I am grateful for this guidance and this blog - it is reassuring and I agree, after years of making yeast bread, that dipping one's toe into sourdough baking (no, not literally) can be both exhilarating and a little daunting. I am on Day 4 of the process and I'm a little worried that my house could be a little cold for that extra punch (I'm not at all sure it is doubling), but on the other hand my starter is very bubbly and aromatic and ought to be worthy of a test baking in a few days. I have two questions - first, when one taps in to the artisan bread community, one of the first things you see is a lot of "baker's math" - bakers exchanging information about the hydration of their dough. Can you walk me through how this corresponds to these instructions? Is this a 100% hydration starter, because we are using equal weights of water and flour both in the initial mix and in the feedings? And then does one compute the hydration of the dough for the actual loaf? Guidance welcome. I also splurged on a pair of 8" banneton baskets, I am just itching to use them in the first baking and see how the appearance turns out. I'm wondering if the proportions of the basic 5-cup-plus-starter sourdough recipes you have will favor baking two loaves in bannetons of this size? Or do I need to make more dough than that? I'm sure experimentation will shed light on this, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for everything you do! Ken Saratoga Springs, NY

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