I have been baking sourdough loaves following Chad Robertson's recipes for at least a decade with a starter older than that and have never had problems: following most recent Robertson protocols, I've arrived at a dough that, after a roughly three hour fermentation period, feels lofty (almost balloon-like) and easy to handle with a scant amount of flour or no flour at all. These breads have routinely produced an oven-spring that doubles the height with good open-cell structure. But something has happened with my last three loaves (semolina, spelt and high-extraction wheat, respectively, all with varying amounts of King Arthur organic white): when I get to the shaping stage, the the balloon-like feel quickly collapses and the dough becomes quite sticky, as if the gluten chains suddenly broke apart. I have begun to wonder if the problem is the starter, which I store in the refrigerator in a covered ceramic crock. I have not cleaned the crock in a while (no good, I know!), and there are some hardened bits of starter on the sides, but no apparent discoloration of the starter. Any idea of what the problem might be? I am trying to see if I can keep the starter by scooping out about 30 g and refreshing it in a glass bowl. Does the starter seem the likeliest problem? Should I simply start from scratch? Thanks!

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