Frightening texture. I am not talking about cottage cheese, nor tapioca pudding, but rather the 100% whole wheat sourdough bread that has been having a good old time disgusting me with its texture of late. I have used the tactics that I have found here on the Fresh Loaf site- stretch and folds at 30 min /1 hour intervals, autolyse, and the great slap and fold technique. Yet my sourdough bread remains stubbornly dense except for a sprinkly of yeast tunnels scattered throughout the bread, and each slice of the bread results in wheaty streaks on the knife. Argh. I know that I am capable of making bread that doesn't knock a hole through the wall when you hurl it in frustration:

the above bread is 100% whole wheat (with some seeds added), but contains yeast. Here would be my attempts at 100% whole wheat sourdough:

and worse yet:

and here's the knife after cutting into these fiber nuggets:

frustrating. typically my procedure mimicks that of a post I found on this site: an overnight levain consisting of 90 g flour, 7.5 g levain (100% hydration), and 73 g water and an overnight soaker of 375 g flour, 302 g water, and 9 g salt. "Flour" refers to whole wheat flour, or more specifically type 150 flour as I am in France and flour is sold by its "type" ranging from 45 to 150; 45 resembles baby powder and 150 contains the most bran. In the morning (~7h30) , I mix the soaker and the levain and perform stretch and folds every hour until 11h00, when i shape the bread and then let it rest about 3 hours. Into a 425 F/220 C oven for a few minutes it goes after the rest- and after a few minutes i lower the temperature to 375 F/190 C and let it bake for 45 min.

 I would be overjoyed if someone had some advice on what I can do to improve the texture of my sourdough. My hypotheses are that my dough is too hydrated (it can get pretty gloppy at times- in my head is the chant "wetter is better!" that I have picked up from multiple posts on this site. wetter may be better, but a swamp is well, a swamp), or that the flour's high bran content is slicing up the gluten, although I doubt that as my yeast bread comes out fine.

I look forward to your responses,

Claire- a longtime Fresh Loaf lurker who has finally decided to step into the light and create a post

I have been baking bread for about six months now, so I'm still a complete noobie, but really enjoying myself. I've been making Reinhart's San Francisco sourdough a lot, and I've recently tried his Ciabatta (in the Apprentice book) a few times.

I cook in an electric oven, weigh all my ingredients, have used KAF and most recently the high gluten Giusto's.

The main problem I'm having is that I want my bread to have a really open crumb with big, irregular holes. I've tried increasing the hydration on Reinhart's SF sourdough recipe with a bit of improvement, but nothing major, and tried the Ciabatta recipe with 9 oz of water and 4-5 folds and I still can't get it to look like his photo. (My latest theory is that perhaps I didn't flatten the dough enough, mine went into the oven about 3-4 inches high.)

Anyway, I would appreciate any tips you might have that would help me accomplish my dream of yummy sourdough/artesian bread with enormous holes. I've seriously tried varying proofing time, oven temperature, quantity of steam, mix time, all without any luck. Any sort of tips in terms of the factors that play into big holes would be much valued.

(Also, just in case it matters, I live in a tropical climate (Hawaii) which is pretty hot and humid most of the time.)

Thanks in advance!

This weekend I baked the second batch of bread from my newly-minted sourdough starter (so new I haven't named it yet).  The first batch was edible, although the crust was not as crisp as I would have liked, and the holes in the crumb were uniform.

My second attempt fared much better.  The crust was crisp and blistered, and the crumb was riddled with variously-sized holes.  And I wish I could describe the taste!  Suffice it to say that when I went to put the rest of the bread away before bed, I found that my five year old had ripped the crumb out of the middle of the bread and polished it off.

Here's a picture:

Sourdough redux