I consider myself a novice because my loaves aren’t consistent. After five years baking on and off I’ve had only a few loaves that gets those splits on top (the “ears”), and yes, it took me about a year of consistent effort and intentional failures/experimentation to finally learn how to “read” the dough.

That said, if it’s the flavor you like, you can “boost” sourdough doughs by adding a very small amount of commercial SAF (Red) yeast to a batch with wild starter - you’ll get a predictable rise and strong oven spring, but with the wonderful sourdough flavor and moisture.

This reduces frustration while you’re learning, or if you don’t love bread baking bread but are just solving the problem of lacking access, it can be a simple way to minimize the learning curve and quickly get you to delicious bread. :-)

One other point: the average sourdough starter isn’t actually really sour… most commercial sourdough loaves seem to add souring agents (e.g., citric acid), because while starter *smells * sour, I’ve rarely nurtured a starter that created sour-*tasting* bread like San Francisco’s famous loaf.

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