Runny dough
Hi all, I'm quite a newbie to bread making but couldn't wait to get in to sourdough breadmaking.
I was hoping for some ideas on why when I use my sourdough starter, when I try to shape my bread the dough has become very runny. It stretches like crazy and has no elasticity at all. I have tried keeping the finished dough in the refrigerator which seems to help the handling a bit but my finished bread still comes out very wide and flat. The taste is excellent and the crumb is actually ok, it does rise in the oven.
I've tried different flour combinations of organic stoneground wheat, spelt, rye and emmer but still finish with a runny dough. I've tried using different amounts of starter in case it was something to do with that too. Also tried shorter fermentation times, it seems to double in size very quickly and become bubbly even though I have read that sourdough takes longer to rise etc. I prefer to have longer ferments as the flavour is better.
Any ideas what could be causing this non elastic runny dough? I don't have any of these issues with bakers yeast. Help...
Thanks,
Chris