Mike Avery wrote about Ed Wood's starter reviving technique that takes 6 days;
>folks have wondered if he's always revived the same starter that he
>started with.
Building a new fully usable starter from scratch takes about 4 or 5
days using wheat flour and about 3 or 4 days using rye flour. Since
Ed's starter revival technique involves adding new flour, and it
takes several refreshments to get the revived starter going, it is
far more likely that the revived starter is actually a new sourdough.
In Joe Ortiz's "The Village Baker" he doesn't save starters. Ortiz
recommends starting from scratch each time you bake. That would seem
to be good advice if you only bake sourdough
occasionally. Refreshing a tired old starter will take several days
at best, starting from scratch will only take a day or two more. I
used to keep a starter, but I only baked sourdough occasionally. One
day I forgot to set aside a piece of refreshed starter and ended up
baking (and eating) my starter. When I built a new starter from
scratch I found that the resulting bread tasted cleaner and fresher
than the bread I made after refreshing tired starters. I think we
all have a tendency to build the final dough too soon after we detect
some life in the old starter and carry along a lot of spoiled flavors
into the bread. Refreshing starters involves more than just getting
the batter to bubble, it has to be continued until the starter smells
"wheaty" and sweet, which may take day or two more.
If you consider your nearly-dead starter to be just a piece of
spoiled food rather than a family heirloom, it is emotionally much
easier to abandon it and start over. Once you start over you will
likely find that for occasional sourdough baking, starting over each
time makes better bread and you don't throw anything away.
I can't remember where I read these guidelines but they make sense to me:
If you bake sourdough nearly every day, keep you starter as a batter
and refresh it twice a day.
If you bake sourdough once a week, keep you starter as a firm dough
and refresh it for each bake.
If you bake sourdough rarely, ie every few months, start from scratch.
If you don't bake often you are not likely to keep refreshing your starter.
Werner