I have just started baking sourdough at home and am completely addicted. I have basically zero baking experience. So I have about a million questions, but the most pressing one is about sticky dough.
I am finding that even when I follow recipes closely, within a minute or two of kneading the dough is too sticky. I find I end up adding about an extra cup of flour or more while kneading. So the question is should I keep adding flour until the dough can be kneaded without becoming sticky? Or should I be adding more flour at the start?
The recipe I am using was 400g of flour and 200ml of water. I reckon I added at least another cup of flour to that while kneading.
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IT WOULD HELP ME IF YOU USED THE SAME UNITS FOR THE WATER AND FLOUR --- THERE IS NO DIRECT CONVERSION FROM ml TO gms --- SO I CANNOT CALCULATE THE HYDRATION --
TONYK
Hello redrich,
You don't tell us how much starter and the starter hydration that you use or the type of flour. With only the flour mass and the water volume that you give, I find it hard to believe that you would have a problem with stickiness - quite the opposite in fact.
Despite that, if you persist with your kneading efforts and don't add the extra flour, you will probably find that as the gluten develops, the stickiness will disappear and the dough will become smooth and elastic. At worst, dip your hands in flour to reduce the sticking to them. The alternative would be to use the stretch and fold technique in which the gluten strength develops over time with relatively minor energy input.
Feel free to give us more detail of your recipe and technique and if you haven't read SourDom's beginners blogs on this site yet then I highly recommend that you do.
Keep on bakin'
Farinam
I don't know the hydration of the starter, it was like a thick oozy batter and I used 100g. The flout was 3:1 Bakers and white spelt.
As to the water, the recipe used mls so that's what I did. I have scales that can do volume so measured using those.
1g water = 1ml water
Mick
www.thepartisanbaker.com
www.bethesdabakers.com
Hi redrich,
Sounds as if you starter could be about 100% from your description. From that and the other numbers you have given the dough hydration is only 56% which is quite low and I would have thought should be quite firm.
I have no experience with spelt flour but would not have thought that would be a problem.
All I can suggest is that you try to persist and work the dough as I suggested and see how it goes. There are some excellent videos out on the net showing various kneading techniques as well as the stretch and fold method. If you go for kneading, I favour the method as demonstrated by Bertinet (as an example).
Any method of developing the dough will produce equivalent results, it is just a matter of what suits you best.
In any case, I would suggest that you make a number of loaves using a simple recipe - I favour SourDom's Pane Francesa - to get your method right and don't go haring off trying to find 'magic' ingredients or recipes.
Let us know how you go.
Farinam
So I have just chucked my latest attempt in the bin and am about ready to give up. I followed the basic pan francesca recipe as suggested: 180g of starter; 500g of flour; 10g of salt and 320g of water. Mixed it and turned it out onto an oiled board. The result was barely thicker than a batter, it just oozed everywhere and was completely unkneadable. I waited 10 mins but no change.
To try to save it I put it back in the bowl and stopped counting after I had added another 150g of flour but it was still oozy and looked nothing like the picture. I don't understand where I went wrong.
Good morning redrich,
Sorry to hear about your further problems.
In an earlier post you mentioned that your kitchen scales had the facility to measure 'volume' eg mls. If that is the case you would need to enter, or it would need to have preprogrammed, densities for the different substances that you are measuring.. The latter is probably more likely. In that case, if you were in 'volume' mode set for flour and you were measuring water, you would get far more water than required.
So, and I might very well be on a completely wrong track here, make sure that your scales are in 'weight' mode and that you are actually measuring the true weight of what you are adding to your starter when you are feeding it and to your dough when you are making that.
Let us know how you go.
Farinam
Hi redrich,
Give this basic formula a try.
460 grams bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup fully active sourdough starter [I keep my starter at 100%=== fed with 1 cup water and 1 3/4 cups bread flour]
1 cup bottled or filtered water
1 ½ teaspoons sea salt
My starter is homemade using the cold start method by using grapes and grape leaves from my garden. Mix with water and flour and into the refrigerator for several days, I went 4-5 days before sitting out at room temp. I've read that the cold environment surpresses the bad yeast and gives the good yeasties a headstart.
I let the breadmachine make the dough for me, so I haven't tried it by hand or mixer. After the dough cycle finishes, I leave the dough in the pan for 20 minutes to relax. Then I stretch and fold and shape, then proof and bake in oven with lidded pan. If I proof in warm oven [preheated to 170F and turned off] and according to extra ingredients added, I'm ready to bake in 1 to 2 hours. If I want more sourness I proof in refrigerator oven night in a lidded Brottopf/Romertoff, then put into a cold oven, to bake at 450F for 25 minutes, remove lid then bake at 350F until internal temp of about 200F and loaf is browned.
If I want a boule loaf instead of a batard type when the dough is proofed, after stretching, folding, and shaping, into a casserole dish that is lined with parchment paper and sprayed with oil and covered with plastic wrap. When dough is close to doubling, I bake. If I want a crunchy crust caused by steam I use a stainless steel bowl that fits the casserole dish to keep the moisture in.
Apparently spelt is difficult to work with.
Have a look at some spelt only recipes :)
I think the problem was the spelt flour. I have also since read that it takes less water. I do want to master spelt though given how much better for you it is.
I have tried one spelt only recipe yesterday that had a large range for the amount of water to use. It is quite edible but is very dense. I think the dough was too dry - erring on the side of caution. Interestingly the recipe suggests blanching half the flour with hot water and the consistency is a little porridgy to me.
When this one is finished, I'll try another spelt only recipe from this site and see how that goes.