Now that your starter has been rehydrated and is active and bubbly, it’s time for the next step: feeding your starter.
To keep your starter active + alive, you will need to split it, and add flour + water.
The starter will be split in 2-3:
-10g will into making a new starter, so that you can bake bread next time.
-20-30g (depending on your bread recipe) will go into making a levain, which will be used to make your loaves.
-the rest will be discarded. (I like to keep a jar in the fridge with my discarded sourdough, and when I have enough, I bake something from it. But that’s a whole other blog post!)
There are many different ratios you can use for feeding your starter. Ive seen 1:1:1, 1:2:2, 1:5:5..
This is how I feed my starter:
10g Starter
50g Water
50g All-Purpose Flour
(Ratio here is 1:5:5)
Simply add all the ingredients into a clean jar, and stir. It should be the consistency of a thick pancake batter.
Then place a marker onto the jar so you know the level at which the starter started in the jar (washable marker or an elastic band works great!). And then leave the jar out on your counter, until it doubles or triples. This should take anywhere from 8-24hrs, depending on the temperature in your home.
Once it doubles or triples, it’s ready to make a levain, and move onto baking.
Note: if you need to feed your starter, but DONT want to bake bread, you can put the newly fed (but not yet risen) starter in your fridge, to slow the down the process, until you are ready to bake. Once you’re ready to bake, take the starter out of the fridge, let it rise, and then make the levain.