I would like to start by greeting everyone who's posts and blogs got me started on this insane bread journey that began when I discovered this website.

All I wanted was a recipe for Pita bread and I ended up with a hobby that I fell in love with...and hate!

I've started a sourdough culture that was doubling in less than 8 hours on Day 4  (orange juice method...juice on day 1 and 2,  water since day 3, rye starter 100% hydration).

Is that possible? Anyways I couldn't wait to try to bake so I followed a recipe from the HANDBOOK http://www.thefreshloaf.com/handbook/overnight-whole-grain-sourdough-wheat-spelt-amp-rye [1]

After adding the flour and stirring I noticed how wet the dough was and checked the recipe....yup 75% hydration...okay thats why it says "unusual open crumb for 100% whole wheat"!

Being fairly new at breadbaking I have a few questions considering I still haven't baked the pancake...oops loaf that resulted after the shaping stage:

- No kneading or folding was mentioned of...so I kneaded the dough for 10mins...maybe I shouldn't have?

- The recipe calls for an 8-10 hour bulk fermentation at room temp. Is that normal for SD? The dough looked like a stringy sponge at this point kinda like a poolish.

- I couldn't shape it at all! I was trying to shape a boule with wet hands and the tension would rip holes in the dough.

- After adding a bit of flour (without degassing,do you degass SD?, recipe doesn't mention) and managing to get some height, I came back 2 hours later and found it flat as a pancake!

-Thinking I maybe made a mistake weighing the flour so I folded in about 100 more grams of whole wheat, made a ball and its been in the fridge ever since...

Any Ideas what happened? could it be the traces of OJ that are  still in the starter? Anyone try this recipe?

Thank you and good night!

Jim.