From a message posted by Barb Beck at news:rec.food.sourdough

Most bread baked from sourdough starters is intended NOT to be very sour. If you read old cookbooks you find that people went to great length to avoid sour bread. It was some crazies in the SF Bay area that started producing not only a fine Mild sourdough loaf but also the extra sour stuff.

The trick to making the extra sour stuff seems to be to leave the starter at room temperature or warmer for an extended time. I feed mine each day. It takes a stable starter to do this. The Goldrush starter is too unstable, Carl Griffiths and the SDI starters work well. It takes weeks for the full flavor to develop. By leaving it out the beasties get the upper hand, making the culture quite sour. This also tends to supress the yeast and if you are not careful the bread does not rise well. I find that giving the starter an extra feeding the day before use usually gets the yeast back into shape.

The other method which I now use is the 2 starter method where I use 1 1/2 cups of the extra sour starter to make a sponge the evening before baking and 1/2 cup of a refrigerated starter which was brought out and fed the day before. (For 2 loaves of bread I use 1 1/2 cup of sour culture 2 cups of bottled water and 2 cups of flour for the sponge. The next day I add the 1/2 cup of the starter activated from the refrigerator, 1 tablespoon of salt and enough flour to make the dough. I form into loaves immediately, let rise at about 88 degrees F and bake.) Note: the pot of sour starter usually has between 2 and 12 cups of starter in it.

Each starter has its own unique flavor which is intensified by letting it sour. It has been interesting playing with my collection of yeasties and beasties to see how their flavor developes with time.

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