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Xx_GetSniped_xX
Every week is way too long if you want an active starter, every day is ideal.
Edit: This seems to be a controversial opinion. To clarify one thing I am also using my starter everyday so thats part of the reasoning as well.
jakebr8k
The instructions to keep it alive are taped on the jar.
uncontainedsun
discard isn’t important really – it’s done in the beginning to reduce mold risk i think but when it’s a strong culture it’s fine, you’ll want to discard when you run out of room in the jar & by that point, you can bake with it!!
i just fed my starter after five+ months and it was fine, at this point they’re pretty sturdy if kept in the fridge!
your feeding schedule depends on your baking schedule. if you bake sourdough once a week, feeding once a week is fine 🙂
hummus_is_yummus1
Every other day, not weekly
-DoofusRick-
Hi, the instructions seem simple but they are actually a bit confusing. Here’s how you do it:
– Starter out of the fridge (on the counter): take an amount of starter and feed it equal amounts of flour and water every day. So for example 100g starter + 100g flour +100g water. This is a typical 1:1:1 ratio and works very well. You can also use 50g, 150g,… depending on how often you bake and what the quantities are that you need. The starter that remains in the old jar after weighing a specific part for feeding is your discard and can be thrown away or used for other recipes. I recommand discard crackers because they’re low effort and amazing.
-Starter in the fridge: feed approx. once a week, but don’t worry too much about killing it. You’d have to forget it for a long time and even then it’s sometimes possible to bring it back to life. By feeding regularly, your starter will remain alive but the cold might make it less ‘active’, so if you plan on making sourdough the next day, feed your starter once outside of the fridge and leave it on the counter overnight. Then in the morning or whenever you want to start the process, you can feed again and it will rise more quickly.
Hot_Angle_9835
Pour the contents into a bowl. Weigh that empty jar in grams on a kitchen scale.
Put 30grams of the starter back in, then put the 150g of flour and 150g of water in.. mix it up, put a coffee filter or fabric lid on so it can breathe. Move the rubber band to match the current level. Leave the jar on the counter.
It’ll balloon up after 8-12 hours. When it recedes back down, remove starter until there’s 30g left, feed it the same ratio again.
When you want to bake with it, pull out the starter that you’ee going to use while it’s still ballooned up.
This continues into infinity. If you don’t want to feed it every 12-18 hours, put it in the fridge and get advice from someone else. I’m not familiar with keeping a fridged starter alive. I imagine it’s similar, but the feeding is less frequent.
I bake 2 loaves every weekend now, so i just keep it on the counter and feed it before and after work.
Shigy
It will be fine in the fridge for months honestly, but you’ll want 2 or 3 feeding cycles before baking if you leave it unfed for an extended period.
As for amounts to feed it, I would avoid the 150g instructions and just reduce the amount of starter you maintain since it’s kind of a waste unless you plan to make several loaves at a time. What’s important is ratios and that you feed it roughly 1-2x the amount of unfed starter (ie. 25g starter to 25g water/flour)
Use unbleached flour and blend in some whole wheat and/or rye to promote activity.
Wild_Honeysuckle
First, relax: starters are surprisingly resilient.
Third: if you do somehow kill your starter, ask your husband’s coworker for some more. I would happily give mine anyway to whoever asked. (Particularly if they baked me some cookies, first!)
srahlo
The instructions are not clear for a true beginner:
You will take the current jar, and empty (x)g of what is in it (starter) into another jar.
You can feed at 1:1:1 (150g starter:150g unbleached AP flour, 150g NON-tap water), 1:2:2 (75:150:150), or 1:3:3 (50:150:150).
If you do a 1:1:1, you’ll need to feed it more often depending on where you keep it, and when you want to bake. Someone with more experience will know way more about timing and storage than I do, tbh.
IIIIInamelllll
Use what’s in the jar to make something (I suggest a sweet dough like cinnamon rolls first to up your confidence before you tackle bread)
Pour water on the stuck bits in the jar, put the lid on and shake until dissolved. Now add flour and mix with spoon until goopy. Leave at room temp for a couple hours then fridge for however long you want.
That’s mostly it for now. Read up on recipes, different feeding ratios and starter consistency as you go. It’s a fun hobby so treat it like one! 🙂
If the starter seems weak coming from the fridge, feed it at room temp a few times, best time to do that is when it’s done rising. Good luck, you got this!
cognitiveDiscontents
The advice you’re getting here about daily feeding is wrong. If it’s a mature starter, you don’t need to feed every day. That is a waste of time and flour. Keep it in your fridge and only feed to bake (look around online and you’ll see lots to back this up). Daily feeding is only for creating not maintaining stater.
And not to knock the person who gave it to you but 150g flour and 150 water is wayyy too much for feeding and is wasteful (in order to not keep getting more and more starter after each feeding some people throw away half or more, instead of dialing it back or baking a discard recipe).
There is no magic number of how much to feed for maintenance, just equal parts flour and water. I do 20-50 grams or so for maintenance feeding. But nowadays I just keep it on the fridge and when I want to bake I feed it up to the weight I need plus a little for next time (get a digital scale, it is worth it). Using 150g flour to feed everyday is wasteful unless you’re baking everyday. Online recipes like King Arthur say to use 113g of flour because big flour wants you to buy more.
If you’re worried about killing it, 2 pieces of advice.
1) all you need to revive it is one little drop of starter and that will convert a whole heap of fresh flour and water into starter. Divide it up into a couple jars in case you break/bake/lose one. You can also look into drying and freezing.
2) starters are a lot harder to kill than people tend to think. Black liquid on top and you haven’t fed for months? Stir it in and feed and be surprised. Accidentally preheated the oven with your starter in there? Scrape out any wet bits from the bottom and it could revive with feeding (as long as you didn’t bake it all the way through).
One more piece of advice. Learn the concepts behind sourdough baking rather than the protocol. Follow a recipe, yes, but see the big picture as you do. Learn from your mistakes and different sources. And for the love of god don’t waste food by discarding all the extra starter you will have if you ignore me and feed 150g flour every day. Look up discard recipes!
PretendCold4
That’s a lot of flour and water for a starter. I’d reduced it by half. 75g flour and water.
hawxguy
Only pull it out of the fridge 24’hours before I plan to use it. I do 50 g starter, 25 wheat flour, 75 g ap flour, 100 g water. Stir and put in a warm spot. Should double in size. Take a little out and put it into a cup of water, when it floats, you’re good to go
Dyergram
Wait I’ve fed my starter everyday for 2 years should I have been keeping it in the fridge and feeding it once a week lol? I make two loaves a week and one large Sicilian pizza…
Verbanoun
Just do what it says on the jar.
I discard mine and leave 50g in the jar so I’m not just dumping flour in there for no reason and then I only feed 25g flour and 25g water. But for now just do what the jar says.
SilverLabPuppies
When you are just starting it’s best to keep with how to maintain. If you are keeping it in the fridge weekly discard (need another jar for discard if not using discard in recipes the day of feed. Put unused discard in jar in fridge) & keep 150 g then feed 150g flour & water. Stir well. Tighten the lid. Return to fridge. So if you got her today then feed her in a week. Use a clean new jar weekly snd keep sides clean!
If you want to understand your new starter. This is recommended. Then tomorrow discard keeping 150 g of starter and feeding. Stir well. Make sure to keep THICK consistency by adding a little more flour. The rubberband moves to where the top of your feeding is so you can monitor the rise. Monitoring the rise helps you understand when it starts to rise and when it has peaked (jot time down). So when you bake you know you have to make your dough just before or at the peak time. I would do this for a week: feeding daily on the counter.
It is best to dry out some of this starter so if things go bad you can rehydrate and feed this dehydrated starter and be ready in 3 days to bake. Smear a THIN layer of starter on parchment paper. Cover with parchment. Allow to sir dry on counter or in your oven. Takes 1-2 days approx. when dry flake it up place in small glass jar with tight lid. Put in pantry. Do this today! Just use 1-2 Tablespoons thinned (spread) out.
Congrats! You have an established starter. Established means you can use the discard or the starter right away. You will need an empty discard jar for your daily discard if you do not use/bake with it that day. Place in jar in fridge. Each day your discard goes in this jar, mix well, back in fridge. If you toss the discard because you have too much that’s okay. Just remember your discard jar needs a weekly feeding to keep bad germs, molds, yeast from growing. Let it get used to your house/temp/air. You can start baking tomorrow.
Starter is more sturdy then people want to make it out to be. My starter will be in my fridge for weeks without me feeding it. When I do fees it I add like 50g of water and 50g of flour, mixit together in the starter and let it sit out for a few hours before putting it back in the fridge. If I plan to bake with it I will let it sit all day, then build a leaven for overnight and out the starter back in the fridge. I never have discard that I throw away.
InksPenandPaper
You don’t need to keep this much.
You can feed this once a week, once a month or even once a year depending on your usage. Personally, I’m a weekend Baker and I only feed my starter the day before usage. So this is what I do, but I’m going to account for what you currently have:
Take out the starter from the fridge and place on your counter the night before.
Next day, take 15 g from the current container and consider the rest discard. You do not have to throw away discard as you can use it for many other things including mixing some into cookie dough, pancake batter, cinnamon rolls, galette crusts and so on. Or you can use the entirety of it to make crackers by spreading it thin on parchment paper to bake.
Once you have your 15 g placed in a container with the top and add 50 g of water and mix thoroughly to dissolve the starter. Then, add 50 g of flour and to mix thoroughly. Place the top on the container and leave on the counter until it doubles in size.
Once peaked, go ahead and pull 15 g aside and place in a small, clean, airtight container.
At this point, go ahead and place the 15 g of starter back in the fridge and go ahead and use the 100 g left over to make sourdough.
This method has no discard, so it removes much of the stress of what to do with this card and its sometimes wasteful nature (people not using it and just throwing it out).
And just for the heck of it, if you’d like to know what a small amount of discard that hasn’t been fed in a year looks like:
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Every week is way too long if you want an active starter, every day is ideal.
Edit: This seems to be a controversial opinion. To clarify one thing I am also using my starter everyday so thats part of the reasoning as well.
The instructions to keep it alive are taped on the jar.
discard isn’t important really – it’s done in the beginning to reduce mold risk i think but when it’s a strong culture it’s fine, you’ll want to discard when you run out of room in the jar & by that point, you can bake with it!!
i just fed my starter after five+ months and it was fine, at this point they’re pretty sturdy if kept in the fridge!
your feeding schedule depends on your baking schedule. if you bake sourdough once a week, feeding once a week is fine 🙂
Every other day, not weekly
Hi, the instructions seem simple but they are actually a bit confusing. Here’s how you do it:
– Starter out of the fridge (on the counter): take an amount of starter and feed it equal amounts of flour and water every day. So for example 100g starter + 100g flour +100g water. This is a typical 1:1:1 ratio and works very well. You can also use 50g, 150g,… depending on how often you bake and what the quantities are that you need. The starter that remains in the old jar after weighing a specific part for feeding is your discard and can be thrown away or used for other recipes. I recommand discard crackers because they’re low effort and amazing.
-Starter in the fridge: feed approx. once a week, but don’t worry too much about killing it. You’d have to forget it for a long time and even then it’s sometimes possible to bring it back to life. By feeding regularly, your starter will remain alive but the cold might make it less ‘active’, so if you plan on making sourdough the next day, feed your starter once outside of the fridge and leave it on the counter overnight. Then in the morning or whenever you want to start the process, you can feed again and it will rise more quickly.
Pour the contents into a bowl. Weigh that empty jar in grams on a kitchen scale.
Put 30grams of the starter back in, then put the 150g of flour and 150g of water in.. mix it up, put a coffee filter or fabric lid on so it can breathe. Move the rubber band to match the current level.
Leave the jar on the counter.
It’ll balloon up after 8-12 hours. When it recedes back down, remove starter until there’s 30g left, feed it the same ratio again.
When you want to bake with it, pull out the starter that you’ee going to use while it’s still ballooned up.
This continues into infinity. If you don’t want to feed it every 12-18 hours, put it in the fridge and get advice from someone else. I’m not familiar with keeping a fridged starter alive. I imagine it’s similar, but the feeding is less frequent.
I bake 2 loaves every weekend now, so i just keep it on the counter and feed it before and after work.
It will be fine in the fridge for months honestly, but you’ll want 2 or 3 feeding cycles before baking if you leave it unfed for an extended period.
As for amounts to feed it, I would avoid the 150g instructions and just reduce the amount of starter you maintain since it’s kind of a waste unless you plan to make several loaves at a time. What’s important is ratios and that you feed it roughly 1-2x the amount of unfed starter (ie. 25g starter to 25g water/flour)
Use unbleached flour and blend in some whole wheat and/or rye to promote activity.
First, relax: starters are surprisingly resilient.
Second: read all the good advice on https://www.theperfectloaf.com/new-baker-start-here/. It’s a great site, and I’m still using their Beginner’s Sourdough as my main weekly bake several years on.
Third: if you do somehow kill your starter, ask your husband’s coworker for some more. I would happily give mine anyway to whoever asked. (Particularly if they baked me some cookies, first!)
The instructions are not clear for a true beginner:
You will take the current jar, and empty (x)g of what is in it (starter) into another jar.
You can feed at 1:1:1 (150g starter:150g unbleached AP flour, 150g NON-tap water), 1:2:2 (75:150:150), or 1:3:3 (50:150:150).
If you do a 1:1:1, you’ll need to feed it more often depending on where you keep it, and when you want to bake. Someone with more experience will know way more about timing and storage than I do, tbh.
Use what’s in the jar to make something (I suggest a sweet dough like cinnamon rolls first to up your confidence before you tackle bread)
Pour water on the stuck bits in the jar, put the lid on and shake until dissolved. Now add flour and mix with spoon until goopy. Leave at room temp for a couple hours then fridge for however long you want.
That’s mostly it for now. Read up on recipes, different feeding ratios and starter consistency as you go. It’s a fun hobby so treat it like one! 🙂
If the starter seems weak coming from the fridge, feed it at room temp a few times, best time to do that is when it’s done rising. Good luck, you got this!
The advice you’re getting here about daily feeding is wrong. If it’s a mature starter, you don’t need to feed every day. That is a waste of time and flour. Keep it in your fridge and only feed to bake (look around online and you’ll see lots to back this up). Daily feeding is only for creating not maintaining stater.
And not to knock the person who gave it to you but 150g flour and 150 water is wayyy too much for feeding and is wasteful (in order to not keep getting more and more starter after each feeding some people throw away half or more, instead of dialing it back or baking a discard recipe).
There is no magic number of how much to feed for maintenance, just equal parts flour and water. I do 20-50 grams or so for maintenance feeding. But nowadays I just keep it on the fridge and when I want to bake I feed it up to the weight I need plus a little for next time (get a digital scale, it is worth it). Using 150g flour to feed everyday is wasteful unless you’re baking everyday. Online recipes like King Arthur say to use 113g of flour because big flour wants you to buy more.
If you’re worried about killing it, 2 pieces of advice.
1) all you need to revive it is one little drop of starter and that will convert a whole heap of fresh flour and water into starter. Divide it up into a couple jars in case you break/bake/lose one. You can also look into drying and freezing.
2) starters are a lot harder to kill than people tend to think. Black liquid on top and you haven’t fed for months? Stir it in and feed and be surprised. Accidentally preheated the oven with your starter in there? Scrape out any wet bits from the bottom and it could revive with feeding (as long as you didn’t bake it all the way through).
One more piece of advice. Learn the concepts behind sourdough baking rather than the protocol. Follow a recipe, yes, but see the big picture as you do. Learn from your mistakes and different sources. And for the love of god don’t waste food by discarding all the extra starter you will have if you ignore me and feed 150g flour every day. Look up discard recipes!
That’s a lot of flour and water for a starter. I’d reduced it by half. 75g flour and water.
Only pull it out of the fridge 24’hours before I plan to use it. I do 50 g starter, 25 wheat flour, 75 g ap flour, 100 g water. Stir and put in a warm spot. Should double in size. Take a little out and put it into a cup of water, when it floats, you’re good to go
Wait I’ve fed my starter everyday for 2 years should I have been keeping it in the fridge and feeding it once a week lol? I make two loaves a week and one large Sicilian pizza…
Just do what it says on the jar.
I discard mine and leave 50g in the jar so I’m not just dumping flour in there for no reason and then I only feed 25g flour and 25g water. But for now just do what the jar says.
When you are just starting it’s best to keep with how to maintain. If you are keeping it in the fridge weekly discard (need another jar for discard if not using discard in recipes the day of feed. Put unused discard in jar in fridge) & keep 150 g then feed 150g flour & water. Stir well. Tighten the lid. Return to fridge. So if you got her today then feed her in a week. Use a clean new jar weekly snd keep sides clean!
If you want to understand your new starter. This is recommended. Then tomorrow discard keeping 150 g of starter and feeding. Stir well. Make sure to keep THICK consistency by adding a little more flour. The rubberband moves to where the top of your feeding is so you can monitor the rise. Monitoring the rise helps you understand when it starts to rise and when it has peaked (jot time down). So when you bake you know you have to make your dough just before or at the peak time. I would do this for a week: feeding daily on the counter.
It is best to dry out some of this starter so if things go bad you can rehydrate and feed this dehydrated starter and be ready in 3 days to bake. Smear a THIN layer of starter on parchment paper. Cover with parchment. Allow to sir dry on counter or in your oven. Takes 1-2 days approx. when dry flake it up place in small glass jar with tight lid. Put in pantry. Do this today! Just use 1-2 Tablespoons thinned (spread) out.
Congrats! You have an established starter. Established means you can use the discard or the starter right away. You will need an empty discard jar for your daily discard if you do not use/bake with it that day. Place in jar in fridge. Each day your discard goes in this jar, mix well, back in fridge. If you toss the discard because you have too much that’s okay. Just remember your discard jar needs a weekly feeding to keep bad germs, molds, yeast from growing. Let it get used to your house/temp/air. You can start baking tomorrow.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/feeding-and-maintaining-your-sourdough-starter-recipe
your fridge is beautiful wow
“Feed the bitch”
-Adam Last-Name-Unknown
Starter is more sturdy then people want to make it out to be. My starter will be in my fridge for weeks without me feeding it. When I do fees it I add like 50g of water and 50g of flour, mixit together in the starter and let it sit out for a few hours before putting it back in the fridge. If I plan to bake with it I will let it sit all day, then build a leaven for overnight and out the starter back in the fridge. I never have discard that I throw away.
You don’t need to keep this much.
You can feed this once a week, once a month or even once a year depending on your usage. Personally, I’m a weekend Baker and I only feed my starter the day before usage. So this is what I do, but I’m going to account for what you currently have:
Take out the starter from the fridge and place on your counter the night before.
Next day, take 15 g from the current container and consider the rest discard. You do not have to throw away discard as you can use it for many other things including mixing some into cookie dough, pancake batter, cinnamon rolls, galette crusts and so on. Or you can use the entirety of it to make crackers by spreading it thin on parchment paper to bake.
Once you have your 15 g placed in a container with the top and add 50 g of water and mix thoroughly to dissolve the starter. Then, add 50 g of flour and to mix thoroughly. Place the top on the container and leave on the counter until it doubles in size.
Once peaked, go ahead and pull 15 g aside and place in a small, clean, airtight container.
At this point, go ahead and place the 15 g of starter back in the fridge and go ahead and use the 100 g left over to make sourdough.
This method has no discard, so it removes much of the stress of what to do with this card and its sometimes wasteful nature (people not using it and just throwing it out).
And just for the heck of it, if you’d like to know what a small amount of discard that hasn’t been fed in a year looks like:
https://preview.redd.it/ylz8itqryf6e1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f87bae405383fa45e90b49b402095f91e328bbfc
videos that might help:
This is a pretty good explanation of keeping it in the fridge: https://youtu.be/eKVld-RRNS0
This is normal maintenance: https://youtu.be/DXVnIlNC6s4
Here is a bread recipe: https://youtu.be/VEtU4Co08yY
It’s a little long but this video has the information if something goes wrong with the starter: https://youtu.be/DX3-UANTMG4