Hi Patricia, congratulations on achieving a happy, healthy starter! This is when the real fun begins! While a starter does tend to hover in the peak zone for an hour or two, this can vary depending on the consistency of the starter and how warm it is in your house. You may also be able to to prolong the peak a bit by putting your starter in the refrigerator, but I'd say you'd still want to use it within an hour or two, and temperature changes may also affect the way your starter performs in the recipe. If it's bedtime and your starter is peaking, you may be better off giving it another feeding and postponing your baking for the following day, but there are also other options and strategies that can help you with your timing. 

One approach is to adjust your feeding routine to help slow down or speed up fermentation, so that the peak comes when you want/need it to occur. Using cooler water to feed your starter will help slow down fermentation, and sticking your starter in a warmer spot (I wouldn't go much higher than 82F/28C) can help speed things up. You can also adjust the ratio of ingredients in your starter to help slow things down; lowering the percentage of starter as compared to water/flour fed (by weight) is a way of offering your starter a relatively larger meal, which will take it longer to consume and ferment. This might mean adopting a 1:2:2 or even 1:3:3 ratio (starter:water:flour, by weight) on a hot summer evening, to make it more likely that your starter will be at its peak when you want to bake with it the next morning. 

On the other hand if your starter is peaking at bedtime, that's a great opportunity to add it to a recipe like our Pain Au Levain, that uses a small amount of ripe starter to create an overnight levain. That's the wonderful thing about sourdough bread baking; there are all kinds of methods of making bread, each of which will call for a different schedule and create different results. I would encourage you to try several different recipes, incorporating different techniques and timelines, so that you can discover the recipes and routines that work best for you and your lifestyle. In addition to the Pain Au Levain recipe, here are a few other recipes that I think will provide great sourdough baking experiences for you: No-Knead Sourdough, Naturally Leavened Sourdough, Vermont Sourdough, Artisan Sourdough Bread with Stiff Starter, and Maura's Sourdough (as featured in Don't be A Bread Hostage). If you're looking for a nice, soft Sourdough Sandwich Bread, this is also one of my favorites. 

Happy Baking! 

Barb

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