Referring to this video:1:59 -
https://youtu.be/P_hR43eMgug?t=1m59s
It says before placing it into the refrigerator i should feed it one last time and then put it.
1.Then it says once a week bring it out fill it with flour, and place it back Then my question is Filling it equal flour and water or just flour? because he does not say anything about water
2.About reviving for baking it says A day before baking it, pick up a few tbsp then feed it with equal parts of water and flour and it will start to activate in a day or so. Then after it activates and i used the starter to bake my bread if i want to put it back to the refrigerator should i wait a couple of days before placing it back or i can just feed it and put it back to the fridge?
"Filling it equal flour and water or just flour?"
1. You can't just feed it with flour or it will become too dry.
"if i want to put it back to the refrigerator should i wait a couple of days before placing it back or i can just feed it and put it back to the fridge?"
2. I just put it back in the fridge.
(Starters are more forgiving than you might suspect after reading rigid instructions.)
Refrigerator can be a very convenient place to store your starter for longer periods. However, I don’t like to leave my starter for more than a week in the fridge because it usually takes longer to revive with the additional care required.
I am really uncaring about my starter. I even didn't give it a name and just call it 'starter'.
I feed it only after I used most, that is every 3 days to 2 weeks. Usually I take 100g out for my sourdough bread. Then I add (sometimes a few days later) 55g each water and rye flour. Let it raise a bit for a few hours - and then back in the fridge. Sometimes I use a new glass, sometimes not. I always works for me.
For my sourdough bread I take those 100g and mix it with 100g each water and wholewheat flour, and let it stay 10-12 hours in my tropical warm kitchen. So that is then 25% of my total 600g (flour) bread.
My rye starter seems to be very robust. I use it for about 4 month now.
my abused starters greet yours. Don't you just love rye starters?
Mine is looking very abused at the moment. My apple yeast water is looking good after a three month stint in the fridge. Smells great too. The flour starters look pretty dark. Time to pull them out and get them up to duty. The cooler weather invites baking.
Dont be afraid to ask more questions. Generally reviving a long abused starter(not fed for months) it is better to start out small and increase feedings without discarding for a few days at a conservative temp of about 24 to 26°C. Save the discard as back up too (simply put it in the fridge with a cover) as you feed and get the new starter up to working speed. I seem to have gotten ahead of myself here.
If I have a mature starter that has just had a good portion removed for baking, and I planned on using it again in a few days up to a week, I'd thicken it slightly with some fresh flour only, cover and put it back into the fridge. Then to make the next levain, let it warm up to judge maturity (cold starters are hard to read, smell and are stiff) to use or inoculate more flour and water.
1. You should feed it 1:1:1, which is 1 part your old starter, 1 part water and 1 part flour, all measured in weight. But depending on the flour you are using, you can use a bit less water to thicken it up, which makes it easier to observe the bubbles and to slow down it a little bit.
2. I usually just take my starter out of the fridge and feed it straight away. In about 6-8 hrs it's ready to be used. Then I scoop out the amount I use as levain, stir the rest, pop it back to the fridge. This way the starter is always starving and will happily eat up flour once I get it out and feed it.
But you will need to plan ahead and calculate according to how much starter you need for your recipe if you use this method. Otherwise you may not get enough starter or too much starter that you need to throw out some.
Another thing is that, if your starter is resting in the fridge all the time, there are possibilities that the bacterias and the yeasts will change in quantities during the long periods of being in a cold environment. My starter once got overwhelmed by AAB, which made it super sour and not active enough to properly rise a bread. I had to do 1:4:4 feedings for a few days to reduce acidity and boost the yeast population back up.
Every starter has its own characteristic, if you don't bake everyday and wanna save some flour, just pop it into the fridge. You will have a fun learning curve and you can come back anytime to ask any questions you encountered :)
This is my white bread flour starter which I had left in the refrigerator at 37°F for 30 days with no feeding or anything else. I stirred it, removed 75g to a clean container and sterilized my primary container which is 32oz by volume. To the sterilized container I added 75g old starter, 75g purified water and 100g white bread flour. This doubled in about 8 hours and I left it on the kitchen counter for a full 24 hours. At that time I fed it another 75g white bread flour and 100g purified water. The volume subsequently tripled (peaked) in about 3 hours and I used 330g to make sourdough bread. So, starter check... Just need to figure out the bread now... Best wishes. Dave
Can you put a regular jar lid on it? Or does it need air to circulate
Starters:
Broke all the jail house rules. No proper labels, no dates, no warning signs (hubby is trained) and long neglected. (the starters.) I later found another one that wasn't soooo bad, might be only 4 months old, very thick and that helps survival. Good y'all can't smell these jailbirds. All carefully removed samples from the bottom of the jars and fed in new clean cages. They all get tender loving care (tlc) to activate to peak several times, several feeding cycles, before going back in. Now to sort out all the pickles crowding the fridge!
The one on the right is wheat, or is it rye, oh well, doesn't matter, it's wheat now. :)
This is one of my favorite videos for explaining how to cycle a starter in and out of the refrigerator with zero waste.
That said, some starters, Iike mine, need an extra feeding before they’re ready to go; so there’s always a little waste when it comes to waking up my starter and getting it ready to make bread. This might be the case with yours as well...But if you’re lucky and it does come right back to life with one feeding, then making bread will become wonderfully efficient and effective for you. Check it out:
https://youtu.be/Uj6YpNCUYYQ