I cannot get a loaf to completion to save my life. Dough is liquidy after bulk fermentation and will not hold shape.
A little background. I started baking sourdough during the pandemic like half the world did. Created a starter from scratch using Joshua Weissman's method and baked bread successfully using his recipe for a bit, then switched over to this recipe
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/33725/my-basic-sourdough-bread-recipe
Bread was awesome for a few years using the Weissman method with the one hour autolyse and the four stretch and folds before bulk fermentation. Then, last year, I left my starter in the fridge without feeding for too long and it molded. Threw it out and made a new one from scratch a few month ago. It developed mold before it was viable so I threw that out and started again. Moved it to clean jars every feed. Got it to ready. Tried to make bread and the dough would not come together. After the bulk ferment in the oven with the light on, when the dough has doubled, I take it out of the container onto a cutting board and it spreads out like a liquid. Sticky. No structure at all. I've tried about a dozen times over the past few months and every time the dough comes out unusable.
I tried this with the Weissman method with the one hour autolyse and the four stretch and folds and also with The Bread Code method with no autolyse and one minute of stretch and folds before bulk fermentation. Neither made any difference. Liquid dough after bulk fermentation. I even tried using a stand mixer for kneading before bulk fermantation. Still liquidy,
I tried the recommendations from My Sourdough Journey on how to strengthen a weak starter by doing a few peak feedings at 2 flour:2 water:1 old starter until the starter was peaking at 8 hours and smelled yeasty. No change.
I switched the starter from 100% bread flour to 50% bread flour/50% whole wheat. Same liquidy dough.
So what has changed and what has stayed the same since successful bread?
Flour is the same. King Arthur Bread Flour and a little bit of King Arthur Whole Wheat flour. Same thing I used before. Both in the starter and in the bread. I even bought a bag of Bob's Red Mill Bread Flour to see if the flour was the problem and no change - same liquidy dough.
Water is different. We switched from an undersink coconut fiber carbon filter to one of those fancy Reverse Osmosis deals. Waterdrop G2P600 if that matters.
Salt is the same. Morton's table salt.
Scale is different. Old one crapped out so got a new one. It seems calibrated well so I don't think that is the issue.
Here is what the starter looks like this morning 10 hours after feeding (1:1:1)
Any ideas what I am doing wrong?
You admit that the water has changed, but don't say if you've tried different water. Reverse osmosis water, which lacks minerals needed for yeast activity, is not recommended for bread dough.
I think I am going to bring the old Brita filter out of retirement and see if that makes a difference. Maybe a big jug of water from the grocery store too for comparison.
The link does not work, but no matter - I'd suggest that your starter is no good. I'd try switching it to whole grain for a while, a different bag from what you are using, and maybe starting a new one at the same time.
I would say both are in play - the water and the starter. Assume that the starter is shot for whatever reason. Create a new one using pineapple juice instead of water to begin - first read Debra Wink's posts about it:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10856/pineapple-juice-solution-part-1
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/10901/pineapple-juice-solution-part-2
Make sure that none of the old starter gets into the new.
Use bottled drinking water that isn't R-O or "purified" so that it still has some minerals in it.
You could also try making a straight yeasted bread with your R-O water. This might not be definitive because the dried yeast comes with its own yeast food, but it if fails and you still have the same problems you will know for sure it's not the starter per se.
TomP
I have made plenty of bread with Dry Active Yeast and the R/O water. That bread has always come out just fine. Normal amount of rise from bread made before the new filter. But also there is a ton of dry yeast in those recipes and a short rise time compared to sourdough.
The R/O filter says that it has a remineralization stage where it adds minerals back but it doesn't say which ones or how much. I also cannot find definitively what said filter changes the pH of the water to. I am now thinking that it changes it enough to negatively affect the yeast production.
The tap water in this area terrible. It tastes and smells metallic. The coconut filter we used before helped but I could still smell and taste how bad it was and could not drink it though the others in the house were fine with it. A plumber told me to expect the faucets and shower heads that I changed when we moved in to last about 8 years before the water corrodes them. This is year 5 so I cannot verify that yet but I believe him. The R/O filter made the water drinkable for me, but maybe the change is too much for bread. I do have a Brita filter that isn't doing anything currently so I might try using that and see if that changes anything
Here is the starter this morning. Last feeding (1:1:1) was 10 hours ago.
To me it also sounds like something is not right with the starter. Before chucking it out and starting again, you might want to give a try to a starter remedy that worked for me a while back when I had a similar situation with my overnight preferment becoming sludge.
When I refreshed the starter ahead of a bake (a 1:2:2 starter, flour, water feed, keeping 40g of the starter for the next bake on the fridge), I added 1tsp of chickpea flour into the mixture and proceeded to my preferment as usual. The next morning, no sludge and the loaf was pretty much ok. A couple of feeds like that fine tuning the addition of the chickpea flour as needed and the starter became absolutely perfect and is still baking great loaves almost a year later. User the search function to find my original post and some explanations by others as to why this might work.