Thing 1 and Thing 2 have given birth to two reasonably successful loaves of bread. I used Rose Beranbaum's 2 day basic sourdough recipe from TBB. I made one loaf with each of the starters. The doughs were made from:

After 7 long days, Thing 1 and Thing 2 are looking and acting like living, breathing starters. Thing 1, the indoor starter almost tripled itself today, and Thing 2, the outdoor starter doubled.

As I expected, they are behaving differently, but I actually expected Thing 2 to be more energetic than Thing 1. I guess I expected the outdoor microflora to be more lively than the ones in the house.

I'm going to keep them at 100% hydration for a few more days and then switch them to 50%. I want to see if I can expand them both enough to bake with them this weekend.

Starter A and Starter B departed this earthly plain yesterday afternoon after a brief and uneventful life.  After a short memorial, they were buried at sea.

After looking at several other blogs showing amazing sourdough results, I'm feeling really envious!    My starter experiment is dying a slow, horrible death. (If figures that the 3 other starters I have took off in no time at all, but the one I share with everyone tanks!!)   I fed the starters again trying a reduced amount of flour and water to see if anything will change.  If not, I'm going to toss both of them and start over.

Well, I'm not going to post any pictures because the starters aren't doing anything right now.   I'm hoping that it is just the typical down time in the early life of a starter.   I fed both of them again tonight with a 30/60/60 feeding.    Hopefully I will see bubbles tomorrow.

Well, 5:00 Wednesday evening was first feeding time for my starters.   The one on the refrigerator looked nice and bubbly after 48 hours.   The one that was outside, however, was relatively dried out from being out in the wind for 2 days.

After reading all the discussions about "flour vs. micro organisms" in getting a good starter, I decided to run my own test.

I believe that the flour has all the vital nutrients that a starter needs to survive, but I also believe that the location and local flora and fauna play a part. I believe that is what makes San Francisco sourdough taste different than a Russian sourdough, which tastes different from a European sourdough.