Early on in my bread baking - at least this latest go-round - I noticed that my reverse osmosis water was not working very well in my yeast breads.  I read my recipes a little more closely and saw that they recommended spring water.  So I went out and bought Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water and found a big improvement.

(For those not in the know, the reverse osmosis process removes everything from the water except the water itself; so you end up with theoretically pure water.) 

Lately, my bread has had the same kind of stickiness that I'd been experiencing with the reverse osmosis water.   So today I used tap water instead.  The dough is doing very well.  It is undergoing stretches-and-folds and  I may yet see a windowpane on my 100% WW.  (The bread is a double-batch of Peter Reinhart's 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread.)

Is there anyone else out there who uses Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water?  How are your yeast breads doing?  What about other spring waters?

I have my suspicions.

Rosalie

1st starter. So I've got a white flour starter (14 days old today) that I've been building for some time now. It smells good, with the occaional 'berry smell'. When I feed, I'll keep half old starter (stirred well) and half white flour, with spring water. Well, I will only see about 30 percent rise. But everytime I use pineapple juice instead of water to re-feed, it will double in volume at around the 7 hour mark. If I go back to plain spring water, it only raises 30%. Strangely enough, I don't get any 'houch' from this starter.