Hi all, haven't posted in a while, but I wanted some of your insight.
The standard practice for feeding sourdough is to make 2-3x as much as you need, take what you need, and discard the rest to the trash or pancakes or the compost. Flour is cheap, but I still don't like throwing it out or being pressured into making pancakes.
For a few years now I have been feeding my sourdough with a method that I've found to be both efficient and effective and wonder why it is not used more frequently. Simply put, I keep a small amount of starter in a quart sized jar, say about 100-200 gram of 100% hydration whole wheat starter. At least once or twice weekly we will bake bread or pizza and at such a time, I add the exact amount of water/flour for the recipe I'm making, such that for my standard bread loaf that requires 150 grams of starter, I add 75 grams water and flour. When ripe, I remove the needed amount and put the now refreshed starter back in the fridge.
No waste, no need for large jars or bowls for making more starter than needed. I understand that temperature will be more variable in the smaller mass of levain. I usually try to double or triple the volume of starter originally in the jar, but I'm not strict about this. The results don't seem to suffer, breads still proof and bake up like they always did before I started doing this.
Is anyone else doing this? If not why? I know there may be issues with this method in theory, but in practice I've got a vigorous starter that doesn't seem to mind and the results are unchanged.
I've not made sourdough for a while, given the higher kitchen temperatures and variability.
When I was making it, I tended to do what you've proposed.
I didn't understand why I always needed to make WAY too much, and throw out the excess.
So I kept a small amount 'brewing,' added the flour and water I needed, used that amount, and kept the starter going.
I'd be curious to know why the practice developed of making too much and then throwing the excess away.
And I don't make pancakes!
The method you propose is used by many. As long as you are baking regularly. But if you bake infrequently, or have different starters (for different loaves) then you will likely need to discard some of it at some point. The commonly seen excess amount of leftover starter is from commercial bakers. They just toss it in a container and use it the next day, so it’s not waste. But for home bakers it is not usually practical.
A more common theme here at TFL is to keep a small amount of starter(s), ~20-40 grams (usually in the fridge), and just build a levain from it when needed. The discard is minimal, or use it for other things as suggested in many posts.
It’s unfortunate that many of the popular authors don’t better explain that a home baker will not need that much extra starter. So it is up to us to do a little diligence and make it work better for us.