Fiona,
It's cheating if you don't learn how to make a good loaf of bread and if you kill your starter by stopping baking alltogether.
Also, baking regularly car help build character.
To learn more about natural leavened bread baking you might read a post I made last year:
Re: Bread
(
http://www.cybermacro.com/forums/for...forum2/read/54 ).
Also, because I get so many e-mails (often from people who aren't even into macrobiotics) who ask me for advice on baking sourdough bread (because of my Cybermacro free web page (Bruce['s Daily Bread]) (
http://www.cybermacro.com/pages/user...brucewalk.html ), Ive decided to set up yet another specialized discussion site called " the fall and RISE of our DAILY BREAD" (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thefal...ourDAILYBREAD/ ) where people can talk all they want about natural leavened bread, sourdough, desem, yeast, organic ingredients, salt, good quality water, or any other natural leavened bread baking related thing they want, and everyone is is invited to check it out, join and post if you want to.
Maybe that will provide a needed service.
I hope that helps, thank you, very much.
Bruce Paine