Drawn to its outside size
For temperature control around a starter jar
Brod & Taylor Sourdough HomeA small heating-and-cooling chamber for a jar, rather than a full dough bowl.
41 to 122°F, heats and cools8 × 10 in outside
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Less sourdough discard: keep a small starter
Keep a small starter, about 20 g as in King Arthur's smaller-starter method, or a little less, and you discard only a spoonful at each feed. When you bake, build just the levain the recipe needs from a few grams of it. This cuts flour use and discard to a fraction of a 100 g routine.
Keep: about 20 g. Feed: 1:2:2 to 1:5:5 (10 g + 50 g + 50 g makes 110 g). Bake: build the levain from a few grams the night before. Use the rest: pancakes, crackers, flatbreads.
The small-starter routine
Discard to 10 g, add 20 g flour and 20 g water (1:2:2), and you have 50 g; a 1:2:2 feed peaked in about 8 hours in King Arthur's test at 78°F, so allow longer at 75°F. In the fridge, feed it once a week the same way. A scale that reads in 1 g steps makes these small amounts easy. Whatever its size, throw a starter out for fuzzy mold, pink or orange streaks, or a smell that is not its usual clean, sour one (when to throw a starter out).
Build only what you bake with
For a recipe that needs 150 g of levain, take 10 g of starter the night before and feed it 1:7:7 (70 g flour, 70 g water) to make 150 g, plus a little extra to keep. A feed this large takes longer than the 12 hours King Arthur's 1:4:4 took at 78°F, so check it in the morning and give it time to peak. The feeding calculator does the sums, and the leftover becomes the next starter.
Using discard
Unfed discard adds flavour but little rise. Stir it into pancake or waffle batter, crackers, flatbreads, or a yeasted dough at up to about 20% of the flour weight, counting its flour and water. Keep a jar of discard in the fridge for up to about a week.
Questions bakers ask
Do I have to discard sourdough starter?
If you keep feeding without discarding, the starter grows each day. A small starter makes the discard tiny.
How little starter can I keep?
10 to 20 g works well with a scale. Some bakers keep as little as 5 g.
Equipment for this job
Keep what you own when it does the job. These are the other exact models we profile.
Drawn to its outside size
OXO Good Grips 11 lb Stainless Steel Food Scale
For seeing the display past a wide bowl
OXO Good Grips 11 lb Stainless Steel Food ScaleA pull-out display helps keep the reading visible under larger containers.
11 lb (5.0 kg), reads in 1 g steps