Recipe is fine for sure, and I was doing this for a long time, but some time ago I have learned superior way of keeping sourdough.
The oft cited recipe asks for feeding it every day and also keeping something like 100% hydration. Remembering to feed it every day is a major hassle for me.
My sourdough is a piece of bread dough that is enough to use for my next batch. Basically, after first rise and before I shape my bread, I will cut something between 50-200g of dough, put it in a glass container with a small hole for air circulation and store it in the fridge. I will not feed the starter. Next time I make bread I will take it out of the fridge and mix it with measured amount of warm water that is going to be used for the bread.
Advantages:
- no separate feeding, you cut a piece of bread, and you use it as part of next one,
- hydration and salt level matches your bread recipe which means you can add way more or less starter and the bread will still have the same hydration and salt level,
- the hydration and salt level makes it stable in a fridge for a very long time, I have tested up to 3 weeks with no ill effects and I decided not to stretch it any more. I was only able to keep the traditional 100% hydration no-salt starter for only about a week or risk it spoiling.
I’ve got a lazier option.
Get some starter, add 70g of flour, 100g water and leave it overnight.
Then stick it in the fridge and use it like you’d use a very slow working shop bought yeast (and maybe 20g at a time). Don’t feed it till it gets low. Treat it mean, any more effort on it is wasted. Mine’s coming up on 10 years old now and is just fine. I accidentally put it in the freezer and lost it for a month, I think it improved it.
This is actually the "right" way to do this, or at least the way sourdough bread has been made traditionally almost everywhere I've looked into.
The same kind of process applies to yogurt. You make the starting batch of bacteria in a similar way but then you just use a portion of the previous batch.
Yes, lots of people in India make yogurt (called curd here) at home daily in that way - just add a spoonful or so of the previous curd to the warm milk of the next batch to be made. I doubt anyone adds any separate starter culture - the old curd plays that role.
I'm not sure if I'm cargo-culting here or just trying to figure out the point of Chesterton's fence, but I would be worried about the effects of significant amounts of salt in sourdough starter. Salt could theoretically inhibit yeast growth less (or more) than bacteria, potentially causing the ratio to move in an unhealthy, less flavorful, more sour, or less voluminous direction. If it works and tastes good though, this is a super clever and awesome idea.
Lactobacilli are among the most salt tolerant of common bacteria. In fact, when making wild ferments, the salt is what selects for them (if you make low salt wild ferments, they're less sour and have off flavors). Yeast do alright in high salinity, but they need oxygen to thrive.
Salt-containing starters will taste fine and be healthy as the short chain fatty acids produced by the lactobacilli are what give most of the flavor and health benefits. Your rise might be a little bit weak though. The best thing you can do is take it out frequently and fold it a few times to oxygenate the dough.
The oft cited recipe asks for feeding it every day and also keeping something like 100% hydration. Remembering to feed it every day is a major hassle for me.
My sourdough is a piece of bread dough that is enough to use for my next batch. Basically, after first rise and before I shape my bread, I will cut something between 50-200g of dough, put it in a glass container with a small hole for air circulation and store it in the fridge. I will not feed the starter. Next time I make bread I will take it out of the fridge and mix it with measured amount of warm water that is going to be used for the bread.
Advantages:
- no separate feeding, you cut a piece of bread, and you use it as part of next one,
- hydration and salt level matches your bread recipe which means you can add way more or less starter and the bread will still have the same hydration and salt level,
- the hydration and salt level makes it stable in a fridge for a very long time, I have tested up to 3 weeks with no ill effects and I decided not to stretch it any more. I was only able to keep the traditional 100% hydration no-salt starter for only about a week or risk it spoiling.
I also use a spreadsheet to aid calculations (I plan to make android app but I somehow never have time to finish it): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lSBl3kjAeitBUH75DEIR...