I’ve been baking with starter for years, I’ll keep this super simple. As others have said it does not need to be complicated, bread is an ancient invention.

The most important thing is to have fun and feel free to expirement.

• keep the starter in the fridge, I use a large jar with a screw top lid
• use weight for all measurements, not volume. Get a pair of kitchen scales, they don’t need to be super expensive
• get a loaf tin, don’t worry about dutch ovens and baskets at this stage, they are purely for aestetic and what we want is functional bread
• if you need 150g of starter for a recipe, feed the starter with 75g flour, and 75g water, and give it a good stir (I use a chopstick for ease). Leave it on the side at room temp for about 6 hours, but overnight is fine. As long as it’s spongy you’ll be fine.

That’s it.

The following is the loaf recipe I’ve used for years. It makes a 3lb / 1300g loaf, so adjust the amount depending on the size of the tin.

• 206g starter

• 615g flour

• 410g water

• 5g sugar

• 6g salt

• 10g apple cider vinegar

• Mix starter, sugar, water, and half the flour together in a bowl, leave for at least 30 minutes (I usually do this overnight cos I’m lazy)

• Mix in the remaining flour, salt, and vinegar

• Knead for 3-5 minutes - the mixture will feel wet, it is, but as long as everything has been mixed in you’re fine. Resist all urges to add extra flour.

• Place in a large bowl and cover with a tea towel, leave for 2 hours / double in size

• Pour a small amount of oil (like the size of a coin) on your worktop, and wipe it around with your hand to make a large rectangle, with the long side nearest you / “landscape”

• Lightly oil your loaf tin

• place dough in centre of rectangle, and shape the dough to be about the size of a letter / A4 paper, with the long side nearest you / “landscape”

• imagine the dough has 3 equal sections. Take the left section and fold it on top of the middle section. Then take the right section and fold it on top of both so you have 3 “layers” in the middle of the rectangle

• roll it over, so the bottom layer is now facing upwards / on top

• place in to the loaf tin

• put in a CLEAN, and lightly oiled plastic bag and leave to rise for 2 hours / doubled / tin is full

• bake at 200C fan for 40 minutes

Enjoy!

It’s not that hard. You just need to keep it fed on a daily or semi-daily basis.

Take some of your starter (use the other part for baking or throw away), add new flour and water to it, mix well, put in the fridge. Not much more to it.

Some people store a part of their starter in the freezer and only feed it once a month, but it has the risk of killing the culture.

Can be quite wasteful if you’re not using it regularly, but it’s great for bread.

I used the numbers in this video as a rough guideline to maintain it, when I still had mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTAiDki7AQA

but the exact numbers don’t really matter. it’s more of a rule of thumb

Edit: The most important part is to name it, though. Mine was called Remy