It's baked with the lid on Annie. Usually a pre-determined time for the lid to come off and baked a bit longer to top brown. I believe that is what gives bread personality. With a bit of study, and knowing your own oven and its quirks, bread can be what you want. Nice to reach a point where it feels natural and 'understood'. I like the parchment 'dump' method ann-t. I just made #6 batch of my grain rye. For the ruis i've been lifting out of the pot by the parchment and sliding the loaf back in the oven nude. To brown and finish on the oven rack. DH finishes his boul in the dutch oven. What has surprised me and my recent baking attempts is getting a good feel for the dough. I'm just now starting to ask 'why'. What's all that crazy talk about strand and gluten, pre-fermentation bla bla bla. spounges and poolish and biga and starter. I think i got lucky that my first recipe included a sponge. Kept me focused and held my attention. At the point now where i don't need the recipe. Just a glance to check if i've forgotten something. This link has been helpful.... Here is a link that might be useful: poolish and biga

1. Personally, I wouldn't use a freshly-made starter, I would feed the starter a couple more times to make sure I had a good colony of natural yeast growing in the starter. If your starter won't double in bulk when you feed it, it's not going to raise your bread dough. 2. You don't say whether your recipe uses starter only as the leavening agent, or both starter and baker's yeast. In recipes where the bread is raised with starter, I only use my Zo for mixing the sourdough bread dough - I don't allow it to raise in the machine. As soon as it's done mixing/kneading, I remove it from the bread machine and put it in a dough-rising bucket so I can monitor the rise. It takes sourdough a lot longer to rise than it does baker's yeast risen dough. Even on the sourdough cycle on the Zo, it may not be right amount of time. Then I bake the bread in the oven. If the recipe uses starter as a flavoring agent, and also uses a normal amount of yeast, then it should work to mix and bake in the Zo - as long as the amount of ingredients is correct for a loaf of bread. 3. Both fat and sugar have important jobs in breads. You don't say if you are making a lean dough or an enriched dough, and that would be helpful information, but I'm going to assume it's an enriched dough because it includes fat and sugar. There typically is only a small amount of each (with exceptions - such as a Portuguese Sweet Bread or brioche). The fat helps tenderize the crumb and keeps it from drying out as quickly as a lean dough. Depending on the type of bread you are making and the mixing method used, fat plays a vital part. If you want to skip the fat, don't use butter on your sliced bread after it's baked. If you want to skip sugar, don't use jelly or honey as a topping. If you are watching carbs - sugars - then don't forget the flour is jam-packed with them - as is applesauce. If you don't want sugar or fat in your loaves, choose lean bread recipes (Italian and French Breads) and skip the enriched breads (those that include sugar, fat, dairy, eggs - such as sandwich bread). 4. Splenda would NOT be a good substitute for sugar in a yeast bread. Bread isn't a good place for a no-calorie substitute. Sugar (honey, syrup) in a recipe provides food for yeast, flavor, tenderizes the crumb, keeps the crumb moist, makes the crust darker. You can't get those same results using a no-calorie sugar substitute. If you take some time and do a Google search on - care and feeding of sourdough starter - that will give you a lot of information about making and using starters. You will quickly find it's not one thing, there are rules and broken rules for it's use, it's a contradiction and as individual as the people who use it. Good luck with your sourdough bread. I hope you have good success and many more loaves to come... -Grainlady

I would suggest you give the starter another 4 days to a week to "age" a bit. Then first making sure you have enough to keep some back, take out what you need for your recipe about 3-4 hours after it has been fed. [You don't want to use all your starter in your recipe and have none left to keep in the frig - do you? Then you would have to start all over again.] Prepare your recipe just after the starter has expanded all it's going to expand. It will just go down hill from there. When you add the recipe ingredients to it, it will recognize the feast you are giving it and go to town on that. It is alive, you know? Teresa

"British terms are silly IMO" Good grief. Of all people on this board I thought you, Lars, would accept rather than mock difference. I would never say something like that about American terms. Of course you don't use British terms, why would you? Just as I don't use American terms, unless they enable me to express something I can't in my version of English. Somehow we manage to function, as do you. Ps I think Americans could perhaps usefully look at our differentiation between soil and dirt. Also rocks and stones. And shovel and spade.