I understand how to revive a starter that's kept in the fridge for baking purposes. But what is the process if I just want to feed it and put it back?
My guess would be: take it out, discard down, feed, wait a few hours and stick it back in the fridge. Is that correct? Also, I read somewhere that for fridge storage I should increase the feed (e.g. instead of feeding 100g flour, feed it 200g) to help preservation. Does that make sense?
First, I am no expert on starters, but mine works fine, and if it ain't broke don't fix it, so here's what I do.
Whenever I know that there will be a big gap until my next bake, I put my starter in the fridge. The initial process is the same for a standard feeding, which in my case is 1:2:2, meaning however much starter I retain, I feed it two parts flour and two parts water. Typically I keep 30 g of starter when I refrigerate, so 60 g of flour (AP/whole wheat) and 60 g of water. Stir it up, put the lid on, and leave it on a desk in a room where I can watch its activity. When the starter has risen a fair amount and demonstrated activity, I put it in the refrigerator. (If I feed at say 8:30 am,. this often occurs in mid-afternoon.) Once in the fridge, the starter stays there until I am going to bake and want to revive it.
My starter is dormant in the fridge. It needs no maintenance in there.
When I get ready to bake, I have found that a couple of days of standard early morning feeding will revive it. Sometimes, if it seems a bit sluggish, I will feed it twice on the first day out of the fridge. When the starter is back to being active (meaning it gets fed, sits there awhile, and then expands), I know it is ready to use for baking.
Happy baking.
Ted
I thought it can only be a week in the fridge without feeding?
My answer would be no. my starter lives in the fridge, I feed it monthly more or less but have left it longer (about 2 months) when I was away overseas. not sure how a 100% hydration starter would go, but mine is about 65% hydration and is 6 years old. I just build a levain each time I bake using maybe 5-10 g from the starter and building a 100% levain from there.
Leslie
I take it out and feed it the day before I plan to bake; unless it's otherwise been in there unused for more than a couple of weeks, in which case I 'let it out to play' for a day or two.
I do notice that it improves in vigour if I take it out two days ahead of baking, but that generally involves more planning than I'm good at ;-)
My fridge is about 5ºC by the way.
I've kept starters in this fashion at both 100% hydration and more recently 80%, but they both seem to react the same way.
Perhaps just a word of reassurance, it's really quite hard to completely 'kill' a starter with neglect... even if you ignore it for a month you can revive it by taking a couple of teaspoons of it and feeding 1:5:5
I feed my 1:1:1 starter once a week with equal portion of APF and WWF. After feeding I leave it at room temp for about an hour, then into the refrig (40F) until the next feeding a week later. When I bake, I feed twice. My starter is at its peak after about 8 - 9 hours, and ready for use (or a second feeding).
Been doing this with the same starter for about 3 years and about 100 SD bakes, with great success. Starter is much more resilient than you'd think, and really has a will to survive. A while back I missed a feeding for about 2 weeks with no resulting problem.