The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Bulk starter

March 29, 2021 - 8:40pm
hankhus's picture
hankhus

Bulk starter

Hi guys

im New to sourdough  although I can maintain my starter in the past but now run into a snag. I have about 2.2 # of starter. How do I feed this. I’ve tried replacing one cup starter with 8oz flour and 8 Oz water but the results I get with the action is not near with the action when I was first feeding the starter.   Now it takes forever to ferment and bubbling is weak not as it was. 
what am I doing wrong 

thanks for any help 

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Comments

Benito's picture
Benito
March 30, 2021 - 8:47am

Hi, you’ll need to start to discard and keep much less starter otherwise you’ll have a bathtub full of starter soon.  I keep a very small amount of starter about 30-40 g in total and I bake twice per week.  Do something along these lines, discard all (you can keep the discard for discard recipes for which there are many on TFL and on the internet) and keep about 5 g.  Next feed that 5 g in a ratio of 1:2:2 or so.  Wait until it peaks and just starts to fall before you discard and feed again.  You can feed higher ratios if you cannot attend to it when it peaks, say for example that you’ll be sleeping.

Benny

hankhus's picture
hankhus
March 30, 2021 - 5:07pm

Thanks Benny. Guess I’ll get used to discarding the excess starter.     Ive been adding 100% hydration  and discarding what I will add. I weight the discard and add the same weight back equal parts water flour. 

I ended up with a sloppy soup so I added more flour to get back to a thicker consistency. And now have a huge quantity. So I will discard and look for discard recipe. 

pardon my ignorance but  the ratio. 1:2:2   Can you explain how that is supposed to work 

I must say that myy the initial results were excellent