Trying this bread tonight, but the dough was a lot looser and stickier than I had expected, requiring me to jump through a few hoops to get more flour in during kneading. (Fortunately, I used the bread machine for that, so it wasn't too hard.) I think this is because my homemade starter, which smells tangy and is all bubbly and was as easy to make as I could hope, is apparently a lot thinner than it's supposed to be, even though I thought it "looked like pancake batter," like everyone says. So, when I weighed out eight ounces of it, I'm sure it was more liquid than solid. So, always the science geek, always trying to make things foolproof (I've never even been tempted to ask for $5 for a KAF recipe not working!), I have this thought: Since one cup of flour weighs about four ounces in KAF recipes, but one cup of water always weighs eight ounces, then "one cup of starter" that's correctly mixed 50-50 should weigh six ounces. Shouldn't it? (If so, the weight version of the recipe here is wrong, because it says one cup of "fed" starter weighs eight ounces.) If the weight in the recipe is pre-determined and I'm completely wrong, then that's fine—wouldn't be the first time! If not, and if you guys have some "fed" starter around the KAF kitchens, could you weigh "one cup" of it a few times (I'm guessing that despite the consistency, we should use one dry measuring cup and not a liquid measuring cup) and see how much it weighs? I would think this would be a foolproof way to judge the consistency of starter that's supposed to be 50% flour and 50% water: if the right volume weighs too little, it'll be too thin (more water than flour), but if the right volume weighs too much, it'll be too thick (more flour than water). This could lead to easy adjustments, like "If your cup of starter doesn't quite weigh 6 ounces (or 8 ounces or whatever), add a few more tablespoons of flour to the dough; if it weighs more, add one tablespoon of water for every ½ ounce more than 6 ounces (or 8 ounces) that the cup of starter actually weighs." Maybe I just make thin pancakes? I dunno. I may be overthinking this, of course, but if there's an easy way to use the handy-dandy kitchen scale to know if my starter isn't the same consistency as your starter, I'd really like to figure it out! Interesting point. I weighed the starter when I was making the recipe, and it always hovered around 8 ounces (often just a bit over, like 8 1/8 ounces). But I always feed it half and half with flour and water (by weight, not volume). What's up with that? My gut tells me this has something to do with the fact that 1 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water doesn't = 1 1/2 cups of starter. I just went and measured 1/4 cup flour and 2 T water (mind you, it's 6 a.m. - I'm not at my sharpest yet! This is a challenge) - 2 oz. - and got 3T of "starter." So at this point, 1 cup of this very thick starter would weigh 5 1/3 x 2 = 10 2/3 oz. Which means the water/flour combination is inherently heavier than plain water. Then, as the yeast gives off alcohol, the very thick starter gradually leans more towards the liquid than the solid side, and the relative weight of the starter diminishes. So, the less a starter weighs per cup, the thinner it appears to be. At this time of day, the math to go any further isn't springing easily to mind. Anyone want to jump n here? I'm going to the gym to clear my head! PJH

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