I usually bake bread with poolish starters. I finally built up the courage
to try to grow my own sourdough starter using advice from Mike Avery's web
site - 3/8 cup organic rye to 1/4 cup water. I left this in my oven with
the light turned on overnight and discovered that instead of being the
recommended 85 degrees, my oven was 100 degrees but I had small bubbles
anyway so I hadn't killed it.

In any event I wasn't sure if I should see ACTIVE bubbles (as I frequently
do with my poolishes) or just small "stay-in-one-place" kind of bubbles, so
I stirred the mixture, opened the oven door a crack and moved the starter
towards the side of the oven away from the light bulb. The temperature in
the oven dropped to 80 degrees & I left it alone some more.

At 5:30 PM it had grown quite a lot, so I fed it with another 3/8 cup
organic rye to 1/4 cup water and left it on the counter (ambient temp.
closer to 70 degrees) hoping to slow it down a bit. (In the meantime I read
Rose Levy Berenbaum's section on sourdough cultures and she recommended
cooler temperatures.) Like a nervous mother I checked the mixture again at
7:30 and discovered that not only were the small bubbles all back - but the
mixture had doubled in bulk AFTER I had fed it!!!

According to everything I read, I thought that when the culture doubles in
3 - 6 hours it's ready to bake with. But then again, I thought it was
supposed to take 3 - 5 days to reach this point!

What do I do NOW?? Please help!

Hobbit-in-Wonderland