How to Track Your Sourdough Starter Feeding Schedule (The Easy Way)

Sourdough runs on a 12-72h rhythm. Human memory compresses time. By the time you bake your third loaf you've forgotten the hydration on the first, the ambient temperature on the second, whether that week was warmer or cooler than usual. Multiply across flour types, seasons, feeding ratios, and ambient variations and you end up with gut feeling — which works until the kitchen gets 4°C cooler in October and suddenly nothing makes sense. A simple log prevents all of this.

1. Time of feed — the actual clock time, not 'this morning'. You need this to calculate time-to-peak later. 2. Rise % — measured at peak (the rubber band method: height at peak divided by height at feed, minus one, times 100). The single most useful starter health metric. 3. Ambient temperature — the one number that explains most of the variation between feeds. A 22°C vs 18°C kitchen can shift peak by 3-4 hours. Everything else — flour type, water temperature, discard amount, observations — is supplementary but not load-bearing.

Take a side-on jar photo at feed time and another at peak. That's it. Two photos per feed, 30 seconds total. After six months of feeds, your eye develops sourdough-specific pattern recognition that no amount of reading can replicate. You'll spot an under-performing starter in 3 seconds because you've seen 80 photos of yours across different states. The photos also settle the 'did it double?' debate instantly — no more squinting at the rubber band.

After 10-14 feeds logged with time, rise %, and ambient temperature, a clear pattern appears. Your starter peaks at a consistent time window for a given temperature band. You'll see it in the numbers: 'every feed at 20-22°C peaks in 7-9h; every feed at 17-19°C peaks in 11-14h'. That correlation is the most valuable thing you can know as a sourdough baker. Sourdough Tracker shows rise % over time on each starter's timeline — the chart makes this pattern visible without any manual calculation.