Sourdough Starter (maintenance)

 1:4:4 ratio

60 g starter (1/4 cup) (air removed)
240 g warm water (1 cup)
240 g Bread Flour (1 heaping cup)
Wide mouth quart jar with plastic lid

Stir water and flour into your starter in a quart jar, it should take up about half of the jar.  You want it to be a thick pancake batter consistency.  Add more flour if too runny, more water if too thick.  Cover with a plastic lid, but loosely. Mark with a rubber band level to see when it doubles.  It should fill up the whole jar.  

Float Test: Wait till doubles in size (~4-6 hours).  Drop spoonful of starter into a jar of water. If it floats to the top, it is full of air and ready to use! 

Empty jar into bowl you are going to use for your bread recipe.  What remains in the jar is what you will feed for your next recipe.  Add 240 g warm water and 240 g bread flour.  Stir, make sure you scrap all the starter from around the jar down with a rubber scrapper.  Remember no metal should come into contact with your starter.  Mark with rubber band where level is.  Refrigerate if you will not be baking again in 24 hours.  Leave at room temperature if you will be baking again.  It will activate within 12-24 hours.  

Feeding Starter: Discard starter is flat, on the way down from a rise, and pretty runny, no bubbles (well maybe a few) (~1 cup) has not been fed.

Feed starter at least once per week.  Either cook with it or discard half and feed remaining starter with 1:1:1 ratio.  It will be ready in a few hours.

Active Starter: you put a rubber band around jar and it has doubled in size,  I might be coming down from having doubled (okay).  This is what you will use in a recipe.  

Note: To replace active dry yeast in a recipe with your sourdough starter, simply substitute each Tablespoon of active dry yeast with 1 cup of starter (air removed). 

I got this recipe from Amber's Kitchen See her website for sourdough starter information