Recently I successfully baked a sourdough farmbread recipe with a friend for guidance.    After this success, he gave me a cup of chef and the recipe.     Since then, I have tried, unsuccessfully, to bake the bread.     After making the levain the night before, I made the bread dough the next morning, but kneading it resulted in a sticky mess - the recipe calls for 5 minutes of kneading at the outset and I have kneaded for up to 10 minutes and still couldn't get the sticky consistency to evolve into a nice dough ball.  But I persevered - saving a cup of chef for the next time and divided the dough into two equal parts.   The first proof was 4 hours and it rose fairly well - I let it rest,  folded it several times, letting it rest each time -  trying to get the flaccidity to congeal better, without much success.    Then I put each half into a floured basket for the final proof - again it rose moderatly, but when I rolled the dough out onto the cornmeal dusted stone, it was still pretty flaccid.    I baked them according to instructions but they came out quite flat and undone in the centers.    This has happened twice in the last 2 weeks.     I have been told that too much kneading is counterproductive.    Help!   Julian

Hi Loafers. I've been lurking and learning from the Fresh Loaf contributors for some months but this is my first post. Hopefully someone can suggest a cure for my sourdough blues. I've been home bread-baking for 15 odd years with commercial yeast leavening, but about a year ago decided to experiment with sourdough. My starter was based on 1/3 wholewheat flour to 2/3 white. It came to life with gusto. I live in Africa and I guess our wild yeast are really wild!

I am new to making bread, and have made a number of loaves using King Arthur bread flour, salt, water and a sourdough starter. The bread tastes great, but when I toast it I am never able to get the crumb to turn brown and crispy, no matter how long I toast it for. What could be going wrong? (The toaster works fine by the way...)

Hope anyone out there could help. I currently use 2 mixers for my production, a 20 quart planetary mixer and a 5 quart KitchenAid mixer. I use my KA mixer for small batches or to test new formulas. Then I use my 20 quarts for bigger and heavier doughs. My problem is... when i mix dough using my KA mixer, my bread usually turns out soft, but when I mix it using the bigger mixer, it kinda turns harder than expected. Now my question is, would there be a difference in the final product when making larger quantities?

Hi.  I'm a new member of the forum, though I've read a lot here just recently.  I haven't baked bread in years, and then it was mostly in a bread machine.  But this no-knead bread is so easy it's become a habit.  It's also very good!  I'm still working on a good whole wheat version.  Today's dough is half AP and half WW flours.  The only recipe changes are adding 1.5 Tbsp gluten and  more water.