I'd made a few loaves using KA's Naturally Leavened Sourdough recipe, and they turned out great. I was excited to see this recipe because I hate tossing all that unused starter. I've tried this twice now and I'm having a lot of trouble with it.

I used your variation, with the higher amount of starter. I halved the recipe, using 375g of AP flour, and split the remaining 125g more or less evenly between white whole wheat and rye flours. The dough seems to get wetter as it sits, so that by the time I try to shape it, it's extremely sticky and soft; I can't handle it without having quite a bit of flour on the work surface, and it doesn't hold its shape at all. The first time I did cold fermentation and I couldn't really tell that it had done anything overnight. I baked it cold, which seemed to be what the recipe called for, and it was a disaster: didn't puff up in the oven; the center of the loaf was doughy and damp but the crust would have burned if I'd left it in any longer. The second time I left it on the countertop overnight instead of putting it in the refrigerator. It still didn't rise detectably overnight. It puffed a bit in the oven, but nothing like the more traditional recipe. The crumb is better, but it's still very dense.

The flavor is excellent, which is why I'm still trying to make a go of it, but I'm clearly doing something wrong, as my loaves look nothing like the pictures here. Can you help?

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