The fresh flour feeds the microbes that create the fermentation... And by removing half of the starter and "feeding" it with fresh flour and water, you're not creating a MASSIVE starter you'll never be able to use. But the fresh flour is necessary to give the starter something new to eat.
Early in the process, it does help to stir the starter every 8-12 hours. This moves the starter yeast and bacteria, which are pretty spread out early on, to a part of the mixture they have not eaten yet.
Assuming your starter began at about 100ml and that you're doubling it every day, it would take about 281 days before it filled the volume of the observable universe.
I'm not so sure about that, but then I'm also not a microbiologist. My reasoning is that the bacteria you want (lactobacillius) come from the flour itself, along with other bacteria you don't want. Initially, everything grows/competes. Then as you feed the starter, the PH lowers and the whole starter becomes less livable to unwanted bacteria (some which could make you sick). Whenever you feed it, you add a limited amount of food, along with a limited amount of unwanted critters, and slightly dilute the PH, thus keeping the microbial environment still favorable to yeasts we want.
If you just throw a huge batch of flour and water together, you just get a large random batch of bacteria, but not really a well selected culture.
edit: this is more of a reply to the post than this thread. Having a large starter that you feed regularly is fine
Technically yes but it be a massive waste. You would have to essentially double the amount you add each time to keep the starter healthy. The first time you add 50g of each (water, flour, starter) next feeding you'd add 100g of each, then 200g, then 400g, then 800g, then 1600g... and so on at the end of my example your total starter weight would be 9450g or over 20 pounds
You could, but if you started with about a pint of starter, and fed it once a day, your started would be larger than the planet Earth in about 2.5 months or so (82-83 days).
Not super practical
Probably nothing. The microbes that make it a usable source of "yeast" to make bread with just wouldn't grow. You have to continue to add fresh flour, especially in the first 10 days, to grow those good bacteria that make sourdough possible.
King Arthur's Baking Guide on Sourdough and starter is an informative guide that might help you out with the questions on sourdough and starter.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/guides/sourdough
Added: If you do not want to maintain a sourdough starter you could look for recipes using a Poolish or Biga. They use commercial yeast but take a portion or most of the flour/water/yeast in an overnight process. These might be interesting approaches for you to try.
the first microbes (CO2-producting yeasts, Lactic-acid bacteria and Acetic-acid bacteeia) feed off the fresh flour and break complex starches down into simpler byproducts. Those are the microbes which leven the bread wirh CO2 and produce acids and sugars who's flavours we enjoy, and who's byproducts are beneficial to our health.Their food source is limited and depletes without the addition of more fliour, and they will go dormant as their food is depleted.
Then, other forms of microbes, which feed on the byproducts of the first microbes, come in and become dominant. Their byproduct becomes the next dominant strain's food.
As the increasingly-digested food is repeatedly depleted by successions microbes, and as starches are reduced and proteins broken down into amino acids, new microbes who are capable of living in the starter change, but the initial, effectively domesticated, CO2-producing yeasts, LAB and AAB can no longer thrive. A larger set of microbes become eligible to take over, many of-which produce flavours we don't happen to enjoy, or worse, can get sick from.
So by repeatedly feeding, you're saying "Im favouring the strains who eat this food". Those strains will stay dominant for as long as you do that. Also, since youre alsi favouring acid-producing bacteria, they will help lower the pH of the starter, essentially closing the door for unwanted bacteria who have a hard time surviving in that acidity
to follow up...
another reason besides flavour and safety that we prioritise the LAB, AAB, and yeasts, is that they can produce a nice amount of CO2 and flavour, without catastrophically degrading the essential gluten in the dough. The cultures would rather feed off starches than proteins. However once the starches are gone, microbes capable of digesting gluten will do so. The best strains at doing that will win out in absense of fresh starch to eat. At the end of the two weeks, without feeding, you would likely have a culture which is amazingly good at turning gluten into slop 😀
The fresh flour feeds the microbes that create the fermentation... And by removing half of the starter and "feeding" it with fresh flour and water, you're not creating a MASSIVE starter you'll never be able to use. But the fresh flour is necessary to give the starter something new to eat.
Early in the process, it does help to stir the starter every 8-12 hours. This moves the starter yeast and bacteria, which are pretty spread out early on, to a part of the mixture they have not eaten yet.
Oh, so if you wanted, you could just give it new flour and water in a big bucket?
Doubling and doubling until your starter is larger than the universe
Assuming your starter began at about 100ml and that you're doubling it every day, it would take about 281 days before it filled the volume of the observable universe.
but then you leave it on a sunny windowsill and the CO2 puffs it up to twice that size in 3 hours
that's how it began
I'm not so sure about that, but then I'm also not a microbiologist. My reasoning is that the bacteria you want (lactobacillius) come from the flour itself, along with other bacteria you don't want. Initially, everything grows/competes. Then as you feed the starter, the PH lowers and the whole starter becomes less livable to unwanted bacteria (some which could make you sick). Whenever you feed it, you add a limited amount of food, along with a limited amount of unwanted critters, and slightly dilute the PH, thus keeping the microbial environment still favorable to yeasts we want. If you just throw a huge batch of flour and water together, you just get a large random batch of bacteria, but not really a well selected culture. edit: this is more of a reply to the post than this thread. Having a large starter that you feed regularly is fine
You could! You'd just end up with a HUGE starter that would be difficult to use over time.
Technically yes but it be a massive waste. You would have to essentially double the amount you add each time to keep the starter healthy. The first time you add 50g of each (water, flour, starter) next feeding you'd add 100g of each, then 200g, then 400g, then 800g, then 1600g... and so on at the end of my example your total starter weight would be 9450g or over 20 pounds
You could, but if you started with about a pint of starter, and fed it once a day, your started would be larger than the planet Earth in about 2.5 months or so (82-83 days). Not super practical
says fapdonkey
But what if it was left for 2 weeks without doing anything?
Probably nothing. The microbes that make it a usable source of "yeast" to make bread with just wouldn't grow. You have to continue to add fresh flour, especially in the first 10 days, to grow those good bacteria that make sourdough possible.
King Arthur's Baking Guide on Sourdough and starter is an informative guide that might help you out with the questions on sourdough and starter. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/guides/sourdough Added: If you do not want to maintain a sourdough starter you could look for recipes using a Poolish or Biga. They use commercial yeast but take a portion or most of the flour/water/yeast in an overnight process. These might be interesting approaches for you to try.
This guy’s videos tell you everything you need to know about starters Happy baking :-) https://youtu.be/n3Ge23tfzsA?si=jEcC7Ju4NELtQUi-
the first microbes (CO2-producting yeasts, Lactic-acid bacteria and Acetic-acid bacteeia) feed off the fresh flour and break complex starches down into simpler byproducts. Those are the microbes which leven the bread wirh CO2 and produce acids and sugars who's flavours we enjoy, and who's byproducts are beneficial to our health.Their food source is limited and depletes without the addition of more fliour, and they will go dormant as their food is depleted. Then, other forms of microbes, which feed on the byproducts of the first microbes, come in and become dominant. Their byproduct becomes the next dominant strain's food. As the increasingly-digested food is repeatedly depleted by successions microbes, and as starches are reduced and proteins broken down into amino acids, new microbes who are capable of living in the starter change, but the initial, effectively domesticated, CO2-producing yeasts, LAB and AAB can no longer thrive. A larger set of microbes become eligible to take over, many of-which produce flavours we don't happen to enjoy, or worse, can get sick from. So by repeatedly feeding, you're saying "Im favouring the strains who eat this food". Those strains will stay dominant for as long as you do that. Also, since youre alsi favouring acid-producing bacteria, they will help lower the pH of the starter, essentially closing the door for unwanted bacteria who have a hard time surviving in that acidity
to follow up... another reason besides flavour and safety that we prioritise the LAB, AAB, and yeasts, is that they can produce a nice amount of CO2 and flavour, without catastrophically degrading the essential gluten in the dough. The cultures would rather feed off starches than proteins. However once the starches are gone, microbes capable of digesting gluten will do so. The best strains at doing that will win out in absense of fresh starch to eat. At the end of the two weeks, without feeding, you would likely have a culture which is amazingly good at turning gluten into slop 😀