Using starter directly from fridge

I have a starter that is couple months old. Good fermentation and oven spring. I store Ryely in the fridge and use aprox. 1-2 times per week. When in the cold fridge I see very slow activity and rise.( doesnt reach peak) I understand that we want to use the starter just at its peak or within 20-30 minutes of peaking. I bring Ryely to room temperature where he continues rise and reach peak. Why should I not use Ryely now? Why is it recommended to feed the starter first after taking it out of fridge and wait 6-8 hrs before using? How do you increase sour tang taste if the starter is always freshly fed?

What I do which makes things more predictable is the following. I bake 2 or so times per week. Once per week I take my starter out of the fridge and feed it, I leave it out until it reaches peak and then place it in the fridge. I’ll take what I need from it to build levains for it and then after another week I’ll repeat the process. Allowing the starter to peak before refrigeration ensures that when you take some of it out for building a levain it is ready and raring to go. I do not find any need to refresh my starter before making a levain so long as I have fed it in the past 7d. This works for me and I have little starter discard because I usually plan what I’m going to bake and try only to have enough starter to make those levains and have 5 g left over to refresh.

I do what you’re talking about probably two of my three weekly bakes. It works fine. Especially because I use almost all the starter in the jar and have to feed and multiply it up a bit every bake day (then I refrigerate it with about 20% growth from the final feed).

The population of microbes in the starter is going to be a little smaller if the expansion happened over days in the fridge vs doubling/tripling in the past few hours, but it’s plenty high to get a dough going. Some of that CO2 was made days before by microbes that may be at the dead part of their lifecycle…though with the way cold slows things down, maybe not.

Another thing I do that I thought I was kinda alone in (haha there is nothing new under the baking sun) is a mini refreshment. In this interview of the baker Anomarel Ogen, he talks about doing it too.

Let’s say my starter is tripled but I’m super busy with something else and not ready to mix dough – I do a mini feed just to tide it over a couple of hours, keep it from getting past ripe. Sourdough “law” says never feed less than 1:1:1 but even this is not set in stone. Obviously I don’t look for doubling, rather bubbly aeration and aroma, a sort of gut sense of it’s ready (probably more that I’m ready ;).

Finally, for real mind bending sourdough starter use and maintenance, check out the methods of @homebreadbaker here:

I bake like this a couple of times a month, and the loaves turn out great.
Here’s a bread flour version of it, with 1% starter (way more than he uses :open_mouth::slightly_smiling_face:)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBA9rfEJfYj/?igshid=i0v39yzws76x

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“How do you increase sour tang taste if the starter is always freshly fed?”

You increase the sour tang by increasing the acetic acids. To do that, make a stiffer starter, and ferment (cool) around 68-77 F. Inversely, you can achieve a mild tang, like yogurt, by increasing the lactic acid content. To do that, make a wetter (or liquid) starter and ferment (warm) around 85-90 F.

If you did nothing different, eventually, in enough generations (feedings), your starter will be sour whether you want it to be or not. The total of organic acids is always increasing. If your starter eventually gets too sour you can wash it, give it a bath, to remove some of the acids, lessening the sourness. A simple way to know if your starter is sour to your liking is to taste it, raw. It is just dough. NOTE: it is necessary to always maintain your starter at/below ph 4.2 to inhibiting the survival of nefarious pathogens.

There is nothing wrong with using your starter right out of the fridge. For home bakers, the more mature a starter is, the immediate temperature and/or the need-to-feed, seems to matter less. I have a starter I have been maintaining for 12+ years that I always use cold out of the fridge, even if it was last feed a week or 10-days ago. I add the starter to warm water, then use my hand to squish, soften, and dissolve, like making a mud pie. Then I dump in the dry ingredients on top. Easiest bread to make and the flavor profile is way up there, over the top.