question about sourdough starter (pics)

[kross]

I always use a scale when feeding my starter.  In my case, I add 100 grams of flour, and 100 grams of water, giving a starter hydration of 100%.  Jeff Varasano's spreadsheet takes the starter hydration into account when figuring the overall hydration of the pizza dough.

[Pete-zza]

The forum's preferment dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html also accounts for the preferment hydration.

Peter

[Super Mario]

Unfortunately I missed that calculator link when I started making the sourdough so basically what I've got is a 'wild card' starter if I understand.
Live and learn.

[kross]

After a few feedings and uses where you feed it a consistent measured amount, the starter hydration % should be close enough that it won't make a difference.  In the meantime, just use your best guess in the preferment calculator tool.

[Super Mario]

Will do, Kross.

Just to make sure I've got things right, when they say 50/50, it means an equal measure of water and flour, right?  So for instance, 30 grams of flour and 30 grams of water (as Kross suggested).  I'm asking this because I've seen a few tutorial videos where people mention "equal parts" and then put in a cup of water and a cup of flour...which is puzzling to me as flour and water don't have the same weight.

So a 50/50 (as in "equal weight of each") starter would be a good starting point for pizza?
 

[Super Mario]

I edited my last post 2 days ago so it may have passed unnoticed.  Are my assumptions right ?

[Jackie Tran]

SM, yes you are correct in your assumptions.  I don't know but I assume most ppl do this part like I do and just eyeball it.  You can measure it for a while until you get a feel for the consistency you like in the starter.  You'll develop this after you've feed it multiple times.

When you go to the calculate the hydration ratio, you take the amount of starter you used (say 16gm) divided by 2 and add 8gm each to the water and flour amount in the recipe then calculate your hydration ratio.

JT

[BrickStoneOven]

I also use a scale when I feed my starter. I measured out how much a cup of the flour I was using weighed and I put it on a scale it came out to 172g, so now I always go by that. I did the same thing with  the water which is scaled to 122g.

[c0mpl3x]

when i bake sourdough bread i use my starter that is 1/2c ea wheat/white flour(both are local, unbleached/unbromated) with 1T subtracted from each,  1T cornstarch (makes overproofed more elastic, more uniform color when baked, 2x the absorbency of flour) and 1c water.  add in 1/2t ady/bread/idy yeast, 1T sugar.  stir, let sit one day out of fridge, then at least 3 days (keep checking) in fridge temps until it smells like quality malty/hoppy dark beer.   makes awesome starter, local flours seem to have more of a natural yeast to them much like italy relies on with its grape skins.  white powder on grapes = yeast.  also seen starter made from wild grapes and flour too, smells awesome but never tried it.  don't mind me just rambling.