How Conservative Are Your Sourdough Starters?

[Basher]

The baking posts here are amazing and have inspired me to bake some breads- never done this before.

I've started the starter and am curious whether you experienced bakers have tried different additives to your starters and seen a difference in flavours.

This is the simple form after 3 hours per reading from today. It's easily doubled, maybe even trebled and seems active early. We are close to mid winter here and night temps get down to 10C( 50f) and the days are about 25C( 80f)

Anyone crushed a few pepperberries?

Maybe tried feeding your starter different ground flour other than wheat, rye? Ground nuts, Sorghum, Psyllium Husks?

Some of the Belgian brewers open ferment there beer in spring and get a different flavour each year depending on the wild yeasts blowing at the time.

Is this the same with sourdough starters?

[Pequod]

I maintain a 100 hydration starter with 1/2 King Arthur bread flour and 1/2 fresh milled whole wheat. Fresh milled grains make starters go wild...they peak much more quickly. This is my base which I use for almost everything, keep in the fridge and feed once a week if not baking that week. When planning a bake, I may use that starter as the seed for my levain, which may require a few feedings of whatever is in that levain, like rye, etc.

[ckreef]

I've had a starter going for maybe a year now in the refrigerator. I pull it out to feed it whenever I want to use it or at least every week or two. Just regular flour but I'm not a big baker anyway. 

 

[MacKenzie]

I pretty much do a Pequod mentioned although I just feed my starter with regular bread flour and water. 100g starter + 100g bread flour + 100g water.

[Syzygies]

9 hours ago, Pequod said:

I maintain a 100 hydration starter with 1/2 King Arthur bread flour and 1/2 fresh milled whole wheat.

Nearly the same here: Our freshly milled flour is 1:1 red wheat to rye.