novice requiring starter help

Nothing in your description sounds too bad.

I bake weekly and always keep the starter in the fridge. I take it out the morning before, make a preferment that night, refresh the starter back in the fridge and bake next day.

The sourdough starter sounds like its working, but you have to remember that you have a yeast "farm" - it grows and develops.. Small adjustments to the water flour ratio can make a difference to the "sourness". I make mine quite stiff (65%). Sourness comes from the acid produced by lactobacillus (like yoghurt).

Sourdough like this won't taste like store (or soda) bread, so it will take time. I used instant yeast and recipes from Jeffrey Hamelmans book for about 12 months before i started with sourdough. That gave the family time to get used to the yeast taste of real bread, and the sourdough taste was less of a shock.

Kneading is over-rated IMHO - 3 or 4 folds are usually enough during the bulk rise, with a bit more working while doing the final shape.

if you could break up your text into paragraphs, it woould be easier to read. That big block of text is a bit daunting.

Hello Chel,

Don't be discouraged! It takes time to learn your starters and for them to develop to their full potential. I can tell you what I do for my starter and loaves. Flours are different here in the U.S. (most add distatic malt powder) than in Europe but the basics should work the same.

I feed my starters every 12 hours when they are on the counter at about 23C. I tend to get best results when I use the starter 12 hours post feeding. I mix the ingredients the dough except for the salt to a just mixed state and let set for 30 min. then I ad the salt and mix just long enough to make sure the salt is well mixed. I place the dough in a covered container for three to four hours (three if warmer, four if cooler). I fold the dough each hour. You should see the gluten forming nicely during this time. Then I form the loaves and place them in bannetons. I let them set for about 30min. and then cover and place in the refrigerator over night. The next morning I pull the loaves out 30 min. apart, I allow the loaves to proof for 2.5 to 3 hours and bake at about 218C using a baking stone and roasting pan method (20 min. under the pan for steam and another 15-20min. without roasting pan cover until colored as I want.

When not in use, I store the starter in the refrigerator and feed once a week. I usally give the starter two feed cycles before placing it back in the refrigerator.

Good luck!

Roasting pan method:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4PHUyRmpPc&feature=player_embedded

My 2c -

If your starter is smelling acetic acid/vinegar it is getting hungry and needs to be fed more often. 100 g of flour and same of water is a lot of starter to maintain -means you throw a lot out. You really only need a golf-ball size worth, until you want to expand up to make enough to go in your recipe. Simply expand to the amount you need on that last feed and don't throw any out at that time.

The rate of rise through the bulk ferment and in your final loaf will depend on a few things - temp, ratio of levain/starter to final dough new flour/water, salt % etc, but assuming this is all about typical, 9 hrs at room temp after a several hour bulk ferment is a very very long warm rise, especially if you starter is as active as it sounds. If I did this with my ratios, and kitchen conditions/starter, the loaf would be well overproofed and come out very flat no doubt.

Try doing everything you did first time, but either do what the last poster did - retard it in the fridge to slow it down and stop if overproving after shaping the loaves, or shorten the time at room temp - for me 4-5 hours is about right - which you can do on say a weekend when you have daytime to use. Or leave it out for that 9 hours overnight - but find a cool room that drops overnight to say 8-10 celcius, not 18-20.

The bread dough on going into the oven should not be terribly wobbly, with ballooning soft bubbles in the skin, and if you wet or flour-coat your finger and poke it in about 1 cm, it should slowly spring back at least part way. If it bounds right back and feels very firm, it's underproved, if it's really soft/wobbly and refuses to spring back at all, it's overproved.

An underproofed loaf will spring like a mad thing and crack its crust beyond the slashes in the oven, and look spectacular, but be dense and small, and not so sour.

An overproofed one will sag in the oven on the stone and in fact flatten noticeably on the peel before you get it on the stone (assume you are baking free form on a pizza stone or similar), and won't rise back up like a good loaf does at around the 10-15 min mark in the bake, and it will also be dense (becuase the gluten has been degraded and gotten leaky, and the gas generated has escaped the balloon).

You want the point in between - good rise before the oven, but not maximum rise - because there will be no oven spring and a disappointing end result. The crust should not crack othe rthan at slashes, but it should rise to a reasonably proud height.

Also make sure that stone is hot - like 1 hr warm-up - or it may also refuse to spring because the crust will set before enough heat has gotten in there to raise it... And a very hot oven to start, turn down at 20 mins or so so it cooks through, but early heat helps a good rise.  A good loaf will look a bit depressingly flat after a few minutes on the stone, but then will rise like a phoenix, reaching max height around 20-25 mins (sooner for a small loaf).

i am not obsessed with kneading but think some is important to get good gluten development - but I just do a afew short kneads at 10 min intervals after mixing the bread dough, using slap-and-fold method (like 6 slap and folds each 10 minutes, 3 or 4 times), then do a couple of stretch and folds through the rest of the bulk ferment.

BTW the bread should have a slightly sour tang but not taste of vinegar. The vinegar smell is natural in a healthy starter - albeit one that is a bit starved - so don't throw out, but do give it a few refreshes at relatively close intervals taking only a very little of the starter into each refresh. By the second refresh it should smell just like flour and water at the start, but enough bugs should be in there to get it back and bubbling without the acetone notes. It should smell slightly yeasty/beery when it has fermented, but not sharp.

Once it smells a bit more pleasant, it should be right to make bread - then go back to your normal feed schedule.Personally I bake only once a week or so (4 loaves each time) and so I keep mine in the fridge where I can ignore it until the day before I want to make up a levain next time. I have had two episodes of "gone acetic" in about 4 years, each time rapid feeding of a small amount of the starter at short intervals has brought it back to "normal".

So don't giv e up - you are really close to great bread I reckon, and sound like you have a very active starter, just needs a bit of tinkering.

PS I re-read you post and while I don't use a breadmaker to knead that should work well enough. I also saw you do use the pizza stone - so do make sure it's hot.