Glad they came out better. Do you think the cake flour made a difference? From the lack of holes in the crumb, I'd say you should have more water. IF you want that sort of thing. It looks a little dense to me, still. Did you slash it differently? If you changed it on my advice, I meant the other way. End to end rather than side to side. I'd also go for darker. Like DARK. There's an article I have called Why We Burn Our Bread from the March issue of The Breadline. 9th Issue. I'm still thinking about the corn syrup. I wouldn't do it. I'm thinking about the salt too, but will get back to that later.