Starter Maintenance

Carefree Care and Meticulous Method-
-Also see Wild Yeast Tips



Carefree Care:

Care for your starter based on a simple schedule. Feed your starter once a day. Begin with your 1/2 cup of reconstituted starter.

• For two days feed your starter 1/2 cup flour, and enough water to bring the starter to the consistency of thick pancake batter.
  
• For the next two days feed your starter 1 cup flour and enough water to make it the consistency of thick pancake batter.
  
• For the next two days feed your starter 1 1/2 cups flour and enough water to make it the consistency of pancake batter.

This is almost a week's worth of care--this is the longest I would suggest cultivating your starter without using it. (The starter can very quickly grow to proportions threatening to take over your entire kitchen, so if you don't have plans to use your starter in the next week, consider long-term storage plans.)

Before the end of one week you may have used some of your starter for baking. If that is the case, go back to feeding 1 cup of flour a day, or 1/2 a cup depending on how much starter is remaining. The goal is to roughly double the starter everyday.

A healthy Wild Yeast starter is very forgiving so using this system of feedings should produce fine results even though technically one day you may be more than doubling the starter and the next day not quite doubling it. If you want a more precise method, continue reading to the Meticulous Method.

Meticulous Method:

The meticulous method is in some ways more work than the Carefree Care, but in other ways it is simpler--you don't have to worry about a schedule. You should feed your starter every day, and double it with every feeding this will keep it healthy and not too sour.

Begin by weighing the container you will store your starter in. Then every day weigh your starter and feed it enough to double it's weight. The feeding should be half water and half flour based on weight. If I weigh my starter (subtract the weight of the container) and it weighs one pound--16 ounces--then I will feed my starter 8oz water (1 cup) and 8 oz of flour (by weight this is about 1 1/2- 1 3/4 cups).