Hello everyone. New baker here, so please excuse what might be a simple question.
I am building my starter. The proportions each day are 75g starter, 50g rye flour, 50 g AP flour, 125 g water. (I recognize this is very hydrated!)
If I understand baker's math, that means there is 75% starter, 100% flour and 125% water.
To reduce my overall starter size by half (to lessen discard), on my next feeding I was planning to use 38g starter, 25g rye, 25g AP, and 63g water.
Did I calculate properly? Just at day 4 (didn't use pineapple juice to start) and guide says start 12 hr feedings today.
Thanks
Rocco
Seems correct to me. As long as you keep the ratios, it shouldn't affect the fermentation rate too much.
Thanks. Glad I have absorbed a little something! My fermentation time is pretty long, since my house is never over 68 degrees, and there are no real warm spots to speed things up - everything is too energy efficient these days!
Stay well.
Rocco
And then feed in the appropriate ratio for what ever weight you have left
Thanks, Martin. That is my plan - to discard half, then feed at same ratios.
Rocco
When i was in England a good few years ago and visited Andy (Ananda) i was amazed at the very small amount of starter culture that he maintained, growing up just enough for his next baking session so didn't have any discard. I maintained quite a large tub of starter at the Hospitality college i worked at but never discarded any of it to waste but got the teaching chef to use the excess culture as an additive to the dough they made for production of dinner rolls for the training restaurant, after all this was fermented flour that has undergone some complex changes converting starches into sugars for the fermentation process. These flavours seemed to be of great benefit when they were producing either very fast or instant doughs to fit into their time line of having dinner rolls ready in time for lunch or dinner (4 hours) from start time to cooled and ready to be served. I have in fact rescued the starter from what was left from a seemingly empty container when a student had emptied the contents away. May i suggest that once your starter has established play around with small amounts, try different hydration ratios for storing and even freezing and then resuscitating and resurrecting, you will be really getting to know your starter. You can get down to small specimen jars for this, when you have a really vigorous culture it need only take a couple of days to build a sizable amount . in fact if you are feeding every 8 hours 10g of culture will build to 2,430g not bad for 40 hours!
kind regards Derek