How do I clear my MacBook Pro HD using Disk Utility?

I'm not sure if my MacBook Pro specifications are necessary, so I'll skip those for the time being, but I have a 2009 release which already had OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on it and came with both the OS X Install DVD and Applications Install DVD for this in case I needed to clear my HD for whatever reason and start over. I skipped Lion and upgraded straight to Mountain Lion when it came out, which I paid for and finally yesterday, I upgraded to Mavericks. This was all through the App Store.
My questions are:
1. Taking into account my situation, would I be best installing Snow Leopard after clearing my HD since I have the DVD for it and then upgrading to either Mountain Lion and then Mavericks, or just straight to Mavericks, or would it be easier to get Mavericks onto a bootable USB and not bother with the Snow Leopard DVD? Keep in mind I'd like the least complicated option, as I haven't done it before. I'm curious because I've read that Mavericks was designed to be used as an upgrade and not so much for clean installs - not sure if that's true or not.
2. Obviously I've got Mountain Lion under "Purchases" in my App Store account and I don't want to have to pay again. If I clear my HD and end up installing Snow Leopard, will it be easy enough to just log in and redownload it without having to pay again? If I do this method and end up with Snow Leopard, will it be advisable to jump straight to Mavericks? The fact Mountain Lion cost around £20 or so (can't remember exactly) and Mavericks is free, I'm not sure I trust jumping...
3. I think I'm ok with actually clearing my HD, but wondering when to insert the disc or USB - will it prompt me or is it just before restarting... Or after restarting? It says on the disc, "To start up from Mac OS X, hold down the C key as the computer starts up'. Confused about the order in which I should do things!
4. In general, is a clean install advisable of just Mavericks? It seems like a huge hassle and I'd rather upgrade from what I bought the MacBook with in the first place. I've read that the recovery partition can go missing if you do a clean install? What is that and does it really happen?
If anyone could help/advise me, that'd be awesome! Thank you! PS I'm aware there are a number of different versions of Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion and so on, so any advice regarding that would also be useful.

Ok, thanks.
I forgot to add that I'm not sure whether to clear the drive through Disk Utility through the Applications folder and then put the disk in before restarting or whether to simply restart my MacBook without doing that, then put the DVD in while pressing the C key.

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