The sour comes from the fermentation time in the refrigerator. If your fridge is really cold, it could slow the progress to next to nothing.
I use the "mother" method for my starter, as it proves the starter is good and ready, I start the process in the morning (7-8am), as it takes most of the day to create that cup of starter, and it's ready by 2pm to start making this recipe. By 6pm, my sponge (that's the first 3 cups of flour and all of the water) has sat for 4 hours and goes in the fridge overnight. Again, not exact science unless you have scientific conditions (aka consistent heat, no drafts, starter last fed at same intervals, and many other variables.) Assume it will take longer on cooler days and less on hotter ones.

I start with a tablespoon of starter, add tablespoon of water (if the water is warm to you, it's too hot!), and heaping tablespoon of flour. Stir and place in warm spot. Wait for that to get all puffy and gooey. When you have a lot of small bubbles, I add 1/4 cup room temp water, mix it in until it is all liquid, and then add 1/4 cup (heaping) of flour. Mix well and wait until you have another bubbly and gooey blob - bigger bubbles is a good thing, but lots of bubbles . Now add 1/2 of room temp water, mix until it is all liquid, and then add a heaping 1/2 cup of flour. Let it sit out yet again, until you have what looks like pancake mix that's gone wild with lots of small bubbles everywhere, and a few are M&M sized. Your fresh starter is now ready to be measured out for use.

Speaking of measuring, I get far better results when I measure "by weight" than by volume. Some flour gets compacted after sitting on a shelf for months. I use a rather cheap scale I got at Target (or Kohl's?) which was $15. It measures well at the 50g and up range, not so great at the 5-10g range.

Kneading is it's own magic, which gets the gluten strands going to make those larger bubbles. Too much and you get tough bread, with very small bubbles, too little and it flows faster than silly putty causing a number of bigger, unwelcome pockets. That said, this dough is on the soft side, and if it doesn't sag a bit, you'll not see many bubbles in the finished product. It's why I hand knead, so I can feel how it's stretching, which should be easy to stretch, not like dried-up, used chewing gum. So, soft and sticky, like soft pizza dough is the sweet spot for me, on the final addition of flour. Run your mixer for 5 minutes, and scoop out a blob of dough, roll it into a ball, then set it on the counter. If it pancakes immediately, mix another few minutes and try again. It will be closer to tacky silly putty when it's done. If you want to see "sheen" just let it sit for a few minutes, to let the water come up to the surface.

Sourdough is an "experiment" bread, it tests you, versus the other way round. Good luck!

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