Caring for your Starter
A sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water that is alive with yeast and bacteria. To keep it alive and healthy, you will need to learn to feed it, and will see how it changes over time. One way to feed a starter is as follows:
Mix together 10g live starter, 50g flour, and 50g water.
This simple feeding can be done once a day, keeping your starter at room temperature. If done regularly, your starter will usually peak 6 to 12 hours after feeding. That peak is the best time to use it to start a batch of sourdough bread.
Weighing your ingredients helps you stay consistent and shows you what ratios you are using. However, starters are very flexible, and so as long as you are adding flour and water to it, you will be refreshing it and keeping it alive.
If you’d like to hold off from feeding your starter, you can keep it in the refrigerator, which will slow down its activity. Left in the fridge, it will not require feeding for several weeks. However, as it keeps fermenting, it will slowly become weaker; when you are ready to start baking again, make sure to take your starter out of the fridge, and give it at least a feeding or two to get its strength back up.
The five factors of Time, Temperature, Ratio, Hydration, and Food are what most affect your starter. These factors can be adjusted in many ways to keep your starter alive and active. By starting with the 10g:50g:50g ratio, once a day, at room temperature, with whatever flour you have at home, you will be starting with a tried and tested formula that works. If you’d like to build up your starter’s activity, you can try adjusting these factors. For example, keeping your starter at an elevated temperature, and feeding twice a day is one way that you might see more activity in your starter.