breadtopia's no knead sourdough failure
I've been baking breadtopia's no knead yeast bread with reasonable success, so I tried it with sourdough today. It's got a great crust, but it's DENSE. The flavor is far superior to the yeasted version, though.
Some measurements were the same; both 300g white, 143g whole wheat, but while both recipes call for 343g of water, I reduced the amount of water for the s/d by 33g, because it was super wet even so, so it only got 310g of water, but of course the 1/4 cup starter was 100% hydration and added more water. One thing I noticed was that after the bulk fermentation, it was NOT showing any bubbles and less increase in size, compared to the yeasted one, which bubbled quite happily. I let the s/d version ferment for 16 hours at 68 vs 14 hours at more like 64 for the yeasted. Should I have NOT omitted the water, and should I have waited much longer for bubbles to appear in the rising dough? I'm so paranoid of over proofing, maybe I erred on the under proofing side?
My hunch is part of the problem is my starter. I just looked at photos of sourdolady's starter, all bubbly and fluffy, and mine never looks like hers. Plus sometimes it just has an "off" smell, even though that fluctuates throughout the day.