It's probably because you aren't using "bread" flour. The " Bread " flour
has a higher gluten content.

You say you've been baking sourdough in your bread machine... would you like
to share your technique?

I've been using my bread machine to mix and knead the dough but have not
had great success in using it to bake the bread.

Rina

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...
> I have been baking sourdough bread in a bread machine for a year,
> about 2x per week. I used Sams' Club enriched flour ($4.50 per 25 lbs
> sack)and it worked great. Also, about a year ago, I bought a 50 lb
> sack of unbleached, not enriched flour from a baker. The flour spent a
> year in my clean and relatively dry basement.
>
> The bad news is that when I switched to this flour, the bread stopped
> rising properly.