Teresa, when I use my sourdough starter I only use a couple of ounces to make a biga and the biga is left overnight to develop and in the morning it is added to the flour with additional water and salt. I don't measure the water because it varies every time depending on the flour, the weather, etc... I go by feel and whether I'm looking for a more hydrated dough or not. Depending on how active your starter is, I don't see a problem with using substantially less than one cup. Ann

@andersons21 - I only saw your reply now - sorry about that. Yes - by "put in water" I just fill the reservoir. (I don't have the plumbed in version of the oven.) I don't do it before preheating because somewhere in the Miele manual it mentioned that the oven works best with cold water. So I always add water at the last moment. Maybe they just meant not to use water that was sitting in your hot water heater. I have no idea. The manual is vague in many places. And yes on MaxiBroil -- the baking steel does reach a higher temp, and the oven spring is better. I use it for both pre-heating and the first cooking stage. When I've pointed an IR thermometer at the baking steel after preheating, it's something like 480-490F. I forget the exact figure, but it's significantly above 435F. I wish it got hotter too, but the interior of the oven is made very differently than a regular oven, so I suspect that's probably why it's limited. The same thing happens in the regular Miele oven (not steam) - the high broil settings let the baking steel reach significantly higher temps (~650F) than the highest setting on the oven (which I think is 575F). I have both ovens btw - and use the steel in the regular oven for pizza.

Hi Nancyjane, There are a few sourdough bread bakers here (I'm not one of them). I bake bread but I don't like the taste of sourdough. Here's a link to a conversation by Ann_T, in case she doesn't chime in. Sourdough

I, myself, have been having issues that made me give up my beloved whole grain, so I've been doing more with white flour and figured I'd try some starter. I used to keep five starters but that was too much. I can make a rye starter any time I want, or just transition a portion of ww to rye in a few days. Similarly, I can get a ww low hydration starter by doing the math again and giving it a few days, and can make a new unbleached from the bleached any time as well. I have my "French" low hydration "levain" starter, which is 95% unbleached and 5% whole wheat, which I can easily transition a piece of to all unbleached, normal hydration, as well, so unless I'm making white bread with a wet starter (I'm more likely to make the levain style with the French style mix), I don't really need the unbleached. So I fed it bleached, pursuant to our discussions of mucilaginous goo. :) All the starters except the rye that died are children of Wubby, my original whole wheat starter. It takes longer to transition from a totally different flour, but still only about 7 days if you don't mind a little mystery flour in there. All of these are 200g, so not very much before they're fed up for use.