Sourdough starter tips

Most people kill their starter in the first two weeks. They overfeed it, underfeed it, or panic when it smells like nail polish remover. The internet makes this worse with conflicting ratios and pseudoscience about wild yeast. Here's what actually works: feed it once a day if it lives on your counter, once a week if it lives in your fridge. Equal parts starter, flour, and water by weight. King Arthur Flour's guide gets the ratios right without the mysticism.

The smell tells you everything. Healthy starter smells like yogurt or beer. Acetone means it's hungry, not dying. True death smells like rotting fruit and shows fuzzy mold in colors that don't belong in food. San Francisco's Boudin Bakery has kept the same mother starter alive since 1849 through fires, earthquakes, and probably several nervous breakdowns. If they can do it for 175 years, you can manage a week.

Discard isn't waste if you use it. Pancakes, crackers, pizza dough. Joshua Weissman's discard recipes turn maintenance into opportunity. The Brooklyn bread scene runs on starters that started as discards from other bakers. Every thriving culture began as someone else's excess.

Consistency beats perfection. Same flour, same schedule, same spot on the counter. Your starter adapts to your routine, not the other way around. When it doubles in size within 4-8 hours of feeding, it's ready to bake. When you can set your watch by its rise and fall, you've stopped being a beginner. The bread follows."