What is the minimum time between sourdough feedings?

handyman_hank

I keep my sourdough starter in the fridge. When I want to use it (~once a week), I will take it out, give it about an hour, discard half, feed it, leave it for a couple of hours, and then begin my recipe. I use half the starter for the recipe and feed what's left in the jar. However, this means the starter in the jar is fed twice within a couple of hours. This got me to think, how frequent is too frequent between feedings? I get that I'm...

Originally asked by maximumwakestore on Stack Exchange (cooking) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

I'm going to guess from the mention of half at least twice in the question that you rigidly follow one of those "The only one true way to sourdough" methods that involves doubling, using half, throwing away half, etc. I can report from actual experience that you can feed a volume of starter amounts inclusive from 10% of its volume to 400% of it's volume without any detrimental effect. Now, obviously 10% is more of a "tiding the starter over" feeding while 400% is serious bulking up and reduces the sourness if used soon, but it all works to make bread. Thus, if you gave it "two feedings" separated by no hours at all, it would be fine. It's also fine to separate them by a few hours or 12-24...

Full answer by Ecnerwal: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/130551 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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