g), you can start bulking up your starter 2 feedings in advance."

Something I should have mentioned there is that it's also possible to build a levain for when you want to bake.  It's basically the same idea, but you keep it separate from your main starter.  It's especially useful when you want starter for your recipe that is made of different flour and/or at a different hydration than your regular starter.

I never "discard half".  I discard however much is leftover.  And I do that at every single feeding.  You don't want to discard only half.  You need to discard more than that, otherwise you are either feeding too small of a ratio, or you'll have to increase how much you feed at each feeding and your starter will soon be eating you out of house & home.  Or if you've used some of your starter since the last feeding, you'll end up diluting it too much when you discard half of the small amount that remains.

But the really important thing is that you must feed in a ratio that is appropriate for your starter.  That will depend on it's stage of development, how vigorous it is, how wet or dry you keep it, etc.

In the post above, I gave an example of a person whose usual feeding routine is 1:5:5 in the amounts of 5g starter: 25g water: 25g flour.  They will have 55g starter on hand, so for the next feeding they will again add water and flour to 5g starter.  The remaining starter becomes discard (it will be somewhat less than 50g due to evaporation and loss of CO2).

I also gave an example of that same person, still feeding at the same ratio of 1:5:5, but who wants to build up their starter so they have enough to bake a loaf of bread.  So they did a feeding of 10g starter: 50g water: 50g flour.  They would still have had (slightly less than ) 55g starter on hand, so they would take 10g for the feeding and discard the rest (slightly less than 45g).

Hope that makes sense now.

 

There's a number of proven and successful  approaches that essentially do away completely with the tradition of discarding starter.

There the "no muss no fuss" approach on this site: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/40918/no-muss-no-fuss-starter

There's the Baking with Jack approach on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6YpNCUYYQ&t=365s

Me, I just keep a semi-small amount of starter in the fridge - probably 200-300g max. Then I pull what I need from it for each baking session to build up for that bake, and put the remainder back in the fridge - typically without feeding it. I only feed my starter when its volume dwindles down to the point where I need to build it back up to a reasonable amount again. In effect - I feed it every 2/3 weeks. Starters are super hardy things and can go weeks (months, really) without feeding. I don't ever discard, and I don't bake anything just to use up extra starter.