Thank you for the wonderful post with easy to follow steps for making sourdough bread. I baked the bread last night following your recipe very closely, but the bread came out a bit dense. No big holes:(. Can you provide some insight on what might have happened? The dough did double in size both time when I left it to rise. I kneaded the dough with hands for a good 10 minutes and left it to rise. It doubled in size in 4 hours. Then, I gently deflated it and shaped it and let it rise again (in my bread loaf pan). Again, it took 4 hours, and it double in size. The only thing I did differently was that I used a bread loaf pan, instead of a flat baking tray for baking the bread. I did this because, I had halved the recipe because I was trying it for the first time, and didn't want to make 2 loaves. Please let me know what I can do differently next time, to get big holes(like the ones you have shown in pictures) and not very dense bread next time. How wet is your dough? The stiffer the dough is, the less likely you are to have big holes, and the slower the dough will rise. 4 hours to double hints that the dough may be on the dry side. Try leaving 1/2 cup of the flour you used last time out of the recipe next time, and see if it a) rises faster and b) has larger holes. Susan

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