Have been maintaining and playing with the starter I made myself. Seems to work fine in baked goods, but it's thin and when I feed it, I see a quick rise of about 25% or so, but within a couple hours, it falls back (quickly). If left overnight, it also gets a nice layer of hooch on top. Seems to me to have a nice smell and flavor. Still.....not sure I'm doing this right.
So I checked the bread making links found above in this thread, and that suggests a very thick starter. Where I had been adding no more than 50% of my starter volume with milk and flour (say 1/2 cup of equal parts milk and flour to 1 cup starter), this site turns that on it's head. Water, not milk, and the proportions are all out of whack.
They suggest:
1 part starter, 2 parts water, 2 parts flour. This by weight.....not volume.
I have started a test batch in these proportions and will report back.
I mention this as I know my starter had gotten thin, and apparently a lot of yours are too. Must not be a critical issue with a lot of room for error, although they do suggest feeding more often and feeding up a batch of fresh starter right before using it. I've not been doing that.
On a semi-related note, when you pull back the curtain of mystery about sour dough, apparently what you have is bacteria converting the starch in the flour to sugar, and yeast fermenting the sugars to alcohol, throwing off CO2 in the process, which is trapped as bubbles in the bread. Since I've been using milk (which has lactose sugar) instead of water, my yeast may be going to town on the lactose sugar up front, but the starter is weak on bacteria downstream. Maybe that, along with being thin, is why is jumps up and down for a few hours, then fizzles out? Again, will report back later.