Sourdough Bread

requires sourdough starter. I recently bought the Tartine cookbook because after visiting Paris and visiting Tartine in CA I want to make bread, more specifically baguettes. After a little research it seems that beginning bread makers should order their flours and bread starter from King Arthur Flour. It's a little chemistry-ish and you can make a bread starter from scratch but apparently this is a temperamental process and even if you order the starter it requires immediate care and needs to be fed with flour and activated before its used in bread.