How do I get enough dough to make a loaf if I only keep small amounts of starter?
No, you do not keep a shelf of jars. At each feeding you keep only a small amount and discard or bake with the rest, so you carry one small starter forward, not many. When it is time to bake, you grow that little starter up (or just use 50 g of it) and feed it into 500 g of flour for the dough. The dough itself is really just one giant starter.
Answered by Hendrik, The Bread Code
From the book
Simply take whatever starter you have left and feed it again. If you depleted all your starter you can cut a piece of your dough. The dough itself is nothing different than a gigantic starter. I recommend a 1:5:5 ratio like mentioned before. So take 1 piece of starter, feed with 5 parts of flour and 5 parts of water. If it is very hot where you live, or if you want to make the bread around 24 hours later after your last feeding, change the ratio. In that case I would go for a 1:10:10 ratio. Sometimes I don’t have enough starter. Then I even use a ratio of 1:50:50 or 1:100:100. Depending on how much new flour you feed it takes longer for your starter to be ready again.
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