Catching wild yeast and making sourdough

Step 2 Feeding time!

All right. Here comes the monotony.

This step is going to take you like a week, seriously. At least it's pretty easy.

For this step you will need:
- 1/4c white flour
- 1/4c wheat flour
-1/4c warm, clean water
- 12 hours

Okay. It has been 12 hours and you probably have a somewhat warm, sort of crusty looking ball that hasn't done anything. Awesome. Good start.

Here is literally all you need to do:

Mix the 1/4c water into the blob. Stir it up and break it down into the water.

Mix the 1/2c flour(s) into the blob. Stir it up.

Let it go for another 12 hours.

At the next feeding it should be a little more liquid.

At any point now you can stop using wheat flour, if you are so inclined. I like using a little wheat flour to get things started. I will add some wheat flour to it every so often, but I feed my started almost exclusively white flour. If you really wanted, you could use only wheat flour. It's all a matter of taste.

Unfortunately my camera was fairly broken at this point. I don't have pictures of most of this, but honestly if you're following the directions even loosely you should be fine. This is not an exact science.

The second feeding (and onward)

Throw half of the starter away. I'm serious.

At some point soon the starter might be too big for your container. Move it to a bigger one.
Note: this is several days later. Broken camera, remember?

Add 1/4c water, stir it up.

Add 1/2c flour, stir it up.

Set for 12 hours.

The reason why half of the mix gets thrown away is simple. When this sucker really gets going it is going to double in size. Every 12 hours. Unless you want gallons and gallons of starter, throw half of it away.

If you want more starter: Just increase the amount of flour and water added at a feeding. Try to keep between a 2:1 and 1:1 flour:water ratio. I like to have a little more flour than water, but whatever makes you happy.