1. Personally, I wouldn't use a freshly-made starter, I would feed the starter a couple more times to make sure I had a good colony of natural yeast growing in the starter. If your starter won't double in bulk when you feed it, it's not going to raise your bread dough. 2. You don't say whether your recipe uses starter only as the leavening agent, or both starter and baker's yeast. In recipes where the bread is raised with starter, I only use my Zo for mixing the sourdough bread dough - I don't allow it to raise in the machine. As soon as it's done mixing/kneading, I remove it from the bread machine and put it in a dough-rising bucket so I can monitor the rise. It takes sourdough a lot longer to rise than it does baker's yeast risen dough. Even on the sourdough cycle on the Zo, it may not be right amount of time. Then I bake the bread in the oven. If the recipe uses starter as a flavoring agent, and also uses a normal amount of yeast, then it should work to mix and bake in the Zo - as long as the amount of ingredients is correct for a loaf of bread. 3. Both fat and sugar have important jobs in breads. You don't say if you are making a lean dough or an enriched dough, and that would be helpful information, but I'm going to assume it's an enriched dough because it includes fat and sugar. There typically is only a small amount of each (with exceptions - such as a Portuguese Sweet Bread or brioche). The fat helps tenderize the crumb and keeps it from drying out as quickly as a lean dough. Depending on the type of bread you are making and the mixing method used, fat plays a vital part. If you want to skip the fat, don't use butter on your sliced bread after it's baked. If you want to skip sugar, don't use jelly or honey as a topping. If you are watching carbs - sugars - then don't forget the flour is jam-packed with them - as is applesauce. If you don't want sugar or fat in your loaves, choose lean bread recipes (Italian and French Breads) and skip the enriched breads (those that include sugar, fat, dairy, eggs - such as sandwich bread). 4. Splenda would NOT be a good substitute for sugar in a yeast bread. Bread isn't a good place for a no-calorie substitute. Sugar (honey, syrup) in a recipe provides food for yeast, flavor, tenderizes the crumb, keeps the crumb moist, makes the crust darker. You can't get those same results using a no-calorie sugar substitute. If you take some time and do a Google search on - care and feeding of sourdough starter - that will give you a lot of information about making and using starters. You will quickly find it's not one thing, there are rules and broken rules for it's use, it's a contradiction and as individual as the people who use it. Good luck with your sourdough bread. I hope you have good success and many more loaves to come... -Grainlady

I would suggest you give the starter another 4 days to a week to "age" a bit. Then first making sure you have enough to keep some back, take out what you need for your recipe about 3-4 hours after it has been fed. [You don't want to use all your starter in your recipe and have none left to keep in the frig - do you? Then you would have to start all over again.] Prepare your recipe just after the starter has expanded all it's going to expand. It will just go down hill from there. When you add the recipe ingredients to it, it will recognize the feast you are giving it and go to town on that. It is alive, you know? Teresa

Thanks, Annie, Ann and Linda! It's the same basic bread I usually make, though the exact contents vary a little. :) Ann, big holes are formed the same way bubble bath big bubbles are--the interstices between bubbles break and they combine to make a bigger bubble. That might also be an indication of good gluten development because the structure around the bigger bubble holds up rather than collapsing. When you punch it down, your strong, long gluten will reinflate. Small amounts of gluten might be broken to let the air out, but most of it is still there. With the quantity of (sharp) bran in this kind of bread, where one can see the big holes while handling the dough--that is, where the side of the bubble is open--it's seeing where the gluten has been cut and will never inflate again once the air has been let out. It's not that the gluten hasn't developed. It loses its legs because there aren't enough long strands left, even with the high protein wheat I've been using. When that happens, the degassed shaped loaf can't rise. While the crumb structure doesn't look very different from usual, having the banneton to cling to did wonders for it.

You can get the grandmammy of starters for free (small donation suggested) from Friends of Carl's Oregon Trail starter. You can also catch your own, though it takes awhile to get it strong and happy. It looks like your baker is unglazed bisque ceramic. If it were glazed (look inside as well), it would have a glassy finish, like tile. I'd guess that you'd want to season it the way they do the terracotta in the link I put in my previous post. The instructions for a similar kind of ceramic baker on the King Arthur Flour (KAF) site seem to imply that pre-seasoning isn't necessary, though seasoning will build over time. It does suggest you grease and flour, however, since the pan isn't seasoned. I'd just go ahead and follow the Mason Cash instructions and season it. Even with three applications, the seasoning is just starting, and gets a lot better over time. I always oil my terracotta bread pans lightly before using, as well as my unglazed ceramic pizza pan. The linked page at KAF also gives some suggestions for picking a recipe to fit their pan. You might see if it's the same size as yours--if so, the recommendations could be useful. That page also says you don't need to soak or anything. That the steam in the dough will do the trick. That's the nice thing about covers, as well. :) If your pan came with instructions to soak it, however, I'd pay some heed. You might also wan to soak it and let it dry as you start to look for your starter just because it's been so long since you used it. There's dry and then there's dried out. :) Good luck! There are other bakers here as well who may have more info for you.