After the many helpful suggestions I received when I last posted, I am
happy to report some real success. I'd thought I'd share my most
recent experience in some detail to show how I got to this point.
Although I'm fairly experienced at making yeast breads, I am very,
very new to trying my hand at sourdoughs. I know I have much to learn
and that much of what follows will make that abundently clear! I'm
pretty sure that my luck was due to the bread faeries and not anything
I did! g

(Forgive me, in advance, once again for a rather long post.)

As mentioned in my earlier posts, I had made a wheat starter that I
hadn't been able to use successfully to produce a decent true
sourdough bread, although it was very successful in a mixed
sourdough/baker's yeast recipe. The problem I was having with the
pure sourdough was getting the starter active enough to produce proper
rise. The taste of the loaves I made was very authentically "sour,"
but the bread itself was very much a brick. For reference, the base
of this starter was the barm recipe from Reinhart's Bread Baker's
Apprentice.

Although I have ordered the Carl's starter, I wanted to try some
experiments with making a couple of my own starters from scratch.
These experiments involved both modifying my existing starter and
beginning a new rye starter using Samartha's formula from his web
site. The remainder of this post deals only with the modifications to
my original starter and the subsequent first use to bake bread.

I began by taking 4 oz. my old wheat starter and fed it with 4 oz.
each of whole rye (Arrowhead) and bottled spring water. I placed this
in a clean clear plastic covered container. I checked on this starter
hourly for the next few hours. At 3 hours, a small amount of
additional moisture began appearing on the surface. Some very, very
small imbedded bubbles (no surface bubbles) appeared after 6 hours,
but no swelling. After 9 hours, there seemed to be a little
"softening" of the starter mixture and maybe a tiny bit of swelling,
with a little bit more softening and movement after another hour.

I haven't found a way yet to maintain consistent temperatures within
the recommended 80f - 85f range. So, all of the above took place at
ambient temps ranging from 85f at the beginning down to 75f after 10
hours, with most of the time in the 80 to 82 degree range. I went to
bed at this point. In the morning (9 hours later), there was no
noticeable change in the appearance of the starter. The ambient
temperature was 66f. Two and a half hours later, the temperature had
risen to 80f, but there was no noticeable change.

At this point, I took 4oz of the starter, threw the rest away, and fed
with 4oz each whole rye (Arrowhead) and spring water. After about 2
hours at 75f, there was a slight softening and more moisture appearing
on the surface. Around 7 hours later, there were some small bubbles.
The temp had fallen to 70f. There were no further changes over the
next 3 hours, at which point I went to bed.

There was no further visable activity at all during the next 30
hours....yes, I mean 30 hours! A half hour later, however, things had
changed! There was lots of bubbling and the starter had nearly
doubled in volume. Since it was my intention to return this to more
of a wheat starter, I immediately fed it with 4oz each of stone ground
whole wheat (KA) and spring water. Four hours later, the starter had
nearly tripled and I put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day (yesterday), I took the starter out of the fridge and let
it warm up on the counter for about 3 hours at which point there was
moderate activity. I then used 4oz to make the "firm starter" for the
Basic Sourdough Bread recipe from BBA, pg. 233. I refed the
remaining starter with stone ground whole wheat (KA) and spring water
to double the weight and left out for 4 hours at which point it had
doubled in volume and I refrigerated it along with the firm starter.

Today, I finished making the above bread. I finally got the
appropriate rise and the bread is good. It's a bit more sour than I'd
like but the texture of the crumb is just right. The crust is a
little chewy but not as firm or thick as I'd like. (Next time, I'll
try leaving it in the oven...turned off and door ajar...for 10 minutes
after it finishes baking.)

Although I seem to have finally produced a viable starter, I suspect
that I haven't been feeding it as regularly as I should have.
Perhaps, this is the reason for the higher degree of sourness than I
would have preferred. I'm also considering increasing the ratio of
flour and water in the next feeding (tripling vs. doubling) to see if
I can improve this to my taste.

I'll look forward to your thoughts and suggestions. As I said above,
I have a lot to learn!