Kim, great questions, and I love that you're thinking about scale before you even have a starter going. That's a seller's mindset. First, the quantity question. You don't need to grow and maintain a giant starter. Keep your everyday starter small, 60g is fine, and build up only when you bake. The night before your 6x batch, take about 50g of your ripe starter and feed it with 300g flour and 300g water. By morning you'll have roughly 650g of active levain, enough for six Country Sourdough loaves at about 100g each with a little insurance built in. Your small mother starter stays on the counter untouched, so you never risk the whole colony on one bake. Feed big only when the bake calls for it. Cheaper on flour too, and every gram counts when you're selling. Second, flour choice. Whole wheat is a great way to start a starter. It ferments faster because there's more wild yeast and nutrition on the bran. Here's what I'd do: begin with whole wheat for the first week to get it going strong, then transition to feeding with unbleached bread flour or a 50/50 mix. A white-flour-fed starter is more predictable, and predictable is what you want when customers expect the same loaf every Saturday. The flour you feed your starter doesn't lock in the flour of your bread. Country Sourdough works beautifully off a white or 50/50 starter. Third, stiff starter. That's just a starter kept at lower hydration, around 50-60% water instead of the usual 100%. It ferments slower and leans sweeter and milder. It's a useful tool, but it's a chapter two skill. Get your standard 100% hydration starter strong and predictable first. Once you can look at it and know exactly where it is in its cycle, then play with stiff starters. One more thing: don't rush the calendar. A starter is usually reliable enough for consistent selling around week three or four, not day seven when it first doubles. Give it time to develop strength and character before you put it to work. Check the Bread Authority for starter resources too: https://skoo.ly/bread-authority