another disaster
I have had reasonably good success with breadtopia's sourdough no knead method recipe. Great crust, but dense-ish. I always followed this recipe:
66 g starter at 100% (1/4 cup in the recipe, and in my case it amounts to 66g)
300g white bread flour
143g whole wheat bread flour
343g water
1.5 tsp salt
I mix this at 6pm, let it ferment until 9am, food it once, let it sit 15 minutes, then shape and let it final proof for 70 minutes.
I feed my starter twice a day, at 1:1.5:1.5. It rises and generally behaves predictably.
Elsewhere on this website I found a suggestion for someone who largely follows the same recipe. The suggestion said this wasn't enough starter in proportion to the dough. He said to feed 40g starter ( in the morning before the day of baking) with 91g of flour and 91g of water; then in the evening, make the dough (with 40g taken out of it for the next starter) with 182g of starter, while taking out those 91g of water and 91g of flour out of the recipe.
In other words, I used 300+143-91=352g of white flour, 143g of whole wheat, and 343-91=252g of water. However, as I was mixing the 182g of starter with the water and remaining flour, I realized if I used all of the 252g of water I'd end up with soup, so I retained ca 10g water, and it still was goop. That was one problem. I did this at 8pm.
The other may have to do with the starter: it took a long time to peak. I assume this is because the ratio was different, since it was 1:2.27:2.27 (40:91:91). I stuck it in a box at initially ca 77 degrees, and after ca 4-5 hours I turned it up to 84 degrees, and it still took 10 hours--is that normal?
Anyway, when I approached the fermenting dough in the morning, at 8am, there was hardly any life in it. It had risen, but not as much as normal. Very few bubbles. I waited until 11am, a few bubbles appeared. I decided to get it out of the bowl to get on with the day. The texture was such that it seemed to tear more easily than normal when I tried to s+f it. And it was sticky as heck. I did two s+f's 10 minutes apart, and let it final proof for 2 hours. Nothing. Never rose, an poking it was like poking a bit of wet, compacted dirt. Total frustration. What on earth went wrong this time??
I just stuck it in the oven. I hope maybe at least it won't be a tooth breaker.
Update: took it out of the oven and it's tiny. Haven't cut into it yet.
Also: when I make the "original" recipe with the 66g starter, I don't subtract flour from the rest, although I don't use the full 343g of water--maybe more like 336g.