Starter size

Claar

If you are baking fairly regularly what size should your starter be?

I've been using the ratios 4oz starter, 4oz flour, 4oz water but when I come to bake bread my recipe uses 250g, which only leaves me with 50gish starter. So I've had two starters on the go (Nancy and Nancy Sometimes)

I'd love to hear other people's feeding regimes.

I live in a cold climate so I feed Nancy once a day and she produces some really nice bread  but I've always been confused about the size she should be. 

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farinam's picture
farinam 2017 October 5

Hello Claar,

I don't know exactly how much 'stock' starter I actually have but I am guessing that it is at least 300g.  I keep it in the fridge.

My 'standard' recipe calls for 180 g of 100% so the night before I extract 90g from my stock and feed that with 45g flour and 45g water and leave that on the bench to get active.  I also add 45g of flour (20%wholemeal rye and 80% white wheat) and 45g water back into my stock container and that goes back into the fridge 'til next time. 

I generally only bake once a week but more frequent bakes do not seem to be a problem.  I have left the stock in the fridge for a month without use/feeding while on holidays with not more than a couple of cycles to get back to full activity.

This is a regime that suits me but I would hazard a guess that there are as many variations as there are bakers out there..

Good luck with your projects.

Farinam

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