Hi Emily, 

Over time sporatic feedings at room temperature, accompanied by long stretches in the refrigerator, are likely to lead to more sluggish rising behavior when it comes time to make your bread. Keep in mind that your starter can survive quite well in the refrigerator, but it's not thriving in there. A few days of twice a day feedings at room temperature, taking care to feed your starter when it's at its highest point of rising, or just beginning to fall, will do much to improve your starter's overall health and will definitely make the wild yeast perform better in your baking. You'll also want to be careful to feed your starter consisently during this period, which means discarding so that the proportion of ingredients in the starter remain fairly constant.

When it comes time to make your bread, be sure to add your starter to the recipe when it's ripe (which means it's at that high point of rising, or just starting to fall after having been fed at room temperature). If you're seeing hooch in your starter when you add it to your bread recipe this is an indication that it's way past being ripe, and needs to be fed again and allowed to ripen before it can do a good job making your bread rise.  

The good news is your starter just needs a slightly more consistent and regular feeding routine. If you're worried about creating too much discard, you could consider either reducing the size of your starter, or taking advantage of our many delicious sourdough discard recipes. 

I hope this helps! Let us know how it goes. 

Barb

• Reply