Care and Feeding Your Start

Care and Feeding of your Natural Yeast Start 

Upon receiving your start, it needs to be fed right away and checked every day.  We recommend feeding Spelt flour or Wheat Flour.  The quality of your ingredients in feeding and in bread making will greatly affect your results. 
Initially, as your start adapts to your refrigerator and as you become accustom to caring for it, check every day.  If water gathers on the top, it has used its food and is hungry. Add as much water as you have start.  . Use wooden spoon to mix thoroughly. Add enough flour to bring your start back to its original consistency.  If you aren’t sure, take a small blob in your hand.  About the size of a golf ball.  If it sets on your fingers and doesn’t run off, it is a great consistency  Wipe the inside of the jar down to within an inch or two of the level of your start with a wet paper towel as it tends to harden. Use only glass and a wooden spoon to mix it. I keep the start in glass jar with a loose lid that doesn't tighten, keep in fridge. Some will say plastic is ok to store in but I really, really suggest glass.
You can use these grains to grind and feed:
White Wheat
Spelt
Kamut
Winter Wheat
I grind my flour and then store it in the freezer. Lasts longer that way.
Every third feeding, I suggest using white unbleached organic flour. It helps to increase the fermentation of the start. I get my white flour from Gilt Edge, Keith’s Best.  It is unbromated, unbleached and has a little citric acid for freshness.
Feed it about every three days if you wish to make bread often. Once your start is well established and happy It can go a week or two without feeding. The longer it goes between feeding, the less active your start will be.
If you let it sit too long without feeding, it will develop a grey watery liquid on top, a grey crust will also appear, just pour off any liquid, use your wooden spoon and scrape off the top layer, this will cause it to be more sour for your bread if left to soak in. Underneath it's still all good. Feed it again. Let sit a couple of days and proceed to make your bread.

If your start is too sour, use the Power Feeding cycle to restore.                         

Extra start is great for thickening gravy, feed to chickens, make cookies, etc.

Sweeteners
Your Yeast Start will feed on the flour AND the sugars in your bread. Raw Honey will impede the growth of your start and thus the raising.  Either use pasteurized honey (I’m so sorry to you honey purists) Or, better yet, scald your honey in the water and let cool before adding your yeast start.  Other good options for sweetness are
Molasses
Maple Syrup
Raw Sugar
Honey Crystals
If I use white sugar I use Cane Sugar