Please help trouble shoot my whole wheat sourdough sandwich loaf.

Hi,

What is proofing?  The last rest the bread had in the loaf pan?  How does it help with splitting exactly? 

I had left the loaves in the loaf pan until they about doubled  and tested with the finger poke.  

I have been a bit nervous about over fermenting the dough, because when I wait till the hole I make with my finger at each point once before shaping and then after shaping the dough sometimes seems over done and goes soft and the bread is heavy and developes a bubbly top that does not smooth out and dome during baking.  

I will try slashing deeper. 

Here is the recipe I am using,

 

The recipe:

Take 20-35 grams of active starter and disolve it in 765g of low chlorine or filtered water. Add to the water and starter, 1090 grams of flour and 20g of salt. Mix the salt into the flour first. Stir until all the flour is wet and set aside for an hour. Tip the dough out onto the counter and do a "french fold" or do a "letter fold" 4 or 5 times. Put into a clean oiled container and allow to double. This should take around 16 to 20 hours. After it has doubled turn it out shape and allow to proof 4 hours or so and bake as normal. This recepie makes a 70% dough. I have found that 35 grams of my starter will double after 16 hours on a 70 degree day. I scaled back to 20 grams or so to get the full 20. Cool thing about this is you can throw it together 8 or 9 pm. let it set until 4 or 5 the next day, shape and bake around 9 or 10pm. If you make it with cold water I imagine you could stretch the fermentation time out even longer. I also sometimes give it a second folding the first night if I think it needs it. This bread also has wonderful flavor as well. Hope this helps.

Da Crumb Bum

I am very happy with it over all, I just am not knowledgeabe enough about the finer aspects of sourdough and koaf shaping.

I just made more loaves and I tried hard not to have it over proof. But I think I left it too long before the shaping stage. I could see big bubbles in the dough through the side of my slightly translucent bowl when I got around to shaping it. The dough sighed when I poked in my test hole and the hole did not fill up at all.

Then I shaped it as it shows in JMonkeys' video on shaping. I did not let it rise in the pan till it doubled because the test hole already remained unfilled after about an hour or so and I didn't want to run the risk of over proofing too much and having the whole thing flop. So I slashed it very deep and baked at 375 for about an hour and then at 350 for another 30 min.

The loaves split even more and the bread even split where the seams were from the rolling of the loaves. SO it spit even more than last time. JMonkey's video shows to roll the loaf for the final shaping then he folds over the ends. I did not fold over the ends.

I did read somwhere that the sourdough starter has to be active and not under fed when you use it. I just store mine in the fridge and feed it sporadically. Then for this bread I have been scooping out the requisite 20-25 g to make the dough. How should my starter be maintained and what should I do before I scoop out my 25 g of starter? I did not feed my starter since then last loaves so perhaps in the two days since my last loaves.