I have finally gotten my home made starter to work. It is nice and bubbly
and frothy before I make the dough. I use King Arthur bread flour, but when
I make the dough and let it rise, it tends to flatten out and spread,
resulting in rather flat but good sourdough bread. I have tried adding more
flour assuming that the dough is too wet, but that didn't seem to help. The
basic recipe I follow is from Crust and Crumb for San Francisco Sourdough.
It is reproduced below.

Perhaps I am letting it rise too long? The bread has nice push when I put
it in the oven, but it still ends up rather flat.

I could be that the dough is too wet because it is not perfectly clear to me
how wet the starter should be and how firm the firm starter should be.

The recipie I follow:

Firm starter:

2C barm starter (rather wet and bubbly and frothy, mmm....)
2C flour

Mix ingredients. Let the firm starter rise for about 4 hours then let it
sit overnight in the refrigerator.

2 C Firm starter
6 C Flour
1 T salt
1 1/4 t sugar
2 C cool water

Roughly, I mix the ingredients, make sure dough passes the window pane test,
and let rise for about 4 hours at room temperature. As the recipie says, it
doesn't rise much up to now. Then I form into loaves, let rise another 4
hours, during which the dough increases in size by about 50%, but tends to
flatten. I then bake at 475F for about 5 minutes, turn temp down to 450 for
another 20-30. But the damage is done before it gets into the oven.

Thanks for any feedback,

Dave