Thank you for the information as I have always been curios , my friends is from CA and always says our east coast sour dough bread is not the same as the bread in CA even with the same recipe and mix due to the specific organisms that only live there,

The more you bake bread the more yeast spores you will have in your kitchen. The bread gets better and better the more you make it. I make 2-4 French loafs a week. Water, yeast, flour, salt. That's all. I use the steam pans to bake them and get the crackly crust. My family can inhale a fresh baked loaf for a snack. I make sourdough about once a month to keep the starter going. I have two sets of the Baparoma Steam Baking Master pans. Theses pans use to be common and inexpensive. If you find a set get them, they bake perfect crusty loaves. [h=2][/h]

Here is the online book about the steam pans. Great bread recipes and tips included. http://www.megaheart.com/pdf/baparoma.pdf

This explains why my DIL makes the best sour dough bread. She makes all her bread.

DH brought home the "fixings" for Friendship Bread in a plastic bag. He got it from a co-worker. I wasn't too crazy about doing it and I suppose I didn't do what I was supposed to do. (its a long time ago) The plastic bag swelled up and exploded in the kitchen. I cleaned up that mess for a long time. I found dried particles of it in places I never imagined. Joke was on me !

Just dug out my sourdough packet with lots of recipes and the starter recipe.
2 cups of flour, 1 tsp salt, 3 tbs sugar, 1/2 tsp granular yeast, 2 cups lukewarm water.
Stir til mix is a smooth thin paste. Put on lid and set in a warm place to sour. Stir it several times a day. In two or three days it will be ready. Recipes use 1/2 cup starter.
Sourdough pancake recipe: To 1/2 cup starter add 2 cups or flour and 2 cups lukewarm water. Beat until smooth and let stand in a warm place overnight. Reserve1/2 cup starter and put into refrigerator in a covered glass jar. to the pancake dough left add 2 level tbs. sugar, 1 tsp salt, and 3 tbs melted shortning or oil, beat in 2 eggs. dissolve one tsp soda in one tbs water and fold gently. Do not stir after the soda has been added. Cook on a greased griddle about 360 degrees.

Our Friendship bread went around our school and into the small community. After a while there were no friends who didn't have it going at their house One of my friends told me she had resorted to using it all to make the bread in muffin tins --a different flavor for each batch -- then freezing it all to use for breakfast, etc. I tried that and soon my freezer was bulging. That's when it all ended. Seriously it makes delicious breakfast muffins.

My son has made several sourdough starters but he only uses King Arthur bread flour.

I made a starter per King Arthur site. All the directions are there with tons of info. I wanted to make m own with no yeast, only flour and water. When you read info here and there you may think you will have an active starter in a week or two. Think again. You will see that many things affect the timing. Mine took three weeks to become strong enough. If there is one bit of advise I would give you it would be to be patient and read all about starters on King Arthur.