40. Should I use an established starter or make my own starter?

Well, it all depends on whether you are interested in sourdough
baking because you want to make good bread or whether you are also
interested in the challenge of creating your own sourdough starter.
Even with a predictable starter culture, sourdough baking can be
occasionally tricky. For someone who has never baked sourdough bread
before and may be experiencing trouble, beginning with a predictable
starter eliminates one possible source of trouble.

How do "established" starters get that way?  They are propagated for
years and years, generations and generations.  Also, "established"
starters are the end result of selective disposal.  For every
100-year-old starter there were countless starters that thrown away
because their properties were simply not special enough to merit
saving.  People did, in fact, give up on all those other starters.
Further, it is a relatively well-accepted fact that certain special
properties in sourdough cultures don't come into being until a
certain amount of time has passed.  For example, one can reasonably
expect that the symbiotic relationship between microorganisms that
have coexisted in a starter for several decades will be much stronger
than what is found in a months-old starter culture.  This is one
reason why these old, established sourdough cultures are such
consistent performers and are often quite resistant to
change/invasion by other sourdough microorganisms.

So the question becomes whether you want to learn how to surf or
whether you want to learn how to make your own surfboard.  Most
people would agree that it makes a lot more sense to learn how to
surf first, rather than doing both at the same time.  Billyfish
illustrates this well in his posting.  Here is a guy who has been
struggling for a long time with various starter recipes. He finally
gets some satisfaction, finally feels like he can experiment with his
technique and concentrate on making the kind of bread he wants
*after* acquiring a proven starter from SDI.  I think he sums it up
perfectly by saying "I now have a starter that is sufficiently
predictable to allow experiments to proceed."

*This* is why so many of us recommend starting with an established
sourdough culture.

-Sam