Feeding Ratios and a Schedule That Sticks
Okay. Your starter's alive, it's passed the float test or you've at least seen it double, and now you're asking me the question I get more than any other: how often do I feed this thing, and how much.
Good news. This is just math. Bad news, sort of. You have to actually do it on a schedule, and that's the part people fall off of, not the ratios.
The ratio, plain
Most of the time I feed at 1:1:1. That means equal parts starter, flour, and water by weight. So if I'm keeping 100 grams of starter in the jar, I feed it 100 grams flour and 100 grams water. Discard down to that 100 first, then feed.
Some weeks, if I want it to grow slower because I'm not baking for a few days, I'll go 1:2:2 — same starter, double the flour and water. That stretches out how long it takes to peak, which buys me time. That's it. That's the whole ratio conversation. Everybody makes it sound mystical and it's a load calc with wetter numbers, same as everything else in this jar.
Weigh it. I know, I know, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. Scoop-and-feed with a spoon is how you end up with a starter that's twice as thick some weeks and soupy the next, and then you can't tell if it's behaving because it's healthy or because you fed it wrong. Fifteen dollars, a scale, put the jar on it, tare, done.
Twice a week, not every day
Here's my actual opinion, and I'll own it's a little contrarian to what you read online: feed your starter on a schedule you will actually keep, even if that schedule is less ambitious than what the internet tells you to do.
I feed mine twice a week. Sunday night and Wednesday night, because those are the two nights I'm reliably home and not up the canyon or at a ward party or wherever. If I promised myself daily feedings I would've killed this starter in June of 2024 out of sheer forgetting, and I've watched it happen to students. They start strong, feed every morning for a week, life gets busy, they miss two days, they panic, they dump the whole jar and start over. Consistency beats ambition. I learned that the hard way, same as most things I actually know.
If your starter's living on the counter at room temp, it wants feeding roughly every 12 to 24 hours if you're baking with it regularly. If it's in the fridge, which is what I do between bakes, once a week is plenty. Pull it out, let it sit an hour, feed it, let it get bubbly again for a couple hours on the counter, then back in the fridge. Simple.
What "ready to feed" looks like
Don't feed on a clock alone. Feed when the jar tells you it's hungry — it'll have risen and started to fall back, maybe with a little liquid (that's hooch, it's fine, just stir it in or pour it off) sitting on top. If you're feeding twice a week and it looks flat and sad three days later, that's your jar telling you it wants a shorter interval or a warmer spot.
A confession about getting fancy
I went through a phase — this was maybe two weeks into owning this thing — where I got completely obsessed with scoring patterns. Watched probably twenty videos. Cut a wheat stalk pattern into a loaf top with a lame, feathered the leaves and everything, and it came out gorgeous. Prettiest loaf I've ever made.
And then I got bored of it in about ten days and went right back to one clean straight slash down the middle. Because here's the thing — the scoring doesn't feed the starter, doesn't build the schedule, doesn't do any of the actual work that makes bread happen reliably. It's decoration on top of a system. I'd rather you get obsessive about your feeding schedule for two weeks than about your scoring, because one of those actually keeps your bread coming out right every single time and the other one just looks nice for a photo.
Same logic applies here. Don't let a fun distraction pull you off the boring, repeatable stuff. The boring stuff is what keeps this jar alive.
A caution on discard
Don't just keep adding flour and water forever without discarding first, or you'll have a gallon of starter inside a month and nowhere to put it. Discard down to your baseline amount every single feeding. And don't throw that discard in the trash — it's not garbage, it's pancakes, it's crackers, it's a hundred things. Throwing it away bugs me a little, honestly.
One real caution: if you're feeding twice a week on the counter and it's summer and your kitchen's running warm, watch it closer. Warm speeds everything up and a starter that's fine on a two-day interval in January can get hungry and cranky in a day and a half come July. Adjust the schedule to the jar, not the other way around.
Before next time: pick your two feeding days and put them somewhere you'll actually see them, and feed at 1:1:1 both times so we're all working from the same starting point next lesson.