Hi Venky, congratulations on getting your starter up and running! I would recommend tweaking your maintenance routine a bit so that your "mother pot" takes advantage of more room temperature feeding time. While it can survive quite well with the once a week feedings you've been giving it, it's not going to thrive under these conditions. On the other hand, the room temperature feedings you're giving the portion of your starter leading up to baking are serving to revitalize the starter in ways that would also be beneficial to your mother starter. 

In other words, it's best to keep your starter maintained at a level where you can feed the whole starter at room temperature for a day or two leading up to baking. When you're ready to bake you'll take off the portion of ripe starter you need for your recipe, and then feed the remaining starter and let it sit out for a few hours before returning it to the refrigerator. 

In addition, be careful about the ratio of ingredients in your starter. A mother starter that consists of 500-600g of starter, that only gets a feeding once a week of 40g of water and 40g of flour isn't going to be adequately nourished by that amount, and will end up being dominated by sourdough waste products. Here's the starter maintenance routine we normally recommend, which calls for a 1:1:1 ratio of starter:water:flour (by weight). 

When your starter is being maintained at room temperature you want to aim to feed it when it's at its highest point or rising, or just as it's beginning to fall. Allowing the starter to fall significantly between feedings can lead to sluggish yeast behavior. 

When you've adopted this kind of feeding routine for several days, I would expect your starter to perform better in your baking. Of course, a lot of other factors can impact how your bread rises, so sometimes honing your sourdough bread baking skills can also be helpful. We have lots of great resources to help you succeed on that front! Consider giving our Pain Au Levain recipe a try, with the expert help of Martin and his son, Arlo. 

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

Barb

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