Years ago I tried making my own starter by setting out a bowl of flour and water and hoping some wild yeast would alight. I never had much luck, so this time I bought a little ball of live starter. Mail order! From Breadtopia. So far so good.
This comment on Amazon sold me on Breadtopia:
The wet dough sourdough product is excellent. Upon feeding and expanding it woke up very quickly and leavened loafs extremely well. Lots of classic sourdough taste and lots of gas production. But as a university microbiologist, I can’t just try out a sourdough starter. I had to take it to the lab and find out what’s in it. I am happy to report that the starter contains precisely what it should: one species of yeast and one species of lactic acid bacteria. It is a complex task to definitively identify them as the authentic Saccharomyces exiguus and Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, but everything is consistent so far with them being derived from authentic San Francisco sourdough. In particular, as one subcultures them repeatedly, the levels of each stay pretty consistent. This is a hallmark of an authentic sourdough starter pair of microbes. I highly recommend this product.
Fanatic Cook 
I started nurturing a sourdough starter a week ago using the method in chapter 5 of the book Josey Baker Bread: mix flour and whole wheat flour, let it sit two days, get rid of all the batter except one tablespoon, add flour and whole wheat flour and repeat for two weeks. I use the starter-to-discard as pancakes. One more week to go before I can actually bake with the starter.
Hope your loaf turned out good!
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It did! It’s very strong, in leavening ability. I’m having to deal with overproofing right now. There’s so much to know about making bread. I hope your loaves turn out good too!
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I like this page. It gives me ideas of what to make:
http://www.joseybakerbread.com/bread/
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