Bread is a sequence, not a recipe: nothing rises before the culture does, and nothing gets diagnosed before there is a loaf to cut open. Naming the starter on day one turns a vague intention into a daily habit with a witness watching the jar. Each step here generates the evidence the next one needs, so by the time you hand a seedling to a friend you actually know what you are passing on.
Step 1: Name It The Day You Mix It
If you wait until the starter proves itself before naming it, you have already given yourself permission to skip days. Naming on day one makes it a thing you would feel bad neglecting. Use 50g whole wheat flour and 50g room-temperature filtered water in a clear glass jar, because you need to see the sides. Stir until no dry pockets remain, scrape the walls down, set the lid on loosely. Write the name and today's date on masking tape stuck to the jar. Heavy chlorine can stall wild yeast, so let tap water sit out overnight first if that is all you have. The usual slip is mixing a huge batch to be safe, and a quart of flour paste is far harder to throw out when it goes wrong.
Step 2: Seven Days Of Feeding, No Skipping
By step two that tape on the jar has a name and a date, and it is now your log. Feed once a day at roughly the same hour: discard everything but about 50g, add 50g flour and 50g water, stir, then snap a rubber band at the new level so rise is visible. Days two and three often go quiet or smell like acetone, which is normal and not a reason to dump it. Real activity looks like a domed top, a sour-yogurt smell, and doubling in four to eight hours. What people get wrong first is feeding without discarding, so the jar overflows and the food-to-yeast ratio never resets. The second is switching flours mid-week. Pick one flour and stay with it until the week is finished.
Step 3: First Loaf: Bake It Anyway
After a week of feeding you have bubbles in the jar, and the temptation is to read six more recipes instead of baking. Bake now, badly, because loaf one is a measurement rather than a meal. Keep it plain: 500g bread flour, 350g water, 100g active starter, 10g salt. Mix, rest 30 minutes, fold four times over two hours, shape, proof two to four hours, then bake covered at 230C for 20 minutes and uncovered for 20 more. Change nothing else. The typical failure is jumping to a complicated recipe with a cold overnight retard and a hydration you cannot handle, which leaves you unable to tell whether the starter, the timing, or your shaping caused the problem. A brick made of four ingredients names its own culprit.
Step 4: Change Exactly One Variable
Because loaf one was plain, you can now diagnose it. Cut it open: dense gummy crumb with a pale crust usually means underproofed, while a flat sour loaf points to overproofing. Choose the single most likely cause and change only that. If loaf one was tight, add 45 minutes to the bulk proof and nothing else. If it came out pale, preheat the pot longer. Write the change on the same masking tape you have used since day one, next to the date, so loaf three has a record to read. The mistake here is moving flour, hydration, and timing all at once and then blaming the starter. Two variables changed means zero information. One variable changed means you know something you can use next week.
Step 5: Hand It Over With Instructions
Two loaves in, you have a starter that reliably doubles in four to six hours, which is the only qualification that matters for passing it on. Give a wrapped slice, or 50g of starter in a small jar with a lid. If starter, put the instructions on paper rather than saying them aloud: feed 1:1:1 by weight at room temperature daily, or refrigerate and feed weekly, and it is ready to bake when it doubles. Say the name out loud so they inherit the habit too. What gets skipped is the written part, and a jar of grey paste with no note gets thrown away by the weekend. Tell them the honest part as well, that the first loaf will probably be dense, so they do not quit at loaf one and assume they killed it.
Two loaves and one jar of starter is a small result, but it only happens if the daily feeding never lapses. A phone reminder disappears the moment you dismiss it and leaves no trace behind; a strip of paper taped to the fridge gets shorter with every cut and stays there until the last line is gone. Tape this one where you store the flour.