Diving into sourdough

Due to my wife now being a prediabetic her doctor has told her that she has to cut down on her bread (as well as pasta, rice, potatoes) etc. I loved baking bread and have a bread machine. Now she is limited to 2 slices of bread a day, and they should be preferably whole grain and sourdough.

We try to keep a sense of humor with my wife having edema, needing to loose weight, having two artificial hips, and needing to avoid diabetes mellitus. We joke that the doctor reduced her diet to bread and water, and now he took that away from her.

I have been investigating sourdough for about a month, and tonight I will be baking sourdough with my newly activated Russian starter from Sourdough International. Look here in my blog for how things go, including recipes I try, new sourdough recipes I create, and old recipes I convert to sourdough.

The 9th of January was my birthday, and I asked if I could get a few bread books. I stopped at three. The books I got were Ed Wood's "Classic Sourdoughs", which is very interesting, Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf, which has wonderful pictures and recipes I am very interested in trying out, and The Laurel's Kitchen Bread book, which I have just glanced at. (Dan Lepard used to be a photographer before he became a baker as well, so there are some wonderful bread pictures in his book.)

Carl's Starter never started

It has been over a year since I have baked bread. First, I was trying to cut down on bread to lose weight. Then my wife was diagnosed as borderline diabetic and she had to cut down on everything made with flour. Unfortunately, I never saved some of my starter.

Recently I had enough of being without homemade bread. I could make the bread, cut back on the amount I ate, and freeze the rest. A few days ago, I decided to start the sample of Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter sample I had received recently from http://www.carlsfriends.org/ and was without success. I carefully followed the instructions, and even had my wife double test the temperature of the water for me. It just sat there no matter how much I pampered it and stirred it for days. When it did not work, I made it thinner and then tried adding warmer water. Nothing worked.

Has anyone used Carl Sourdough Starter with success, and it is it good sourdough? I do not know. I don't know if it is it worth waiting and getting a new sample of Carl's, or should I buy a commercial one, such as from The Baker's Catalog, or one of those San Francisco ones. I live in Battle Ground WA and have not been able to find any place to purchase a starter locally.