Hi Leigh,
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment — though I’m sorry to hear your dough didn’t turn out as expected. I know how frustrating that can be when you’re using good ingredients and putting time into a recipe.
This recipe has been thoroughly tested (many, many times), and has also been made successfully by dozens of other bakers. As an experienced baker — and someone who works with sourdough — I’m sure you know how dramatically factors like flour protein content, starter strength, room temperature, and even humidity can impact dough consistency. That’s why I always encourage bakers to use the texture and feel of the dough as their guide, not just the numbers on a scale or clock.
The brioche dough for this babka is meant to be soft and slightly sticky — that’s what gives it its rich, tender crumb. It should never be “soupy,” though, so it sounds like something in your specific setup absorbed liquid differently. That’s not a failure of the recipe, just one of those charming quirks of sourdough baking.
I do stand by the recipe as written — it works beautifully when followed as directed — but I appreciate you sharing your experience so others can keep an eye on texture as they mix. If you make it again, I’d suggest adding your milk slowly and letting the dough knead longer before making adjustments — enriched sourdoughs often feel looser at first and tighten up as the gluten develops. That way you can account for differences in flour absorption or humidity — something I’m sure, as an experienced baker, you’ve had to do before.
Wishing you smoother bakes ahead (and hopefully fewer “soupy” ones).
Warmly,
Jenni

I am a baker with 50 years experience and I also found this recipe to be soupy. On no planet would this work with the amount of flour – even just approximately that much flour (because it is typical to have to adjust 1/4 cup here and there). THIS recipe, the way you have it here, required me to adjust the flour upwards by almost 2.5 additional cups. I measured my bread flourby gram weight. I fed my starter to 100% hydration as you recommended. And again I am not a newbie to sourdough or breadmaking or baking in general. I encourage you to reproduce your recipe based on the exact instructions you gave us and see what we mean. I feel this was really irresponsible and set us up to fail with extremely costly ingredients, and I’m not happy. I was able to rescue it, but not without a lot of extra time and frustration.

Just regular salt is fine! Unless a recipe specifically calls for something very specific, you can assume its just regular table salt.

Yes, I would try feeding by weight for a few feedings and try again. Sometimes when we measure by volume we can accidentally change the hydration without meaning to, just based on how we measure the flour. It seems fussy, but it gives much better results, especially when you are making more technical bakes!