Hi Peter, congratulations on producing successful sourdough loaves! I agree that it's a bit difficult to determine exactly what led to your recent successes given all the variables involved, but I doubt the yeast/bacteria ratio of the refrigerated starter had much to do with it. Using starter discard slows down the fermentation process significantly because the starter organisms will take longer to activate when they've been stored in the refrigerator. This may be buying you time in a long-fermenting recipe, so that you're able to build strength in the dough before it begins to breakdown, due to over-fermentation and acidification of the dough. Temperature is a factor here as well, since the cold starter will likely result in cooler dough, which is also likely to allow for a more extended rise time at room temperature. 

As far as the amount of starter goes, I would be interested to hear your results when you use 75g of starter from your fridge, but in general more starter means that fermentation occurs more rapidly. However, more starter won't negate the sluggishness that is to be expected when using sourdough discard from the refrigerator. 

Since you're interested in using sourdough discard for your sourdough bread baking, I would encourage you to check out this blog post, and accompanying recipe, which incorporate similar techniques. This recipe only calls for 40g of sourdough discard, so I would imagine your experiment using 75g of sourdough discard will be equally successful! 

Barb

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