Bread: Not so good

After spending a few days activating and feeding my starter, I made my first loaf. It came out of the oven looking VERY strange. I suppose the bottom and sides looked the way they should but the top still just looked like dough, though it was hard as a rock.

In a fit of rage, I threw the loaf away before cutting into it to see if it was also dense and hard on the inside. If that were the case, I could assume my yeast didn't rise properly. Aside from that, I'm at a loss trying to think of things that may have gone wrong.

The dough never really got as big in the pan as I felt it should have. It did get very cold in the apartment overnight, maybe that injured my yeast? Maybe somehow the recipe got messed up when I halved it? I don't see how that's possible but I suppose...

So I'm looking at different recipes and things like that, trying to figure out what I could change up. One thing that's extremely frustrating is that all of these recipes call for sourdough starter as well as commercial packaged yeast. If I wanted to use commercial yeast, why would I be putting so much time and effort into sourdough? Gah!