I have been making the same quick wheat recipe in my Zojirushi model BBCC-V20 for years with only rare problems. Fresh ground wheat and barley with a bit of fine milled whole wheat for texture. Recently every loaf seems unmixed, it sits in two partly connected squares and rises only about 1/3 of the way, very dense. I have tried everything I can think of in the mix reciepe and am sure it is a machine problem (mostly sure that is). I look at the abnormal indicator page of the manual and it does talk about a problem where the motor does not operate during knead cycle due to the weight of the contents...excessive load on the motor.

Has anyone else experienced similar problems or can you point me to a solution?

Thanks.

I have a sourdough starter that's a week old.

I have been feeding it every 12 hours, without discarding any.

I fed it this morning and 2 hours later, tried to make a loaf using the San Francisco Sourdough recipe from this website.

It hasn't risen after 4 hours.

I noticed 2 things about the recipe. #1, it never said "knead the dough", so I didn't. I just did exactly what the recipe says. 

and #2, it calls for Buttermilk, but never said when to add it- so again- I didn't.

I decided to stretch the dough and knead it a little to see what would happen (maybe it could help activate it?) Nothing has happened so far.

I've obviously made some fatal errors that I don't want to repeat. Please help!