So You Got A Piece of Margaret, Now What? Pt. 111

HOW TO MAINTAIN/REFRESH/FEED YOUR STARTER

First of all, when we talk about feeding a starter using this ratio:  1:x:y.  1 represents the amount of starter you use for the basis of your feed. X represents flour.  Y represents water. X and Y are USUALLY the same number and they are determined by how much ripe (fed) starter your recipe calls for and how much time you have to bake.

Essentially, x & y are your starter’s food source.  When you feed a small amount of starter with flour and water you’re providing the yeast and bacteria with the energy it needs to expand. You’ll see this in your jar, when your starter has consumed all of its food, the volume of the starter in the jar should double or triple, have a domed top and have a nice bubbly surface throughout.  This means that your starter is at its peak or is ripe.  This is exactly the moment you’ll want to incorporate your starter into your dough recipe.

If your starter is hungry and has run out of food it will start to fall and won’t be able to maintain all of the air bubbles it developed during feeding.  You’ll even notice a line of starter where it peaked and your starter will have fallen just below it.  This generally starts to happen about 20 mins or so after your starter has reached its peak.  If its warmer in your kitchen than you anticipated or your got distracted and your starter fell.  DON’T PANIC! You can still use this in your baking but best practices dictate that you use starter at its peak to ensure your starter is strong enough to raise your dough.  If your starter has fallen a lot, you will unfortunately have to feed again, to make sure you don’t bake a pancake!

Here’s an example of feeding the starter in practice:

Our basic sourdough boule requires 90g of ripe starter.  We would feed our starter a ratio of 1:2:2. 1 unit of starter and 2 units each of flour and water.  To make 90g of ripe starter, we would use the kitchen scale to measure out 18g of starter into a bowl and feed it 36g of our bread and rye flour mix and 36g of cold water.  18g+36g+36g = 90g.  We would use the spatula to combine that well and place mixture into another clear container and leave it on our kitchen counter, lightly covered, to ripen. We know that a feed of 1:2:2, in our kitchen, takes 5 hours to ripen.  So, if we perform a feed at 9am, we anticipate being ready to add it into our recipe at 2pm.

 Alternatively, a feed of 1:1:1 would take about 3 hours so if we’re short of time we could do a feed of 30g of starter with 30g of flour and water each.

You can slow down your ripening time by using cold water or by feeding your starter more food. You could also do an overnight feed of 1:5:5 (in an air conditioned environment) or 1:8:8 (in a non-air conditioned environment) if you wanted to feed before you went to bed and start prepping your recipe in the morning.  You can also speed up the ripening time by placing your starter in a warm spot i.e. near your oven or even inside of the gas oven that’s turned off or an electric oven with the light on (especially great hack if you have an air conditioned kitchen). 

In the next post, we’ll discuss how to store your sourdough starter.