The only thing I use to bake from scratch was chocolate chip cookies, for decades. Then in 2020 with nearly bare shelves I dove head first. Bough flour (only 2 bags at a time) and yeast. I search kingarthurbakingc.om for bread recipes. I started with a simple unbleached all purpose (can use bread flour) flour bread (like a white bread) and expanded from there making rye bread, wheat bread, english muffins, crackers hot dog buns (with special pan), pocket bread, etc. Basically anything I ate I baked since it was hard to get in the store.
If you refrigerate the sourdough then you
feed it once a week. The "discard" (which is what they call it) is use to make your sourdough item(s). After taking the discard out you feed it equal amounts of
water and flour (make sure the flour is unbleached). Mix it up and then leave it on a counter for a few hours until it rises. If you smell it, it
should smell sour (love that smell.) The start from King Arthur comes with a manual on what to do and how to extend your starter. Comes with the recipes for SD bread, pizza dough, and pancakes. It also has a rustic bread recipe that you start out with since it uses yeast just in case your starter isn't that great. After making the rustic version a few times then make the regular SD bread. Ingredients are the discard, water, flour, some salt, and whole wheat flour. Making the SD bread isn't difficult once you get the hang of it, just takes 6 hours, but you get 2 loaves.
I invested in my first stand mixer also in 2020, Kitchen Aid tilt model, refurbished. Best investment I made that year. I use it all the time.
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