Appreciation post: I started using a 3 year old sourdough starter from a bakery in Portland last month, and it makes a better loaf than any new one I've tried.

Everyone says you need to feed a starter daily for the best flavor, but this one gets fed once a week and still gives my bread a deeper, more complex taste than my daily-fed starters ever did, so what's the deal with that rigid feeding rule?

2 comments

2 Comments

dakota_rodriguez13d ago

That "microbes doing their own slow thing" is key. A hungry starter might develop different acids and flavors than a constantly fed one. The rigid rule probably just comes from a fear of the starter dying, not from what actually makes the best bread.

felix_martin5614d ago

You're onto something there. My best starter came from a friend who only fed it every ten days, and it had this amazing tang that my daily one never got. The rigid rules never made much sense to me either, since the microbes are just doing their own slow thing.