So the most important part of all of this is my starter (I named mine Wade). I have what is called a “stiff” starter. This means that I put in twice the amount of flour than water when its fed. It seems to be what most recipes want and its easy to make it a wet starter if needed. It has made pretty good bread too.
- There’s two ways to do feeding:
IF the starter lives on the counter it will need to be feed every day, it will be really active and gets hungry often
§ To feed mix a cup of bread flour, ½ cup of water and ½ cup of starter every 12 hours
§ The rest is to be used or discarded.
IF the starter lives in the fridge you can feed it about once a week. You can feed it more if you want to do more recipes in the week. This is what I do and it works really well.
§ To feed: have your container warm (out of the fridge; normally takes about an hour)
§ Mix a cup of bread flour with ½ cup of water and ½ of the starter. That will be the starter to go back in the fridge. Leave it out for an hour before putting it back in the fridge.
§ That leaves you with a discard. You can use it as is or you can feed it as well and use it for a recipe as a starter (This is what I do for most recipes. When I'm making one that specifically asks for discard I leave it be. Otherwise I feed it at least twice to get it really happy before use.)