I have my starter on my kitchen cabinet in a jar. I use it usually once a week, but have gone longer. I have found that my does better if I use potatoe water when I feed it. My doesn't like tap water. So i keep some of the water that I have cooked potatoes in. Even if you don't use it, you can still keep it just take some out if you want to or just feed it. Don't use metal anything on it. I have a wooden spoon that I use or have used a rubber or plastic one. I also have a starter that I keep in a small jar. It is from when I make biscuits. I take one of the biscuits & put it in my jar. The rest I bake of course. Then when I make biscuits again I put filtered water in the jar to let it make a liquid and add that to my mixture. My grandmother would just that a piece of dough & put it in her mixing pan that was full of flour cover it over with flour till the next day when she made biscuits again. I have so much fun with my starters, because you are taking care of a living thing and it gives back to you. There are several books out on sourdough starters and recipes for using it. My starter is one that you can make from scratch if you happen to lose it. I will be glad to share it with anyone who would like. Also have how to start your own Amish Friendship Bread so you can have it whenever you want it.

This looks to be #150, so I'll start another sourdough thread with pie segue. :) Cathy, I know the liberated feeling you're talking about! I had it when I started these experiments with the discard. I do as I please with most baking recipes, usually to success. I don't have Grainlady's technical knowledge nor Ann's experience and expertise, but I know that if you control the basics, it'll come out. My mother's challah is so tetchy, however, that controlling it is enough without messing with it. A cousin did that when I was young, and tried using it as a base recipe for other breads, and they were breads, but I didn't really like them. You have to know how to not handle the challah (no typos there) to make it work out right. Add to that the old miseries of using cake yeast and I never messed with yeast dough before. I really liked the figgy loaf! Worrying about keeping the yeast alive rather than if I was going to ruin the bread was great. But that was one of those very soupy things, and if I try that again, I'll use less water/more flour. :) It's interesting that so many people think more hydration means lighter bread and more holes! That's the opposite to what I've experienced so far. Leader, like the ciabatta recipe, works the dough and develops the gluten. Controlled hydration seems to work better for me, and I definitely think the miche was too wet given how much better it got as it dried out. I had similar issues with the pizza recipe. One of the ones I tried, which was the result of much study in a pizza working group, was something like 90% hydration of whole wheat (though not soupy!). It was a very sticky dough and had to be made in a pan. It was not at all comfortable with toppings, though it was okay par-baked. Totally wrong for me, and it didn't have a good enough baked texture to stick with. It's not like my pizza recipe is low hydration. Just comparatively low. It's around 70% hydration. Cathy, I agree that inhaling pizza of any kind is frightening! Thank goodness for the widespread publicity for the Heimlich Maneuver! The miche is peasanty, as in plain old bread. I'd be happy to make the pain de levain for you! That has much more complexity even though it's mostly white. It's very yummy! The miche isn't as flavorless now, but it's not stand in line worthy, unfortunately. Next time. It was supposed to be record setting heat this weekend, but we're having monsoon influence, instead. Not the actual monsoons, which are farther South, but damp and cooler. Spaghetti and meatballs and ciabatta sounds delicious and decadent right now! (Decadent because two starches--my mother never served bread with pasta.) My favorite way to eat ciabatta, however, is with a goodly layer of good butter and an even thicker layer of powder grated good parmesan. This is the breakfast the Italian stewards on the ocean liner tempted my mother with when she was underfed and ill and returning home. I am not underfed, so I don't indulge, but the slightly salty, slightly sour bread with the sweet butter and salty, umami parm is just amazing. (Okay, I'm not underfed, but I haven't had breakfast...) Standing in line for the ciabatta... The gyros-ish meatloaf came out fine. It would have been better with more fat (who says that?), but the meat that needed using was very lean. I suppose I could have added some butter, but who does that? Not I. It's tasty, though. I didn't go full out on the seasoning (i.e., used the recipe) because I'd never made this recipe before. It could be kicked up a bit, but the flavor is about right. The leanness means I can be generous with the oil and grill some up later. :) No yoghurt sauce since since there are no pita either and my cucumbers and dill both bit it in the fridge. Tomatoes, onions and peppers will be fine. :) Ann, one lesson I learned best from you is to just put things in the fridge. Fermenting yeast things, that is. Just put it in the fridge. It's the most freeing thing I've learned recently. I've read all about it, of course, and the pizza recipe is one that's meant to develop in the fridge, but the way you just whip up a levain and throw it in the fridge until you're ready, or make up some do and go off to work, with instructions to Moe for when to take it out. Of course it's a given that cold retards yeast, but so much of my bread life until now has been about keeping yeast warm and cozy and encouraging it to rise, retarding the rise in the fridge to manage the slow process of sourdough is a revelation. Thank-you! Edited to add link and fix weird typo. This post was edited by plllog on Tue, Aug 5, 14 at 20:51

Helene - that is a great tip! What would you freeze it in? Just a freezer bag with the air squished out? I still haven't done my baking - I really need to get to it today. I am about 4 days overdue in baking it. I have two bags of starter on my counter that I would like to use up/give away/freeze. I am very confused on what amounts to freeze, and then how much of the other ingredients to add to it before I bake it all. The recipe says to take out four 1 cup servings of the starter, bag them up, give them away. Then, the remainder in the bag, you use that in your bread recipe. But, what if I want to just bake with the whole bag and not make giveaway starters out of it? How do I know how much to add to it in order to make break out of the whole thing? I'm sorry if this is a dumb question to you more seasoned bakers out there. GW

We each have our own. Labeled 'mine', 'yours', 😂 His gets much more hooch liquid. I feed mine more often. Many, many ways to feed and keep in fridge hibernation. DH has much more experience. He let it go about 10 days and it was very active in no time. The two ball jars have a good spot in the fridge so hard to ignore. If I get a bit of 'hooch' I pour it off. He stirs his in. Before covid I really did not care that much about a starter. That was his deal-i-o. Just no time until now. Trying discard english muffins tomorrow. Like any fermentation your environment will be different than others. When you are ready, maybe the late summer/fall, and once your starter is active, give it a few months feeding once a week for a couple months. Then start a second one using others advice. Your kitchen/fridge temp and active humidity, natural yeast in you kitchen....then you can test longevity. I know some bake less in the hot summer months so they dehydrate and freeze their starter. Never tried that but we take it with us on vacation. Then did leave some in the fridge at home for 2 months and that one died. We are not consuming much bread like I first thought a couple months ago. Enough in the freezer for the next month or so. Down to about two pounds of flour. With so many other choices of various flours in the freezer I've not touched, like corn meal, masa. Hesitating to order flour for a while. Definitely enjoying the learning process like you will eventually. Maybe a year from now I'll go back to no interest. Always nice to have the knowledge.