>In any event the technique I am using now gives me great bread with
sour
>taste, good crust, and good leavening in a reasonable time. The only
problem
>is that after 24 hours the bread has degraded considerably from what
it was
>during the first few hours.


>Bill

Your bread stales faster? if your bread has lots of crack grains it
will gradually absorb all the moisture from the large amount of
starter you used and hours after your bread has been baked you will
end up with a dry textured bread that has some similarity to stale
bread. It was done properly considering the slow hydration
characteristics of mixed grain breads it will come out still good after
several hours or more.
I think you better moisten the cracked wheat mix and let it hydrate
for some time before adding the rest of the ingredients to it to form
a dough.
If you do not add water to the dough but just rely on the liquid
starter to moisten it you had to add some flour or you have to use a
firmer starer instead to attain the desired dough consistency.
...Then you have an allowance for the moistuer to be added to the
cracked grain mix.
Roy