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If you go with the formula where you double it with each feeding, it will grow to an enormous size very fast. If you have a use for that much starter, then there's no reason to throw it out. But it will be harder to throw that away when you've got a huge amount than to throw away a smaller amount of it in the early stages.

And it's not always predictable how many times you're going to need to feed that culture before it gets active enough to use. If you're feeding it and doubling it every 8 hours that's 3 feedings a day to start off, times maybe three days, so that's nine feedings. So if you you start at a quarter cup, the first feeding makes it a 1/2 cup, second it becomes a cup, third feeding, you're at two cups at the end of the day. Day two is four cups, eight cups, sixteen cups. Day three is 32 cups, 64 cups, 128 cups. That's eight gallons. You'd need at least a 16 gallon container to hold it.

Some people have trouble getting a starter to get really active, so it might take a week. You'd be drowning in the stuff. Even if you got lucky and it was ready by the end of the second day, you'd still have a gallon of starter, which is probably more than you could use, considering most recipes don't use a whole lot of starter..

Most people toss out starter because they want to keep the amount manageable for storage and later feeding. But if you don't want to throw it away, you could use that extra starter in regular bread. It won't be active enough to be your leavening, but there's no reason you couldn't add it to a regular bread recipe.

The starter I have in storage is maybe a quarter-cup, and I don't always double the amount when I bring it out to reactivate it, but it still doesn't take long before I've got a full jar and I'm scooping most of it out to use it.

Also consider that when it's fully active, it's going to double in size or maybe even more between feedings. So if you've got a pint of it in a quart jar, you're risking an overflow.

If this is your first sourdough culture, consider saving some of the starter for later use. The first breads you make will be okay, but after the culture matures a bit, it will be a lot better. The oldest culture I've got is over 10 years old as far as my keeping of it.

Also keep in mind that a young sourdough culture may not get your bread rising very fast, and even with a very active one, the goal is not speed. You actually want a very slow rise, and if you're doing two rises, it could be quite a few hours before that dough hits the oven.

Good luck with the project. Sourdough's good.

I'm curious if anyone has done (or knows someone who has) the crazy things mentioned in Kitchen Confidential with their sourdough starters. Bourdain mentioned that Adam-last-name-unknown used things like rotting grapes, fermenting peppers and mushroom trimmings.... sounds very strange, but he did say it was the best bread he's ever tasted.

@jonfoxx, I'm a purist when it comes to sourdough. It's how I learned how to make it years ago, and it's pretty much foolproof if you're following good directions. If you start introducing all sorts of foreign wildlife (bacteria, mold, yeast) you increase the risk that you're going to have a contaminated batch of dough. In the end, the sourdough culture is going to need to live on flour, not on potatoes or lawn trimmings, so it just makes sense to me to start it in a clean environment with just flour and water.

If for some reason a person can't get a culture going with just flour, the first things I would suggest would be different flour and different water before I'd start adding other things.

If you know what a sourdough culture is supposed to behave like and you want to experiment with additives, that's another story. But if a person isn't familiar with sourdough, I don't know that I'd trust them to recognize the difference between a sourdough culture and a botulism culture.

And if someone is intent on experimenting, I'd probably suggest that they try some foreign cultures or they grow local cultures using different types of flours.

I put malt syrup in at first to give it a boost, but now it's just flour and water.

Now that it's going I try to actually make something every feeding instead of throwing it out, but I'm limited by the amount of flour in the house and my family's tolerance for bread products.