I can see why Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking was such a hot seller this holiday season: if you know someone who was inspired to try bread baking by Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread and is now hooked, this book is the perfect gift for them. Shrewd marketing by Thomas Dunne Press.

The "revolution" spoken of in the title is a low-knead, delayed fermentation technique very similar to the famous no-knead technique. Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François take it one step further and suggest refrigerating the dough to stretch the fermentation out for a number of days. The longer and slower the fermentation, the better the flavor.

Folks here might be interested in this article

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25351-2645701,00.html

which is a review of a book on the history of French bread. Lots of info re commercial use of sourdough.