Baking catastrophe! Can you diagnose?

I'm not an expert, there are some here, but that starter sounds like it needs more food. Did you add one cup of flour to the whole four cups of starter or did you disgard some starter first?  Also, what flour did you add?  AP, whole wheat?  Some whole grain rye would help it along.  You'll probably need to feed it twice a day to get it going.

Hope this helps.

Marni

DrPr,

If you fed 1 cup each of flour and water to 4 cups of your existing starter, it probably wasn't nearly enough food to generate much activity.  And, that is seriously soupy starter, so it isn't going to do much more than bubble because you have approximately twice as much water as flour, on a weight basis.

Try this approach: take about 1/4 cup of your starter, throw the rest away.  Add a couple tablespoons of water to it and give it a good stir so that the water and starter are thoroughly blended.  Then stir in flour, a couple of tablespoons at a time, until you have a fairly firm dough.  Place the firm starter that you just created in a container that can be covered to prevent moisture loss and press it down so that its top surface is level across the width of the container.  It will be to your advantage to use a container small enough that it only holds 3 or 4 times the volume of your starter, is clear or translucent so that you can see the starter inside, and has straight sides so that you can see how much the starter grows.  Using a piece of tape or other marker, mark the level that is even with the top of the starter.  Then put another piece of tape or other marker at the level the starter has to reach to be doubled in volume.  Then sit back and let it do its thing.  Depending on room temperature, starter activity, and other unpredictable factors, it may take anywhere from a couple of hours to 12 hours to double.  Then repeat the discard/feed/grow cycle until your starter is back to its usual bouncy self.

Why this recommendation?  First, a firm starter will more easily double in volume than will a liquid starter.  It actually holds onto its bubbles, just like bread dough, instead of letting them escape, as can happen with a batter or liquid consistency starter.  Second, discard all but a small portion of your starter before feeding.  It's a lot more economical to save and work with small amounts of starter, since you only have to feed a smaller yeast/bacteria population. If discarding small amounts still seems prodigal to you, save the discards for making waffles, pancakes, etc.  Third, give the yeast and bacteria plenty of food to work with.  They're growing after all, and you want to encourage them to do so.  Feeding recommendations are all over the map, but the minimum that I've seen suggested is an amount of new flour that is equal in weight to the amount of starter being fed. 

If you don't already have one, please consider buying an inexpensive digital kitchen scale so that you can weigh your starter and its feedings, not to mention your bread ingredients.  My current approach is to feed 10 grams of firm starter with 10 grams of water and 20 grams of flour, if I'm going to be keeping it in storage in the refrigerator.  This makes a stiff (50% hydration) ball of dough not much larger than a walnut.  It will easily go 2 weeks in the fridge between feedings.  When I want to bake, I take it out and do 2 or 3 successively larger feedings that both refresh it and grow it to the amount that is required by the recipe.  Then I save 10 grams, give it another 10 grams of water and 20 of flour, and put it back in the refrigerator until the next time.  If I were doing daily baking, I'd keep it on the counter and feed twice a day.  If I need a liquid levain, I adjust the weights of water and flour in the feedings so that I wind up with a liquid, rather than a firm, levain.  Either way, I aim to feed the starter with twice as much flour (or more) as it originally contained so that it doesn't run through its food supply before I'm ready to use it.

Hope this helps.

Paul