To make a nice loaf of bread using a starter... get a nice starter, right off the bat; a nice wild yeast starter. I've made all too many starters from yeast or tried to get one going, and failed miserably.
I finally found a beautiful wild yeast starter and you can get it here, if you do not already have a great sourdough starter hanging out in your fridge.
Slip on over to http://carlsfriends.net where you will find the 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Preservation Society, P.O. Box 321, Jefferson, MD 21755 USA
These folks volunteer and are doing a great service keeping this beautiful starter going so sending a couple of bucks along with the SASE would be a nice touch.
This their Alaskan Sourdough Bread recipe, which is what I used to make the bread you see in the photo. I made 4 lovely loaves out of this. I also get 4 rounds or 6 smaller 'soup bowl' rounds from it.
Read through, as my changes to make the Italian-ish loaves are after the recipe from the Oregon Trail Starter recipe.
1 cup sourdough starter
4 tablespoons lard (or oil)
1 teaspoon baking soda
8 cups bread flour (all purpose works too) approx. amount
2-1/2 cups warm water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon salt
Combine starter, all the water, and 3 cups of flour the night before and plane in warm, draft free place.
The next morning add other ingredients and knead till smooth and elastic. Place in greased bowl in warm place and let rise to double. Knead down again, shape into loaves, let rise to top of pan plus a little and bake ub greased pans in moderate over 375 F. degrees for about an hour until done. When it is ready, it sounds hollow when thumped. Turn out on racks, over with dishcloth and let cool.
How I put together the bread shown in the photo.
After dough rises the first time, dump dough out on floured board and let it rest a few minutes. Divide into 4 hunks. Do not knead. Shape/ roll into long loaves, pinching together and putting seam-side down. Repeat for remaing dough.
Place loaves on cookie sheets covered with parchment paper. Let rise until about double, then cut skin with very sharp razor blade before putting in 425 F degree oven until nicely browned. If you've got a wood stove... this is a 'hot' or 'fast' oven.
If you are not sure how to shape such a loaf, head on over to Youtube. There are a plethora of videos on shaping loaves of all sort.