What is thiol and how is it getting in my bread?
Here is my original post: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23847/dough-gets-thin-and-runny-bread-won039t-rise [1]
I just went through this! 4 weeks ago I wrote here and got wonderful help and seemed to fix things, then everything went bad again! My first loaf looked fine, rose beautifully, and as it was baking, half just overflowed (on the long side) and the other half stayed normal. Very strange looking loaf. The second loaf looked all melty in the pan, rose about an inch in the oven, then fell. I am now starting all over again (again!) with new Carl’s starter. So my new questions:
1. What is thiol and how does it get in my bread? Is it in the air, flour, water? I’ve used both tap and bottled spring water—just using bottled now.
2. My new starter is still very gummy and not doubling. I’m in day 6 of “refreshing and tossing”. Am I just waiting for it to become “normal” again?
A comment about my starter: For almost a year my starter never rose and I got beautiful bread that would rise more than double. I hope this makes sense, I’m not a baker, just make bread once a week or so for myself. Being so new at this, I didn’t realize the starter was supposed to double, so I didn’t know that wasn’t right. But it made really good bread!
This is very frustrating. How could I go a whole year with the same starter and get beautiful results. Now it seems like nothing is right, even though I’m doing the exact same thing as before. Please HELP!