I FINALLY DID IT 😭

I attempted sourdough April 2024 with starter made in Jan 2024. After 4 attempts I gave up & put the starter in the fridge for a while, taking it out periodically from April-June to feed it. Forgot about the starter from June until about 2 weeks ago. Took it out of my fridge and have been feeding it every 12-24hrs it started doubling after two days and I continued to feed it. Baked a loaf the other day with the recipe I tried in the past and the loaf was alright, not great. Definitely gummy bands in the inside one spot on the bottom completely doughy and had to be trashed. Gave it another week of feeding and last night decided I was going to try again with a new recipe a friend sent me from TikTok. I cut the recipe in half just to make a mini loaf so I wasn’t wasting anything incase it didn’t work out. The dough was MUCH dryer than I was used to. It was a 65% hydration dough. I didn’t have high hopes as it was hard to shape it and I did the whole process at room temp (besides BF I had to put in the fridge because it got too late last night to finish it so I paused it and pulled it out this morning and let it finish) proofed at room temp (we have a woodstove so it’s 85 by the stove so it was a quick proof) and baked on a pizza stone.. it came out PERFECT and now I’m annoyed I only did a mini loaf instead of the whole loaf 🤣 the crust is a little too crusty for me so I’m going to adjust my baking next time to hopefully not get it as crusty lol but besides that the inside in my opinion was totally perfect and the flavor is so good! Just wanted to share my success ☺️ this was the 6th loaf I’ve ever baked and I’m so glad I found something that works. Fingers crossed it works doing a whole loaf 🤣 now to figure out when I should feed my starter to be able to start my dough early enough to BF, Proof and bake in one day 😂 my starter doubled in about 3.5-4hrs