Generally, feeding a starter is pretty simple:
- Remove a little more than half
- Add flour and water
- Stir
- Cover and set somewhere
Now, the specifics are on often you want to make bread and how warm your kitchen is. I like thinking of it this way.
If you want to make bread only twice a month, keep your starter in the fridge. If you want to make it more often than that, you can keep it out of the fridge on a shelf or put it in the fridge if you want.
If you're just doing a maintenance feeding, I use less flour and water to conserve. If I'm feeding the starter to make bread (more on this below), I use more flour and water.
For a maintenance feeding I use:
- 50 grams of water
- 50 grams of flour
For a pre-baking feeding I use:
- 100 grams of water
- 100 grams of flour
It is important to always remove half of your starter to keep the ratio of bacteria to flour/water in check. Some people throw this "discard" away. I think that's pretty wasteful, but end up doing it sometimes. More often than not, I try and give away the discard to somebody looking to start a new starter, or I put it in a covered container in my fridge. I use this discard stash to either make sourdough crackers or to restart my starter if I accidentally let it die.
Even when this discard is in the fridge, it does have an expiration date. Try and use this fridge discard within a month.
We're going to start with a 50% hydration recipe. This dough will be pretty easy to work with. The percentage in this context is a ratio of the weight of the water to the weight of the flour. A 50% hydration recipe, therefore, would call for something like 250 grams of water and 500 grams of flour.
- 250 grams of water at room temperature
- 500 grams of white flour
- 150 grams of starter
- 10 grams of salt, any grind as long as it isn't super coarse
Feed the starter with 100 grams of water and 100 grams of flour. No need to discard if you recently (within a day) fed the starter. If you are taking it out of the fridge, let it warm up to room temperature for about 45 minutes before feeding it.
We will know that the starter is ready to use because it looks bubbly and active. The test is to fill up a small glass of room temperature water and put a spoonful of starter into the glass. If it floats, you're ready to bake! If it doesn't, try adding a little bit more flour and water and wait for 45-ish minutes.
Mix the flour, water, and starter (withhold the salt for now) into a large bowl. You want to mix just until the ingredients come together. Then let sit for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, add the salt with a tiny bit of water and work it into the dough. You shouldn't be able to feel any of the salt crystals beneath your fingers.
Once the salt is mixed into the dough, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a towel. It is pretty important that the plastic wrap is well sealed to the bowl.
Every 30 or so minutes, take off the plastic wrap and towel and turn the dough. To turn the dough, simply reach into the bowl and under a "corner" of the dough mass and then pull it up and over the top of the dough. Turn the bowl a quarter of the way around and repeat till you make it back to the first spot. This will help make the dough light and tough.
Repeat this 4 or so times until it has been about 2 hours since the salt was mixed.
Now we let the dough sit for a while to bulk ferment. This is when you should notice a pretty dramatic change in your dough. It should at least double in size. Once it has doubled in size (this is a function of your room temperature but a ballpark is about 4-6 hours) you should get ready to bake it. DOUGH CAN OVERRISE. If the flour supply is exhausted by the yeast, the dough will fall and there's not a whole lot more you can do about it then. So check in on your dough every 30-45 minutes while it is rising.
When the dough has doubled in size, we want to start doing a few other things. First, we'll shape the dough and get it ready to bake. Lightly flour a workspace, and turn the dough mass out onto it. Spread out slightly, and then fold and shape the dough by taking an edge and folding it over the top. I like to start with the left and right sides and then do the top and bottom. You probably only want to shape the dough a few times. Once it looks mostly like you want, flip the dough over and spin it around on the workspace with your hands, almost like you're doing pottery. You want to tuck the edge underneath the dough so you get a nice round mass.
Preheat the oven to 500° with the dutch oven in it (but no lid). Once the oven is ready (try and coordinate this to be about 20 minutes after you finish shaping the dough). Take the dutch oven out of the oven, and set on the range top. Put a bit of corn flour in the bottom of the oven and drop the dough in (in the same orientation as it was on the board).
While it is in the dutch oven, take a sharp knife and slash the top of the dough. Put the lid on put in the oven. Reduce the temperature to 450°. After about 30 minutes, remove the lid and bake the bread for another 10-15 minutes until the crust is as golden as you'd like.
Remove from the oven and the dutch oven and let bread cool for at least 1 hour before cutting it open. This is super important and you already put a bunch of work into the bread so just wait those extra minutes.