The No-Waste Sourdough Starter Method

My Sourdough Starter Feeding Schedule

Here’s my sourdough starter feeding schedule that I prefer to use for all my sourdough bread baking.

I like to use the no-discard or no-waste method of maintaining my sourdough starter because of so many benefits

1. no waste,
2. no using extra flour, no paying for extra flour
3. no gigantic jars of sourdough discard

Basically, I maintain very very small amounts of sourdough starter and when it’s time to bake bread, I just scale up by feeding at a ratio of a minimum of 1:5:5, but usually more like 1 : 20 : 20 or even more.

I bake sourdough bread everyday, so this works out for me very well.

When I don’t bake, I simply take my sourdough discard and dehydrate it so it’s basically sourdough starter discard in shelf stable form. The dehydrated sourdough starter goes in my starter “bank” for future kitchen use.

Sourdough Starter Feeding Schedule (when baking just one loaf at a time)

SUMMARY

Starter I maintain
10g

Where
Room temp

Feeding frequency
every 12hrs (when I wake up, and when I go to sleep)

Feeding ratio
1:5:5

SCHEDULE

7 PM – feed the starter

8-12hrs later, it comes to peak

7 AM – feed the starter

110g sourdough starter
-100g to make a loaf OR to discard
= 10g sourdough starter that’s left

Repeat.

Notice something?

Even if you don’t bake sourdough bread every day like me, the amount of sourdough starter you are discarding is so very little, 100g.

You can dehydrate and save in a jar for later use OR

you can easily use up the sourdough discard in your everyday meals –you can thicken soups, make gravy, add it to pancakes, use it as batter to fry chicken, etc.

It’s very easy, very simple and you are not bound to a gigantic sourdough discard jar that’s taking up room on your counter or fridge.

Now, I usually bulk bake in batches of 4 loaves at a time

I don’t see the point of baking just one loaf at a time, because scaling from 1 loaf to 4 loaves isn’t that much effort.

So when I do bake 4 loaves of sourdough bread, I am usually feeding at around 1 : 20 : 20, sometimes even more.

The point is, I am never feeding my starter at a 1 : 1 : 1 ratio and I almost never have sourdough starter discard jar to worry about.

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