Newbie sourdough baker in need of tips
I'm pretty new to baking sourdough and have been able to bake some delicious loaves but I haven't quite figured out how to get a nice tight dough that doesn't spread like a pancake and good oven spring. I've been using a rye starter to bake all of my loaves and have tried different flours from 100% whole grain to plain organic white AP but no matter what the dough spreads like crazy after shaping and I have to score it very fast and get it into the dutch oven before it turns into a pancake. Then during baking I am only able to achieve a minimal lift if any at all.
I feed my starter once a day and it doubles within a few hours, is nice and bubbly and smells like sweet apples. I recently realized I may not be feeding it enough flour and water to maintain at least a 1:1:1 ratio so I'm trying to make sure I do that, but I'm not sure if that was the issue?
I'm also not that great at gluten development yet, I've tried mostly no-knead recipes with a few stretch and fold sessions during bulk fermentation. In my most recent loaves I tried kneading the dough for 10 minutes before bulk fermentation and got a nice stretchy dough but it still ended up with the same issues, dough spreading and almost no oven spring. Any tips on gluten development that may help me?
Also the last thing I'm not sure about is how to tell if to dough is proofed enough or over-proofed. I've done the finger poke test but I'm not sure I really know what I'm looking for. Should the dough double in size before baking? or do I need to leave some of the rise to the oven? I feel like I'd like to see more of a rise out of my dough during final proofing but I'm afraid of over-proofing.
And finally, I'm not quite satisfied with the texture of my crumb yet. Even in my loaves using mostly white AP flour the crumb is denser and gummier than I'd like it to be. I'm really looking to achieve that nice light, airy crumb in a traditional sourdough bread.
All and any advice would be appreciated!