Hi Anna, it sounds like your sourdough starter is very similar to ours, although you're discarding a little less than we normally do (our routine calls for discarding 1 cup of starter and feeding 1/2 cup of starter + 1/2 cup of water + 1 scant cup of flour. The short answer is, yes, you can reduce your total maintenance amount to as little as 2 ounces or 1/4 cup, as I've illustrated in this article. It's trickier to go down to that level if you don't have a scale, however. You want to maintain the ratio of ingredients that works best for your starter in your smaller version, while maintaining an accurate and easy means of measurement. A scale can really be helpful in this regard. Things to pay attention to when you reduce your starter size:

1. A smaller starter is more temperature sensitive, so is likely to ferment quite quickly on warmer days, and go dormant more rapidly when refrigerated. When you're maintaining your starter at room temperature ideally you want to feed it when it's at its highest point of rising, or just beginning to fall, which promotes vigorous yeast activity. Allowing the starter to fall significantly between feedings can lead to sluggish yeast behavior. This means that on hot summer days you may need to adjust the ratio of ingredients in your starter so that you're offering a smaller portion of starter a relatively larger meal of water and flour, which it will take longer to consume and ferment. Again, weight measurements make this much easier. While our normal feeding routine calls for equal parts by weight of starter:water:flour (1:1:1), if your house is warm in the summertime, you might need to shift to something more like 1:4:4. With our smaller starter recipe that might look like: 7g starter + 28g water + 28g flour. When you plan to refrigerate your smaller starter, feed it and then let it sit out for at least 4 hours before refrigerating. 

2. You'll also want to be sure that your starter container is an appropriate size for your smaller starter, since it's not particularly healthy for your starter to be spread out too thinly in a larger container. I like to see about an inch of depth to my smaller starter right after feeding. 

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

Barb

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