PG, I don't know about wild yeast, or at least I can't remember, but we used to make our own yeast by grinding the whole-wheat (about a cup from memory) in a stone grinder (it was a hand operated one at the time). That would go into a wide-necked (straight-sided) Fowlers Vacola bottle with enough water to cover. Then it would stand overnight on our bench (we lived in the tropics at the time). Next day the dough would be rising up the sides of the bottle. That's your yeast. You use some and keep some back for next batch. I don't know if the first one works too well.
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Then freshly ground flour into a bowl and add your starter, water, salt, and whatever else you want, but keep it simple to start until you find the right proportions. We always added some shortening.

You can do it so your hands and never touch sticky dough if you coat everything well with flour - the workbench, the dough and your hands.

Kneading and recipes seem to take the fun out of it for me.

Ah! but kneading can be a very relaxing and contemplative exercise;), one you get into the swing of it. You'll get it done to a good rhythm. I read but never follow recipes. They're just good for ideas, as far as I'm concerned.

Happy baking!

I used to make sourdough bread. It took a couple of weeks before the starter was ready and had enough wild yeast in it to use for bread. For about a year I made it. I really liked the taste but I could never get it to rise properly. I read about making it on the internet and I tried to get it to rise well, but I never was able to get the bread to rise well consistently. A few times the bread rose well and made perfect bread but most of the time it stayed pretty flat and I could not tell what the difference was between when it rose well and when it didn't. Even though the bread usually didn't rise well it had a very good taste. It was nice and sour which explains the name and I enjoyed eating it. Because I could never get it to rise well I stopped trying after a long time because I figured all the work I put into it was not paying off because most of the time the bread did not rise, but I thought it was a good experiment and I wish I could have gotten it to work properly because if it did I would have continued making it. I did really like having a jar of living yeast at hand full of bubbles.

Your experience sounds much like mine so far.  There is a baker in my town who make/sell exclusively sourdough bread at our farmers market, and they have to use the ready made packet yeast on top of the sourdough starter in order to get rise and consistent results.  I mean, why else would you use ready made yeast.  However, I think I may know how to get rise.  But, it will have to wait until tomorrow for me to find out, because I already baked today's bread, and my idea consists in how to heat it.  I also have a grape fermentation going.  You can use the fermentation of the grape water for your bread.  I guess it eliminates the sourdough taste, but still makes the bread become bread.  I have a couple more days until that is ready though.

Nadir -  I would love to grind my own grains and make bread.  I think one can control the level of coarseness from the grinder, and that seems interesting.  I wonder how that might affect bread.  Because, in some 3rd world cultures, they will smash the grains in like a giant mortar and pestle made of wood basically to get flour; but I cannot image the flour is as fine as stone ground, and certainly not as fine as what most bread is made from today.  And, imagine all the variety it would create.  It would create coarse,  mildly coarse, fine and extra fine all in one package.

In the late renaissance they started bolting bread, where they would sift our the larger ones and only leave the fines.  But, I wonder if the variance in the size of ground grain would help give a bread rise and preferable texture.  For one, there is definitely a difference in stickyness and hold you might say between finer dough and coarser dough.  Just look at desert doughs, they were usually made of soft whole white wheat rather than whole red wheat.  Because, the larger grains next to the finer grains may allow more air in the bread.  It is like with gold sifting.  If you have heavies in the bottom with the heavy fine gold, the gold will float more rather than sink, because(I think) more water is down at the bottom, and the heavy rocks displace the gold in the water.  I don't know all the science.  But, I suspect that having the wide(er) variety of ground grain aids in bread rise and the inside being done.  

A lot of organic breads to my disdain will ad chopped grain into their finely floured bread whether whole or refined, and it give it the coarse or chewey texture.  However, these chunks of grain are way too large, and harm my stomach(leakey gut) in many cases.  The result is too finely ground wheat combined with too un-ground wheat.  Imagine if that gap was brought closer together, the texture I think would improve.   

There have been previous thread on this topic. I have just done a search and come up with this from the women's section which I don't think the writer will mind sharing with the men:

Stir a quarter cup of water and a half cup of whole wheat flour into a glass bowl or jar every day for 7 days and that's about it. Keep it covered with plastic wrap. Around day 4-5 it should start smelling very sweet and yeasty and it's ready for use on day 7. Around day 4-5 you can switch to white flour so that you don't keep adding too many critters and the starter gets the chance to level off. There are many more tips and tricks online but that's all it really takes to get started. I use enough of it daily that I add a half cup of water to a cup of flour every day but once it's settled it can go dormant for weeks in the fridge or you can leave it on the counter and use/feed once a week.