Do not consider myself to be anywhere near a baker, but one who loves sourdough bread. I've always enjoyed the tang and texture of San Francisco sourdough bread. There is one store here in our neighborhood that has sourdough bread, however the price has slowly crept up to $4 for a 14-oz loaf! This old timer felt that price was too much, so set about making his own. As a retired aircraft mechanic, I had a lot to learn! The closest I’ve come to cooking was performing kitchen duty (KP) in my early Air Force days - using the microwave and toaster is the extent of my kitchen skills.
So, after purchasing books, baking tools, flours, and numerous baking failures, I figure this 'first successful' loaf only cost $60 - $75. :-) But, it's cheaper than beer.
My surprise in this exercise was the amount of information available in the various forums, and “how to” videos. My total frustration was the amount of erroneous information – and my inability to distinguish the difference between the wrong way and the correct way. As someone stated in a forum; “The Internet is a great source of misinformation. How many times were we told "Don't believe everything you read"? That applies to the Internet by two orders of magnitude--unless, of course, you are looking for unsupported claims, unproven theories, ill conceived hypotheses, or simply pure speculation.”
My wife – the real cook – keeps telling me to quit reading all of the Internet information and find a “process” that works for me. So now, I quit trying to follow the various recipes and will work to improve my “process”. My new source of information is this forum