I have always had both refrigerated and dried. I make the starter batch, and spread a little onto some plastic wrap. Its allowed to air dry for about 2 days. By then it crumbles easily. I simply place in a small plastic bag and its fine for almost forever, if stored in the fridge. You MUST create the starter from just water, flour, and the orignal sourdough culture. Do not add salt, sugar or anything else to the culture!! Every time I make a batch of sourdough, I mix my jarred, refrigerated one with flour and water to give me a stiff batter, almost a sticky dough, as well as adding a little of the dried. I keep the dried ones in the fridge too. I have several, one for rye, one, my grandfather used 100 years ago, and one with a more recent (30+ year old) sourdough culture from San Francisco. All three are viable and will start 'working' within 4 hours. The water I use has no chlorine, so bottled might help prolong the cultures. I do have a new one pound bag of regular yeast, and its compressed and granulated. I store it in the freezer, unopened. Once it is opened, it goes into a canning jar with air tight lid, then back into the freezer again. Everything mentioned in the King Arthur descriptive above is exactly what I do. I don't mind smelling top of the starter liquid in the fridge, as its 'hooch' (booze) like another person mentioned. There is also another recent post I made that covers the same issues of keeping a sourdough culture alive and well. I don't even bother to feed mine, and it could be sitting in the fridge 6+ months at a time, with no ill effects.

i just signed up to the forum but thought this was as good a time as any to say hi. i luuuuv pickles! :) it would be a very sad day for a pickle jar to go bad :( vinegar has a ph of around 3? worms need something like 5-9 from a quick web search - i'm wondering if you might be able to stick them in a blender with some ? baking soda to neutralise the acidity - worms already use calcium carbonate in their digestive system afaik at any rate if you start small, with maybe half a pickle's worth?, you can't go far wrong i'm a big fan of precomposting but it'd be fun to see what a blended pickle baking soda mixture would look like :P cheers! and hello :)

Ginny, I am very familiar with Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough culture. Mine has been going strong for 3-4 years now. Usually the starter is fed with equal measures of flour and filtered or bottled water. If you continue to feed it every 12 hours, you will end up with way more starter than you need. Following is from the information sheet that I provide when I share either of my starters: The starter will need feeding about every couple of weeks; just add 1 cup warm water and 1 cup flour. When you want to bake bread, take the starter out of the fridge and bring it up to room temperature (this will take 1-2 hours). Then, feed the starter with 1 cup flour and 1 cup warm water and let it sit in a warm place overnight to ferment. The next morning, remove the amount you need for baking. Pour the remaining starter into a clean jar and refrigerate. Wash the previous jar very well. I have only fed my starter with water and flour, no milk, no potato flakes or potato water and only used sugar and the potato flakes at the very first to activate the dried starter. Beat some air into the starter with the spoon or fork as you feed it. If you find yourself with only a small amount of starter left, you will need to build the starter  i.e. donÂt dump a whole cup of flour and water into 2 TB of starter! To build your starter amount: add 1-2 TB of flour and water into a small amount of remaining starter, let sit to work; then add about 1/4cup flour and water, stir well, let sit to work; next feed, add another 1/4cup flour and water, stir well, let sit to work. Let the starter work for a minimum of 2 hours each time after you feed it. Now you have built up additional starter so you can feed with 1 cup each flour and water, let sit to work, use to make bread, or store in fridge. Store the starter in glass or crockery. I mix the bread in my Kitchen Aid stainless mixer and let it rise in the stainless bowl or in a crockery bowl. There is a lot of speculation about the sourness of bread. One idea is every once in awhile use dark rye flour to feed the starter or some in the bread dough. Another is to let it rise at a lower temperature (60?) so it rises longer and gives the bacteria a longer time to do their work. Some feel that making the starter more firm (adding more flour than water when feeding it) results in a more sour taste. DonÂt expect your starter to ever taste as sour as commercial sourdough bread  they add things to it to get that really sour taste. The starter will develop "hooch"  a mixture of alcohol and water  while being stored in the refrigerator. If there is more than one-inch of hooch, I pour most of that off, let the starter come to room temp, feed it, let it expand 4 hours, then use it to make bread or put back in the refrigerator. Any sourdough recipe you may try assumes that the starter has been fed and left to rise, then you begin the recipe. Hope this helps, Teresa

Ginny, the reason there are so many different ways to do things is that there are a lot that work. Having had a starter going for over a year now, I've found that it isn't that picky. For example, your original question of how much starter to add to make the sponge. It isn't critical. If the amount added is very small, then the sponge will take longer to double because it's starting out with very little yeast. If you add a lot and your starter is a wet one, then you may need to adjust the amount of flour you add to the bread later to get the dough right. I keep my starter in a glass jar in the fridge because it is a convenient size. I'm skeptical about the "no metal" thing. I wouldn't use a reactive metal, but I've stirred with stainless steel and haven't found it to do any harm. I sometimes let my dough rise in a stainless steel bowl. I was a bit worried about whether my starter survived chemo. I only managed to get it out once during the last 5 months when I went through several cycles of fed and double until it was doubling quickly again. Yesterday I finally got it out of the fridge again. It took a while to double (the house is pretty cool at this time of year too) but by this morning it had doubled. It is pretty hardy stuff.