The Mystery of Bread

Sourdough and I have a long, unhappy history. As I've moved into my new life as someone who gardens, cans, has her own egg supply, and makes her own yarn, I've always thought I should be able to make my own bread. I mean, how hard can it be, right?! It's only flour and water and salt...
Wrong.
They key to making a killer loaf of bread is ALL about timing and details. I tried while in college with the basic yeast recipe out of a cook book and those were ok, but not great. I tried again while living in LA with sourdough starter I got in Alaska and that was a complete disaster. The loaves turned out hard as a rock and flavorless.
I had pretty much given up and labeled myself as someone who just can't make bread, then Linda brought me some sourdough starter. At first, I was excited to be given a gift so full of potential- barm is certainly the gift that keeps on giving! Then, I remembered all the times before I had tried. Tried and FAILED, epically. But, the more I thought about it, the more determined I became to give it one more shot. Several things influenced my decision to try again. One, I now have a Kitchen Aid mixer, which I didn't have before. Two, Linda's starter was an old one; it had already proven itself time and time again and should have lots of good flavor already built up. Three, I still had my baking stone and all the equipment (on which I had spent a considerable amount of money, which also contributed to my frustration when I ended up making hockey puck bread). Four, I now had Mom's support since I halved the starter with her.
So, I put my pride on a shelf and tried again.
First, I tried a recipe out of a sourdough starter envelope, thinking it would be more straight forward than my Baker's Apprentice Bread Cookbook (which is more like a cooking school textbook). It was easier, but didn't really give me the results I wanted. No shortcuts here!
Behold the result:

Obviously, I needed more practice...

A week later, Mom came down for the weekend and we each made dough out of the split starter. For a week, we had been feeding it independently and were curious if that would make a difference in the finished loaves.
Our two starter bags:

Creating the finished dough...

Here are Mom's proofed loaves, ready to go into the oven. Jan said the batard looked more like a...well, never mind...it tasted just fine.

And here are my finished loaves after my second attempt. We followed the convoluted instructions of the Bread Apprentice Cookbook to the letter and, I must admit, the result was much improved. It was slightly crunchy on the outside, moist and light on the inside, and tasted great with softened butter.

This is only the beginning, but I feel success within my reach...