Sourdough Starter Day 11 and Counting.....

As long as your starter is showing good activity you can bake with it. It is true that it will continue to improve with time, but why wait? The bread you bake now will be far better than any commercial yeasted bread, so enjoy! I added the recipe above.

There's a lot to learn, but it gets a lot easier. Just take it step by step. Really, all you need to know is:

1. Mix the liquid, yeast (or starter), salt and flour (and other stuff if in the recipe if it's there). See Floyd's White Bread recipe for ingredients to a basic loaf. Add more liquid or flour if necessary until you get the right consistency. Usually it will be somewhat tacky, but not sticky, at least for your first loaves. Later on, you'll probably want to try wetter doughs that are more difficult to handle.
   
2. Knead it until you can snip off a little piece of dough and stretch it into a thin translucent sheet without it tearing. That should take about 10 minutes.
3. Put it in a bowl, cover it and let it rise until it's doubled. Alternatively, you can poke the dough with a wet finger. If the dent doesn't fill in, it's ready.
4. Degass the dough, and shape it into a loaf. Easiest is a pan loaf. Just pat the dough into a rectangle and roll it up tight like a jelly roll. Grease the bread pan with butter or spray oil (i.e. Pam) and put the loaf in. Cover it with plastic and let it rise until it's an inch or two above the rim. You can also use the finger poke test.
5. Preheat the oven to about 350. Let it bake 50 minutes to an hour. It's done when it sounds hollow when the bottom is thumped or, if you've got an instant read thermometer, when the center registers above 190. If it's not done, no need to put it back in the pan. Just put it on the rack for another 10 minutes or so. If it starts getting too dark, lay some aluminum foil on top of the loaf.
6. Let it cool for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour, on a wire rack or a few rolled up balls of aluminum foil before slicing 

These are the basics. Everything else -- autolyse, preferments, folding, long no-knead fermentations, slashing the bread, steaming the oven, high-hydration doughs -- will help you make BETTER bread, but I guarrantee, if you make some basic bread following the techniques above, your bread will taste better than just about anything you buy at the store.

So start with something simple, and then bring the more advanced techniques in later on.

Good luck!

We were all beginners once; I had plenty of help when I started out.

One thing I forgot to mention. I use instant yeast, which allows you to just throw the yeast in with everything else. If you're using active dry yeast, you'll need to "proof" it first in some warm water. Just follow the directions on the package, and use some of the liquid from the recipe for proofing. If you don't have a thermometer, the liquid should feel tepid to your wrist -- neither hot nor cold.

Good luck!