My bread has fallen and it can't get up...
Hi, I hope this is the right forum to ask a question...
I am pretty new to bread baking, so I get stumped pretty easily. I have been making Dreikornbrot (three seed bread) from the Local Breads recipe. First time it came out pretty nice, but I decided it could've used a couple more minutes in the oven. I used my first rye starter and it didn't even look ready (it was pretty stiff, unlike the "porridge-like" description from the book). Nevertheless, it made a nice bread. On subsequent refreshes, the starter looked perfect. It was creamy and rose and developed the holes just like in the picture. But the bread that resulted from those seemingly perfect starters didn't come out as good as the first try. The dough rose great, but was much stickier and harder to handle during the forming stage. The resulting bread tasted ok, but the roof sort of caved in after it was taken from the oven. I assume this is because the dough was too moist and and the structure was too weak to keep it's shape? Do I need to adjust the flour upwards to account for the more liquidy starter that I'm using? Was the starter more correct in the stiffer form than the "porridge-like" form that Leader described? I'm just a little perplexed and disappointed, because I love the bread and I want it to come out of the tin with the perfect "dome", and not a sinkhole. Thanks in advance.