Feeding your starter

Hey guys! Here's how to maintain your starter. There are actually many ways. People use different flours, different schedules, different ratios of flour to water. If you are new, I would just do it this way. This is simple, and works well for me. You can experiment all you want, though. If you have any issues, let me know!

First, keep it in a container, e.g. a glass jar, that has a lid that you can just set on the top but not seal. You don't want to seal it, just cover it. Keep it somewhere that's not too hot or cold. For instance, don't keep it in a cabinet over your oven. Anywhere that stays a normal indoor temperature is fine.

Every morning, you will take equal parts starter, flour, and water (you could do any amount as long as they are equal parts), and mix them together. Obviously if you used all the starter, when you feed it, it would triple in size every day, and soon fill up your entire house! So it's best to throw out about 2/3rds of the starter every morning when you feed it. I keep my starter at about 30grams of yesterdays starter, 30grams of flour, and 30grams of water.

If you have a kitchen scale, it's best to measure those equal parts by weight, but that's not essential. You can just eye-ball it. (The scale will be very useful with bread, because all good bread recipes go by weight and not by cups, etc. So I recommend getting a kitchen scale if you don't have one.)

When you are going to make bread, you will want to use some of the starter that has not been fed in a while (we call this a "mature" starter). So in that case, you would take a bit out to use to start your bread recipe, and then take some more out to feed and keep maintaining for the future, and then if there is any leftover after you take those two parts out, you just throw the rest away.

Last thing. If you ever want to stop feeding it for a while, and you won't be baking, you can just screw on the container lid and put it in the fridge. You don't want to do this for more than a few weeks, I don't think. When you want to use it again, you will want to take it out of the fridge a few days early, and feed it normally for several days before using it. This will build its strength back up.

Happy Baking!
Benjamin