About baking bread

[blue sky at night]

1. I have been baking for over thirty years...

With Sourdough. What you are doing is fine, the sugar feeds the yeast...sourdough is so forgiving you really can't go wrong. I purchased my starter from King Arthur Flour, it comes in a small container as raw dough. They like to say it has been bubbling along in New England for over two hundred years! I continue to learn about baking and have evolved the way I bake from using a pizza stone, to a baking steel and now I use the dutch oven...the best as it traps the moisture in the bread leading to a really nice oven spring. One of my best additions is a "proofing box" that I made from a foam cooler with two C-7 Christmas bulbs in the bottom for heat...it maintains 80 degrees constantly so I don't have to worry about finding a warm spot in the house, not too easy during the winter. BTW, I follow a King Arthur recipe that uses yeast, a much faster method than starter only. I feed the starter often and I use King Arthur Bread Flour exclusively.