Also to clarify: creating a starter is different from maintaining one. In the initial stage, your goal is to cultivate yeast in your source flour and/or envir

Also to clarify: creating a starter is different from maintaining one. In the initial stage, your goal is to cultivate yeast in your source flour and/or environment (far more the former than the latter AFAIU), and have them reach a state where your starter is highly active 8--12 hours after a feeding or so. That requires frequent feeding, 1x to 2x daily, for a week or two. Once you've achieved that goal, your starter becomes far lower maintenance, and typically requires feeding only prior to use and once a week or so as a maintenance process. (I've found I can feed less frequently than this, while refrigerating a sealed jar of starter, but you risk losing the whole batch.) So, yes, you do need to go through a period of daily or twice-daily feedings initially. But you don't need to sustain that indefinitely. And again as noted by others, the removeed "discard" starter left over after a feeding can itself be used for quick and simple baking recipes. (When baking, that "discard" is the levain which you're adding to your dough or recipe.)