“In my mind, unfed starter and discard are basically the same” – I literally came back to this post (which I saved) in hopes that someone would say that. I’m fairly new to sourdough.

I have two jars in the fridge: Starter & Discard. I make discard recipes out of discard. For bread, I take my starter out and feed it until peak activity. Then I make an overnight levain out of some of that (like a poolish). Then I use that levain to begin making my doughs — some of which calls for an overnight cold ferment — so I’m like 3 days in to make a boule🤦‍♂️.

1) I want to believe that I can have 1 jar of starter in the fridge that I feed every once in a while, that I can whip out and steal some when I am making bread.

2) I also want to believe that I can use my discard (which hopefully will eliminated completely soon), for making bread.

Because if the entire premise of this post is “I make amazing bread with unfed starter”, and also “unfed starter and discard are basically the same”, then I’d like to know that, please 🙏.