Ginny, the reason there are so many different ways to do things is that there are a lot that work. Having had a starter going for over a year now, I've found that it isn't that picky. For example, your original question of how much starter to add to make the sponge. It isn't critical. If the amount added is very small, then the sponge will take longer to double because it's starting out with very little yeast. If you add a lot and your starter is a wet one, then you may need to adjust the amount of flour you add to the bread later to get the dough right. I keep my starter in a glass jar in the fridge because it is a convenient size. I'm skeptical about the "no metal" thing. I wouldn't use a reactive metal, but I've stirred with stainless steel and haven't found it to do any harm. I sometimes let my dough rise in a stainless steel bowl. I was a bit worried about whether my starter survived chemo. I only managed to get it out once during the last 5 months when I went through several cycles of fed and double until it was doubling quickly again. Yesterday I finally got it out of the fridge again. It took a while to double (the house is pretty cool at this time of year too) but by this morning it had doubled. It is pretty hardy stuff.

This looks to be #150, so I'll start another sourdough thread with pie segue. :) Cathy, I know the liberated feeling you're talking about! I had it when I started these experiments with the discard. I do as I please with most baking recipes, usually to success. I don't have Grainlady's technical knowledge nor Ann's experience and expertise, but I know that if you control the basics, it'll come out. My mother's challah is so tetchy, however, that controlling it is enough without messing with it. A cousin did that when I was young, and tried using it as a base recipe for other breads, and they were breads, but I didn't really like them. You have to know how to not handle the challah (no typos there) to make it work out right. Add to that the old miseries of using cake yeast and I never messed with yeast dough before. I really liked the figgy loaf! Worrying about keeping the yeast alive rather than if I was going to ruin the bread was great. But that was one of those very soupy things, and if I try that again, I'll use less water/more flour. :) It's interesting that so many people think more hydration means lighter bread and more holes! That's the opposite to what I've experienced so far. Leader, like the ciabatta recipe, works the dough and develops the gluten. Controlled hydration seems to work better for me, and I definitely think the miche was too wet given how much better it got as it dried out. I had similar issues with the pizza recipe. One of the ones I tried, which was the result of much study in a pizza working group, was something like 90% hydration of whole wheat (though not soupy!). It was a very sticky dough and had to be made in a pan. It was not at all comfortable with toppings, though it was okay par-baked. Totally wrong for me, and it didn't have a good enough baked texture to stick with. It's not like my pizza recipe is low hydration. Just comparatively low. It's around 70% hydration. Cathy, I agree that inhaling pizza of any kind is frightening! Thank goodness for the widespread publicity for the Heimlich Maneuver! The miche is peasanty, as in plain old bread. I'd be happy to make the pain de levain for you! That has much more complexity even though it's mostly white. It's very yummy! The miche isn't as flavorless now, but it's not stand in line worthy, unfortunately. Next time. It was supposed to be record setting heat this weekend, but we're having monsoon influence, instead. Not the actual monsoons, which are farther South, but damp and cooler. Spaghetti and meatballs and ciabatta sounds delicious and decadent right now! (Decadent because two starches--my mother never served bread with pasta.) My favorite way to eat ciabatta, however, is with a goodly layer of good butter and an even thicker layer of powder grated good parmesan. This is the breakfast the Italian stewards on the ocean liner tempted my mother with when she was underfed and ill and returning home. I am not underfed, so I don't indulge, but the slightly salty, slightly sour bread with the sweet butter and salty, umami parm is just amazing. (Okay, I'm not underfed, but I haven't had breakfast...) Standing in line for the ciabatta... The gyros-ish meatloaf came out fine. It would have been better with more fat (who says that?), but the meat that needed using was very lean. I suppose I could have added some butter, but who does that? Not I. It's tasty, though. I didn't go full out on the seasoning (i.e., used the recipe) because I'd never made this recipe before. It could be kicked up a bit, but the flavor is about right. The leanness means I can be generous with the oil and grill some up later. :) No yoghurt sauce since since there are no pita either and my cucumbers and dill both bit it in the fridge. Tomatoes, onions and peppers will be fine. :) Ann, one lesson I learned best from you is to just put things in the fridge. Fermenting yeast things, that is. Just put it in the fridge. It's the most freeing thing I've learned recently. I've read all about it, of course, and the pizza recipe is one that's meant to develop in the fridge, but the way you just whip up a levain and throw it in the fridge until you're ready, or make up some do and go off to work, with instructions to Moe for when to take it out. Of course it's a given that cold retards yeast, but so much of my bread life until now has been about keeping yeast warm and cozy and encouraging it to rise, retarding the rise in the fridge to manage the slow process of sourdough is a revelation. Thank-you! Edited to add link and fix weird typo. This post was edited by plllog on Tue, Aug 5, 14 at 20:51

catmom, the NK breads are allowed to rise for 18 hours to develop flavor. They are simply mixed together, covered and allowed to sit. They have less yeast and usually a higher moisture content than other methods. The long slow rise develops enough gluten and the higher moisture creates larger holes in the crumb. Actually I like to knead it a little bit anyway . . just before shaping or in the middle of the rising time . . by gently folding over the dough 10-15 times. Cooking in a covered pot for the first 30 minutes basically imitates a moist oven. Since most of us do not have steam injectors on our ovens it's difficult to maintain a humid oven for long enough to really develop the crust properly at the first stage of baking. A covered pot keeps the steam from the bread inside and allows for a greater 'oven spring' for the bread. The lid is removed for the last 15 minutes to crisp the crust up at the end. You would not want to have your convection oven on in any case with breads as it will simply drive any moisture out of the oven very quickly. You certainly can bake it on a stone and toss in some ice cubes or water at the beginning, but a cover really does work better. You can also put it on the stone and cover it with a large metal bowl.

I'm sure your starter is fine, but I think you'll find that after a year it'll be that much finer, especially if you stress it occasionally (let it go a little too long between feedings) to thin the herd. :) My own journey is a big old muddle of learning wild yeast (sourdough starter) and whole wheat at the same time, combined with water restrictions that made me look for ever less cleanup. Whole wheat actually requires at least eight hours of soak (in the liquid of the recipe) or rise, to fully hydrate, along with some acid to reduce the anti-nutrients. Along the way, I experimented with a number of traditional recipes, some white or with a large enough percentage of white to handle the same as white, many of which I documented in this forum (search on 'sourdough"). What worked for me was making a preferment (i.e., biga or levain--The Kitchn says "leaven") in the evening, and baking in the morning. I can't remember the timing well, because I have a bad relationship with mornings. There are some hours involved for the dough to rise. It only rises as fast as commercial yeast when you're counting on it not to! My best advice is twofold: One, get in the habit of baking bread so that it becomes part of your rhythm, and you'll have it ready before your chicks turn up hungry. The other is just to try some recipes and learn what it is you all like best. There may be one that does it for your daily bread, or a base dough that you can make up differently as in the 5 minutes method, or it may be a rotation of different flavors and textures. While learning one at a time seems wise, there's also something to be said from learning a bit from each thing you try and bringing the total learning back around when you try them again. Nine people, minimum, if I got that right, is plenty to be experimenting on, and should give you plenty of scope for learning what you're doing. So, do you want sour or just good bread with wild yeast? Sour takes some time to work, remember the rule of less starter = more sour taste requires longer rise. If you have your starter on the counter and feed it every day (maybe twice a day while it's young), you'll be ready to bake a lot sooner. I don't quite agree with some of what is said at The Kitchn about starter. It is an acidic environment (not "likes" one). It's also not finicky once established. While it's young, you have a number of organisms fighting for supremacy. The yeast will win, and as it strengthens, it'll do away with new organisms introduced in feedings without any protest. Once it's established, it's very hard to completely kill. Just feed it up and it'll start burping again. I'll also mention, that no matter the original source, all wild yeast in starter is the same kind. The whole location thing is silly. "San Francisco" sourdough is the name used for really really sour. That's about how hungry the yeast is, not the location (French fries aren't from France, either, though, I believe they got their name because frying was in vogue in France at that time, just as really sour bread was commonly made in San Francisco, and they did up beans mighty fine in Boston). Rather than getting too wrapped up in how long the process is going to take, it's best to just go with what you know and work it into your life. Eventually, you'll be able to adjust the timing. Like maybe you know if you set your dough to rise at noon, it'll be ready to bake after the school run, and before dinner. Or that if you make your levain after breakfast, you can mix the dough up after dinner, and bake after breakfast the following day. Also, have some interim breads, either quick to produce commercial yeast breads, or bisquits, waffles, cornbread, or whatever it is you can fill in with if your bread just isn't ready yet, while you're learning. You'll get there.