If you bake sourdough for a living, your starter could conceivably be quite large. In his book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, executive chef Anthony Bourdain describes the sordid world of his baker, Adam Real-last-name-unknown, who frantically called Bourdain late one night, begging him to "Feed the bitch, or else she'll die". Apparently, "the bitch" was a 250-pound blob of sourdough starter that Adam kept in a bin in his fleabag New York City apartment, and, for reasons Bourdain did not wish to hear, Adam had been away from home long enough that the starter was in danger of starving to death. Bourdain bravely tiptoed through the bachelor debris of Adam's apartment to rescue the bitch, as well as his restaurant's steady supply of heavenly sourdough bread.