My First Sourdough Bread Attempt

I have been baking bread for a few years now. It started with a small bread machine, all was well until I burnt it up!!! Then I decided to make more by hand, I received a wonderful new stand mixer for Christmas with a powerful kneading function.

Up until a couple months ago I had focused on breads using yeast. I wanted to get into sourdough. I now have several bubbly concoctions (rye flour, bread flour, a mix of the two) and will be creating a couple more from ideas I've read on-line (potato & pineapple juice both sound like they'd make yummy breads).
After a couple failed bread making attempts and an extensive recipe search this is the first recipe that worked for me!

Sweet Sourdough Bread

INGREDIENTS:

2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup active starter
1 1/2 cups warm water
6 cups bread flour

I only used 5 1/2 cups of bread flour.

Mix ingredients in a large bowl. Add the flour & water alternately. I used my stand mixer with the paddle attachment until
after I put in the 4th cup of flour. Then I switched to the dough hook, added the next 1 1/2 cups of flour & the last of
the water. Let it knead for about 8 minutes until the dough looks smooth.

Oil a container with vegetable oil. (I use a clear, straight-sided plastic container) Put dough in the container and flip over
to cover top of dough with oil or grease. Cover the container with a clean, damp cloth use a rubber band to hold cloth in place.

Let stand 6-8 hours or overnight. I waited overnight, closer to 12 hours.

Punch down and divide into 3 parts. Knead each part 8-10 times on a lightly floured surface.

Shape and put into 3 greased (I use a non-stick cooking spray.) and brush tops with oil (or melted butter).

Cover and let rise 4-5 hours. I left them in a warm location for closer to 6 hours for a nice rise.

Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes.

After baked, brush tops with butter and cool on cooling rack.

This bread can be frozen after it is cooled, but it won't last that long!

My sourdough starter was started with 2 heaping Tablespoons of bread flour + 2 level tablespoons of warm water in a clean canning jar.
I added the previous ingredients (flour & water) the the jar every day for a week. Keeping the jar in a warm location. I didn't discard
any of the mixture until it started to show signs of life. At that point I pulled some out & started the 1cup needed for the bread recipe.

I took 2 T of the active started, added 4 T flour & 3 T water everyday until I had slightly more than the 1 Cup needed to make the bread.
The rest of the starter gets fed once a day as long as it is sitting out on the counter, once a week after it goes in the fridge.