bread question?

Don't worry about asking questions. It's how we all learned :) Here is my opinion on your questions.

I used dry instant yeast. So the proofing period was rather fast, something like 30 minutes!

The longer you dough rises, the more flavor it will develop. If your dough is doubling in 30 minutes you may not be getting the best flavor you can. Try cutting back a bit on the yeast. If the recipe you are using calls for active dry yeast and you're using instant, try using 25% less.

The dough was very sticky before the flouring and shaping process. So hard to knead and work with it since it's so soft and sticky

French bread dough is very well hydrated and can be a challenge to work with. It is the high % of water in the dough that gives the bread its light airy interior. Practice, practice, practice :) The more you work with 'wet' doughs the easier it will become.

And today, when i slashed the risen dough, i noticed the thing deflated a bit like a balloon.

A bit of deflating is OK and will be made up for with oven spring. If they deflated more than a bit you may have overproofed them. As I mentioned before, the amount of water in the dough plays a bigger role in how light your bread is than allowing loaves to proof longer. Over proofed loaves will very rarely be light and airy :)

Is it possible to make a starter to leave overnight with dry instant yeast?


In a word, yes. Given what I said earlier about longer fermentation yeilding bigger flavor, there is a world of breads made with what are called preferments. Try taking about 35% of your recipes flour and mixing it woth 1/8 tsp of yeast and enough water to make a really goopy dough. Let that sit for about 8 hours (until it has at least doubled in bulk and is just about to collapse) and then adding it to the reamining 65% of the flour, the rest of the water and the salt.

Hope this helps!

Kyle