Bread baking question

Posted by ChristineB, August 2, 2008 at 12:11 AM

I've been cooking and baking pretty seriously for a long time (well, 9 out of my 20 years...) and I feel like I've become pretty good at both following recipes, and using intuition while cooking. But one thing I just cannot seem to master is baking yeast breads! I'm not freaked out by using yeast, and I've read up on the topic pretty thoroughly, but I always seem to run into minor problems. Well, particularly one problem, which is that my dough never wants to rise properly during the second fermentation/rising. I make the pre-ferment, I mix up the dough, I knead until it looks/feels great, it rises, everything's going swimmingly, I lightly deflate, and then, BAM!, it's like the dough has hit some kind of fermentation plateau and just can't seem to pull through to the finish line! The breads all taste great, but I've never achieved that ethereal, irregular, holey-ness that is the pinnacle of rustic bread baking--plus all of my loaves are quite a bit smaller than they should be!

Photographic evidence of the latest occurence found here: http://flickr.com/photos/cburas/2721818032/
and a previous attempt (ciabatta, which had pretty much identical crumb to the pain de campagne) here:
http://flickr.com/photos/cburas/2723605391/

Advice, anyone?

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