Hi Suzan, when you're doing everything the same and your results are changing, blame the weather ;-). I'm actually being somewhat serious here because changes in environmental temperatures do have a big impact on how fast your starter and dough will ferment and ripen, so it's important to be able to adjust to changing conditions. Check out this blog post on Desired Dough Temperature to see how you can adjust your water temperature in order to get more consistent results. With the Artisan Sourdough Bread with Stiff Starter recipe, try to be sure that the bulk fermenation time is fairly warm (78 degrees is ideal), and then, once your dough is nice and lively and rising well, shape it and store it in the refrigerator overnight to bake the next day. I find this method gives me very consistent results and takes the guess work out of the final proofing. The dough should be ready to bake right out of the refrigerator. You might also want to try feeding your starter with Unbleached All-Purpose flour rather than Bread flour, simply because it will get a slightly better meal with the lower protein AP flour. This is because starch and protein are inversely proportionate in wheat flour; the higher the protein, the lower the starch. Since starch is what your starter consumes and ferments, it will benefit from the higher starch content in AP flour. For baking this bread, either AP or Bread flour works fine, but my preference is to use our Unbleached All-Purpose flour for this recipe. 

I hope this helps! Let us know how it goes. 

Barb 

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