AN ESTABLISHED STARTER
Keep a small starter jar.
Prepare a separate batch for baking.
Starter is the living flour-and-water mixture you keep feeding. The small amount you keep to start the next feeding is the seed starter. A levain is a batch of fed starter prepared for a particular bake. A reserve is the amount you keep for next time—it stays out of the bread dough.
This guide assumes a 100%-hydration starter: equal weights of flour and water. That does not mean equal cups. If your starter is maintained differently, use its matching feeding method.
Feed a small starter jar.
HAVE READY Your established starter; a clean, food-safe jar with room for the starter to rise; a scale; a spoon; 50 g unbleached all-purpose flour; 50 g water. TO DO NOW 1. Put the empty clean jar on the scale. Press tare/zero so the jar’s weight is not counted. 2. Transfer 50 g starter from your old jar into the clean jar. Keep only this measured portion for this feeding—not the whole old jar. 3. Add 50 g new unbleached all-purpose flour and 50 g water. Stir until no dry flour remains. You now have 150 g starter in this jar. 4. Mark the mixture’s starting height on the outside. Cover loosely so gas can escape; do not seal airtight.
1:1:1 means starter : new flour : new water, by weight. Here it is 50 g : 50 g : 50 g. At each feeding, take a fresh 50 g portion from the previous mixture and repeat. Do not keep adding this feed to an ever-growing jar.
Keep it going between bakes.
HAVE READY The freshly fed jar from step 1. TO DO NOW 1. If keeping it at room temperature, repeat the 50 g + 50 g + 50 g feeding about every 24 hours; it may need feeding sooner in warmth or if it uses its food quickly. 2. If storing it in the refrigerator instead, leave the freshly fed jar at room temperature for about 1–2 hours, then refrigerate. Feed about weekly using step 1.
Get it ready for a bake—then wait for the rise.
HAVE READY Your established starter; the feeding supplies from step 1; your recipe’s required levain weight. TO DO NOW 1. When preparing to bake, feed at room temperature roughly every 12 hours using the 50 g + 50 g + 50 g routine. Repeat until the starter again rises reliably after feeding. 2. For this 1:1:1 feed, look for reliable doubling or tripling in about 6–8 hours, with plenty of bubbles. Other feeding ratios or temperatures change the timing. One unusually fast rise is not enough. 3. In Recipe & scaling, use “Build enough levain” to measure a separate baking batch plus the reserve you want to keep. Mix that build in its own clean jar—not in the bread-dough bowl. 4. Wait for this new build to expand and become bubbly, near its highest level before it falls substantially. This is “ripe” levain. Feeding it does not make it ready immediately. 5. Only when ripe, weigh the recipe’s levain portion. Keep the reserve separate. Add the recipe portion to the dough only at the method’s “add starter” step—not during a flour-and-water-only rest.
Bread words, in plain English
Autolyse: the flour-and-water-only rest used in this app’s plain method; no starter or salt yet. Bulk fermentation: the dough’s first rise, starting when starter is mixed in and ending when you divide it. Fold: lift an edge of dough and lay it over the middle to help it hold its shape. Score: make a cut in the top of the shaped loaf just before baking.
Keep the culture healthy.
Use a clean, food-safe jar and a loose cover that lets gas escape. Never taste raw starter. Mold, fuzzy growth or pink/orange discoloration means discard the whole starter, clean the jar thoroughly and restart.
