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How active is the starter, I'd be feeding it every day for 3-4 days (chuck 2/3's away, add 100g strong flour, 100g tepid water) then the night before take 1tbsp of starter and 200g of flour 200g water and it should be nice and sweet in the morning to start baking. Tartine book has a pretty solid method that has rarely failed to rise.
Also what %'s for the loaf?
inchpincher-
In my extremely limited experience, I'd say it's not very active. I've been feeding it with rye flour and adding dechlorinated water at room temp but only to replace what I've been taking out.
The recipe I'm using for the bread is from Bread Matters - 250g wholemeal flour, starter, water, salt. He does suggest an overnight prove in a room at about 20 degrees should be sufficient but my house is has been colder than that at night recently. In my latest batch I've tried 50g spelt flour with 200g wholemeal to see if that speeds up the prove a little. I'm not going to be able to check on it now until later this eve so we'll see what happens...
I did think about starting off another starter following the Andrew Whitley method to compare (he uses rye flour for sourdough starter) if I don't have any success.
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I wouldn't chuck 2/3's away, I'd freeze it.
If you starter then goes wrong, you have something to go back to rather than starting all over a again.
Arducius
Pompetamine
Got given a sourdough starter on Friday. Made two delicious tasting but very un-risen "loaves" over the weekend. Got a third batch of dough on the prove at the moment. I'd been leaving it overnight to prove but that has proven (geddit?) not to be long enough. My friend I got the starter from said he proves for 36 hours(!) so here's hoping I have more success with the next loaf.
The tast is something else though, nothing like anything you get in the supermarket.