This is super embarrassing to ask but I cannot for the life of me figure this out, I might be over thinking this whole thing.
I converted some of my 100% hydration rye starter to 60% hydration. I wanted a 150 grams of starter for which I took 30 grams (100% starter) and fed it 79 grams flour and 41 grams water. Now I have 150 grams of 60% starter.
Well now I have to feed my stiff starter for the first time after building it and I don't know how much to feed it to keep the 60% hydration....
Let's say I want another 150 grams of 60% stiff rye starter? What would my feeding formula be? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
150 g of 60% hydration starter is 150 divided by 1.6 1 for the flour and .6 for the water so it is 94 g for the flour and 56 for the water. If you take 20 g of your exiting starter it has 20/1.6 = 12.5 g of flour and 7.5 g of water in it. So deduct the flour and water in your 20 g of starter from the 94 and 56 and you get 81 5 g f flour and 48.5 g of water required for the feeding to make 150 g of new 60% hydration starter.
and store it in the fridge fir up to 24 weeks with no maintenance and take a bit of each week to make the levain for that weeks bake. Then you need to known the rule of 7's.
Take amount of new flour you will use in this case 81.5 and divide it by 7 and you get 11.64 g That would be the amount of flour for the first stage feeding and the water would be 48.5 / 7 = 6.93 g of water. The 2nd feeding 4 hours later would be twice the first feeding or 23.24 g of flour and 13.86 g of water. 4 hours later the feeding would be twice the 2nd one ore 46.48 g of flour and 27.72 g or water. This will give you your 150 g of starter at 60% hydration. Once it rises 25% then in the fridge it goes for up to half a year.
Since we know the wee beasties really like the wet I would do the lour feedings as above but would reverse the water feeding amount so that the starter did nit thicken up till the last feeding at the 8 hour mark - but eiother way works. Whole grain breads love NMNF starter and levain builds.
Happy baking
Hello, hope your still around to clarify something for me. Your response has been the most informative I've found on the Internet when it comes to the math of bulk feeding a 60%. Thank you. My Question! How much starter are you keeping after each feeding starting with 11.64g flour and 6.39g water? 20g starter?