Food failures

[derekl_1963]

I know I haven't posted much of my sourdough work, but that's mostly because it's been pretty much discouraging to date. So, time to seek help from my LJ and RL friends.

To date, I've amassed a pretty foolish looking catalog of failures - I've set the oven too low, forgot to slash, etc. etc. But one constant problem I've encountered is the interior of the loaf ends up damp and doughy, even when I get a good hollow 'thump' and the interior temperature reads 180°F+. Given both of these the loaf should be properly cooked, but no dice. Any ideas what is going wrong here?

Yesterday was particularly discouraging because not only did the sourdough come out inedible (again), Chuck and I tried a new method of preparing and grilling spareribs... which came out inedible as well. On top of that, I also baked some of my regular bread and screwed up the yeast conversion (the recipes are for instant yeast but I use active dry yeast), so the loaves ended up denser and flatter than intended. They are still quite nummy, but just not what was intended.

<sigh> I know you encounter problems and failures when you reach for the moon, but a three-fer is just discouraging.