Actually tried making sourdough bread at home, the taste and texture eventually became so superior that we don't want to buy bread in the store any more.
Sure, there are "sourdough" bread in the store, but they always add ordinary yeast to speed up the process, tastes nothing near the real thing.
There did open a new sourdough bakery in the city that does it correctly, however, a single loaf cost 7€.
Same same, my partner got me a sourdough book in april, I have baked maybe 30 loaves since then. I got to a level of quality that there is no reason to buy bread anymore and it feels that store bought bread is not great when we do.
I think we're at a similar number, I don't remember when we started but it was around the same time.
We also tried different types of flour, at first we used ordinary flour but it didn't taste right (bad fermentation too).
Now we use whole-grain for the fermentation stages and then a mixture of stone-milled flour and a little whole-grain during the baking process. Going from ordinary to organic flour also made a difference, especially with the fermentation reaction. We have gotten a few bugs in the flour though, but it's kind of expected, especially on the stone-milled types.
Sure, there are "sourdough" bread in the store, but they always add ordinary yeast to speed up the process, tastes nothing near the real thing.
There did open a new sourdough bakery in the city that does it correctly, however, a single loaf cost 7€.