Time flexibility on fed starter: Mother's offspring
I've been using a sour for about 7 years, no problems, mostly feeding and baking twice a week, sometimes twice a month, no problems. If I'm away for 10 days or more, I just pour off the grey water on top and proceed as normal. The question I have; once I've removed a portion for "tomorrow's" bread and fed the "mother" and it's "offspring", ok, two questions: What do you call the sour that you keep and feed forever and what do you call the sour that's going to go into the bread? I digress. The real question is how long can I keep the new-and-fed offspring before I should probably either just make some more or feed it? In other words, I couldn't get back home to make bread the next day, so even though the offspring has been in the fridge, is it best to consider it depleted and start over or do I have a few days to use it?