Hi Margie, according to my understanding the proportion of starter primarily affects the rate of fermentation, so a larger percentage of starter fed a smaller meal will ferment more quickly than a smaller amount of starter fed a large meal. I kept the proportion of ingredients the same when doing these builds in order to time the builds more predictably. Jeffrey Hamelman does point out that using a smaller portion of mature culture for a build is one strategy for slowing down fermentation. For example, you could use this method if you're preparing your build on a warm summer night and want to avoid it being over-fermented by morning. This may also be why you often see this sort of smaller inoculation process for the final overnight levain in sourdough recipes. Amber Eisler, one of our talented baking instructors here at the King Arthur Baking School also pointed out to me that this type of levain build serves as a helpful way of bringing diverse starters to the same place in a recipe. Sourdough starters come in so many consistencies and activity levels that adding a large quantity of starter directly to a recipe can introduce too much variability. Including a levain build that requires a small amount of ripe starter will help create a more uniform levain build, which will function more predictably in the final recipe. Barb

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