The Starter is FINISHED

Making bread has been so far one of the most wasteful, expensive and time consuming affairs. The results were at first amazing...really, really nice bread with good chew, crust, flavour and texture. best of all, without any preserving agents, the bread kept great for up to 1 week!

I followed the starter recipe and bread recipe for "Whole Wheat Sourdough" in the Pain Quotidien Cookbook called "Cook Book". its a good book if you already know the basics, but not for beginners as I found that the information was simplistic especially if you don't know what you are doing.

The results though...fantastic!
Here is my bread, before baking...
And then 1 hour and a half later..Not bad for a first try, no?

The second batch I made was less of a success. The bread smelled like dirty socks and my father thought my starter had developed bad gas....whatever that means. Maybe it was the sourcrout it had for dinner. The starter has been thrown out, and it took 3 days to get all the muck and crust out of the bowl. Is there an easier way to clean this?!?!