Hello bakers.

I've been making my own bread now for about half a year. The italian bread over in the Favorite Recipes is probably the most difficult I've done. I have some other main stay recipes that I use for white/wheat loaves but what I really want to make is sourdough.

 So after checking my calendar and making sure I'm not traveling anywhere I started my starter.

The starter I'm using is a Amish friendship starter. May or may not be the best but I had all the ingredients at the house.

I began this yesterday and the recipe calls for me to mix 2c AP flour, 2c h20, 2.25tps yeast. and let it sit for 5 days uncovered. After reading many threads on the this forum I assume that is to capture more wild yeast.

This is my question, since it's flour and water mixed it has created a hard shell over the top. 

Does this shell get removed?  Do I smash it into the mixture on day 5 when I add more ingredients? 

This is from before I actually joined this site - actually this is the reason I joined this site.

Background:

In the States, I baked yeast bread. I had one recipe - from a craft, not a cookbook, so it used terms I was familiar with rather than the terms I more often find in baking recipes now that I'm looking around. It was a honey-whole wheat bread. I found all the ingredients in my local grocery store, used that recipe with no alterations except substituting applesauce for half the butter, and I baked it every Saturday, never with a problem.

Now, I live in rural China. I didn't bring the recipe with me. I don't have access to whole wheat. When I look at recipes, they confuse me. And yet my husband really misses bread. I am at a high altitude, but right now it's not dry at all, rather, close to 95% humidity most days. And, without air conditioning, heating, or well-sealed/insulated windows and walls, what it's like outside is a whole lot what it's like inside.

I found this recipe (I can't now for the life of me seem to find it anywhere!! I have it on a notecard) last week and tried it.

Oat-Nut Bread

830 ml flour
830 ml oats, ground to a flou
180 ml finely chopped walnuts
180 ml raisins
60 ml brown sugar
14 ml yeast (1/2 oz.; 14 grams)
10 ml salt
460 ml water
160 ml yogurt (I used vanilla unintentionally)
60 ml oil

1. Combine half the flour, all the oats, nuts, fruit, brown sugar, yeast, and salt.
2. In a saucepan heat water, yogurt, and oil over low heat, just until warm.
3. Add wet to dry ingredients, beating until smooth.
4. Add enough remaining flour for a soft dough.
5. Knead about 4 minutes, or until soft and elastic. Form to a ball.
6. Place on greased baking sheet, cover and let rest for 20 minutes or refrigerate overnight to bake in the morning (I did it overnight.)
7. Bake at 200C for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.
8. Cool on a wire rack.

Unfortunently, this didn't work out for me so well. I did step 1, step 2, step 3. In step 4, I kep adding flour until I'd added way, way more than the recipe called for, and it still was a dough I could barely handle, it was so wet and sticky. I ran out of flour, and began adding oats, hoping to save it - I ground most of them but out of desperation began throwing them in there as whole rolled oats until I could finally knead the bread. Even then, it stuck to my hands, the cutting board, etc. In step 5, I formed it to more of a blob than a ball, since it was runny, and stuck it in a covered bowl in the fridge. In the morning, it was conformed to the shape of the bowl, so I dumped it on a baking sheet, stuck it in the oven, and let it bake.

The result was a very dense bread, tasty enough to eat mostly because of the raisins, but so dense I had to eat the whole thing (my husband didn't like it at all).

I tried the other loaf (this was supposed to make two) leaving it out all night after having frozen the dough (based on something I'd read online, somewhere). It came out just as dense, though it rose a bit in the oven whereas the first never did.

I'm munching on the second loaf now, hoping to get rid of it so I can bake something decent.

The only other note is that I won't be doing the walnuts again, even if I do come back to this recipe, because I couldn't taste nor feel them, and they cost the equivalent of $1.50 for so little!!

Any ideas, anyone, on what I can do better? 

Well, after a bit of a break from baking I'm trying to get the hang of it all over again. I had a few loaves I wasn't happy with so I went back to the first recipes I used, namely the 1984 version of Laurel's. I came up with these, they're the best ones I've made, so obviously I could use some tips! I pretty much make only WW bread, this time with KA.

I did it, I created my first baked product.  I think this may be the start of a very long friendship...Today I arived home from school, I attend Le Cordon Bleu of Atlanta, and decided to challenge this crazy thing called "baking" again.  I have tried to make bread about 3 times before now and have messed something up every time.  But this time was different, I did everything correct.  I made pita's, I know it was just pita's but for a person who has never baked a thing right in his life, except for that box cake I purchased at the super market, I was happy.  I will get a