Thank you very much for your reply. I did try to regenerate the starter which had developed an unpleasant smell. However over 3-4 days there was not much change in flavour so discarded that lot of starter. Recreated a new starter using the levian water from grapes juice fermentation which was preserved 6 month back(from my first creation). After 5 days 12 hrly feeding it seems to have stabilized nicely. Few points where your opinion would be very helpful. First I was using an aluminium tray for kneading the dough. On a hunch that aluminium might be reacting with acid during kneading of the dough and spoiling the flavour, I shifted to an anodized tray. I do not know if my thinking is correct.
I live in Kolkata, India where ambient temperature of 30 C and humidity above 70 is the norm. In this environment if we keep starter at room temperature it is impossible to control sourness of final bread. This lead me to store the starter in refrigerator near to vegetables compartment at approx 5 C. This seems to be working OK with a daily feeding to double the starter volume. For my bread I use about 65% starter some salt a little bit sugar and rest whole wheat flour, No additional water while kneading the dough. The starter itself is from fine husk free wheat flour, what is generally called all purpose flour. Dough does rise to more than double in about 4 hrs when we go for baking it. We keep our bread pieces small about 100 -120 gms dough per piece. Largest piece we baked is about 400 gms. Resulting bread is denser than sandwitch bread but toasts really well. However I miss oven spring. Sourness is there but not too much, this is to our taste. Question in my mind is if keeping starter at 5 C reduces amount of acid producing bacteria which is somehow responsible for starter getting spoiled?
As regards spots on the surface, I think it could be due to steam as you say or kind of micro frying effect because we also use about 3% butter while kneading dough.
Looking forward to your observations and suggestions.

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