How long can your sourdough starter or any starter last in fidge without feeding?

[Garvinque]

How long can your Sourdough Starter or any Starter last in fidge if you can't always feed each week for example you make starter and place in fidge but don't feed for a month?

Thanks for any advise Garvin

[Pequod]

I generally make sure mine is fed on the weekends. Haven't gone longer than a week. My guess is I could go for a month, but I'd need to nurse it back to health a few days before using. 

[Garvinque]

Doing it on the weekends makes sense!

 

Garvin

[Pequod]

And if I'm baking a loaf on the weekend, I'll do at least two feedings before using.

 

[Garvinque]

20 minutes ago, HalfSmoke said:

And if I'm baking a loaf on the weekend, I'll do at least two feedings before using.

 

Why is that?

 

Garvin

[Pequod]

Straight out of the fridge it will be high in acetic acid. Very tangy. It will need at least one feeding to reduce that and to get it "healthy" again. It likely won't pass the float test right out of the fridge. 

Chad Robertson of "Tartine Bread" recommends a young starter. Ken Forkish follows the same basic approach, adapting some of Robertson's techniques. I find I agree with them. I like the flavor I get with a young starter. 

[tony b]

My downfall every time I've tried to do a sourdough starter. After a few weeks, I forget to feed it and end up loosing it. I quit trying. 

[Garvinque]

57 minutes ago, tony b said:

After a few weeks, I forget to feed it and end up loosing it.

That was my problem wanted sourdough pizza and made the starter and got busy and forgot it was in the back of the fidge, three months later my question above

 

Garvin

[Pequod]

If you plan to do sourdough pizza, I like the approach in "The Pizza Bible" better than Forkish's "Elements of Pizza". The flour recommendations in that book tend to be spot on as well. Just FYI. 

[Syzygies]

I sometimes go a month, with starters on both coasts. I often bring bread from CA to NY, and my NY starter gets neglected. After a summer in CA, I always bring some of the CA starter to NY, in a very stiff, dry paste in a sealed chamber vacuum pouch.

I agree with the above comments. The two issues are acid balance, and rising power. On the second feeding after a hiatus, I leave only a small amount as carry-over, to reduce acid. This is also mostly controlled by the timing of the last feeding before actual use; shorter is less acid, at the possible expense of going under the sweet spot for rising power.

As for rising power, I always augment my bread with a tiny bit of yeast, which provides a boost and security. I don't view anything as an authenticity contest; sourdough provides flavor and better shelf life. One can quickly restore rising power by feeding twice a day and observing. I've read something about a float test, but it's pretty obvious if you just eyeball it.

There's a view that an authentic starter (I was once offered one "from the California gold rush") is the same idea as the aliens that looked after early life, terraforming our planet. After a month with whatever flours one actually uses for feeding, any sign of the founder aliens are long gone. This extends to yeast; if you've used commercial yeast in your kitchen, it's going to get into the starter no matter what. I've embraced this on occasion, adding a pinch of yeast to my starter itself.

In fact, for anyone who's had trouble with starter, recognize that there's a continuum of methods from reusing a bit of yesterday's dough (saves on yeast, back in the day), to biga preferments and such, to actual sourdough starters. A continuum is a math term meaning you can jump in anywhere you like. Follow the procedure for a sourdough starter, but instead of whispering in socks while adding pineapple (or whatever voodoo you've heard for this), just add a half teaspoon of yeast to the flour, water the first day. Now keep feeding this as if starter, while telling yourself it really is starter. It's certainly something that works, and if there are other organisms in your flour feed that stand a chance of joining the chorus, they will. Over time this faux starter will become indistinguishable from anyone else's starter, and it works right from the beginning. Easy to do again.