Making Sourdough bread

I have a friend at church that I just adore. She has 5 beautiful grown children and she teaches Latin at the kids school.
Anyway, she has a sourdough starter that she has had since, well for around 20 years!!!! She is forever bringing bread to church functions and it is so delish! It doesn't have a soury sourdough taste like some you get from the supermarket.

I decided I would like to give it a try. So my friend said she would volunteer some of her starter. On Sunday she gave me a bowl with the starter and a 2 page recipe on how to feed the starter and then how to make bread.

Man, I had no idea how much attention it took. Ok, the feeding isn't a big deal, really.
It has to be fed a minimum of 1 x weekly, and as much as every 3 days. For a feeding you have to add 1 TBSP potato flakes, 3/4 cup sugar, and 1 cup warm water. You give it a good gentle stir and then lightly prop the lid on the jar/bowl and leave it out 10-12 hours.
Then you can either put it back into the refrigerator or you go to the next step and begin the process of making bread. If you are making bread you pour in 1 cup of the starter and follow the directions.
The whole process takes a couple of days. Not quite like throwing flour, sugar, yeast, etc in a bowl and in a few hours you have fresh baked bread.

So right now I have 2 loaf pans of bread in the oven on the rise (I hope). It takes 3-5 hours for this process. I am really hoping to have a loaf for dinner tonight.
Time will truly tell.

I was beginning to worry. The paperwork said to let rise 3-5 hours. Well after 3 hours the bread didn't look like it was going to do anything. So I waited another hour. It wasn't quite to the top of the pan but I cranked up the oven anyway. It was already after 6pm and the family needed to eat.
It turned out wonderful! Flavorful! Delish!