I've just finished my third baking of sourdough loaves. The taste is great, but the loaves are too dense with very hard crusts. On each occasion the first two risings were impressive, but the final one after shaping ("proving"?) was definitely unimpressive (for all three). My conclusion is that I'm seriously underproving them. Thanks to SourDom's Beginners Blog I think I have some ideas of what to try next if that's the case.
Here's a picture of my second attempt in the hope that someone will help me by either confirming or correcting me about this. Of course, I'll welcome _any_ comments.
FlourPower
Here's a picture of my second attempt in the hope that someone will help me by either confirming or correcting me about this. Of course, I'll welcome _any_ comments.
FlourPower
Category:
Replies
More info would help. What flour? What timing? What ambient temperature the breads proved in?
Always happy to play bread sleuth, eh, guys?
TP
My first baking was with white (wheat) bread flour off the shelf of the local supermarket. For the second and third I used unbleached stoneground wholemeal wheat flour.
I've tried to keep the kitchen at 20C, which is what the thermometer on the wall showed, but I placed the dough closer to the heater during the rising and proving stages, so the "real" temperature of the dough would have been a little above that.
I expanded the starter overnight (at about 18-20C); mixed in flour, salt, sugar (about 45 min); let rise (2 hr); folded and let rise (2-3 hr); divided, shaped and let rise (2-3 hr); baked on a stone at around 200C for 45-50 minutes.
I've never noticed much "spring" in the oven, either.
I have to say again that the flavour is wonderful, so I really do want to improve the texture.
FP
What you can try is, after 2 hours (with intermittent stretch and folds) of fermentation, make a cut on the dough. If you see a decent size bubbly network, the bread is ready to be shaped and proved. After a subsequent 1.5 hours of proving, poke at the bread. If it springs back quickly, you should allow the bread to prove some more. The bread is ready to bake when the springback is slower. You want to catch the bread when the yeasty action is still on its way up and when the gases produced by the yeast is still inside the bread. When a bread is overproved, the cells begin to break down and the gas start to evaporate.
Do let us know if a shorter proving time works.
Power to you!
TP
FlourPower
p.s. there seems consistently to be little rising going on after I've shaped the loaves - is that a worry?
Another request - do you mind posting a bigger sized pix? Need a closer look at your crumb. Tks!
Cheers
TP
p/s Sourdough is a great life! *cough* I confess I alternate between smug and guilt about appreciating it, hence, my mission to spread its goodness, whether asked for or not....developing a nice thick [s]crust[/s] skin in the process.
FP
Edit by Maedi - Here it is:
Hi,
I'm 8 months new to this sourdough addiction, but perhaps the age of your starter is a factor in the heaviness of your loaf?.. When I began using my starter (which I brewed) the appearance of each loaf for about two weeks was lovely and exciting (particularly using Dom's pot roast method) but the interior was gluey and heavy - I couldn't cook them long enough. Devastation then determination.. After trying lots of small tweaks they improved rapidly, but I think the greatest overall improvement came from maturation of the starter as well as just persistence.
Another recent lesson, learnt the hard way, is for me to feed the starter the same time every 12 hours. Miss one or be too late and it just can't do the job.
It'd be interesting to have some more advice on the subject of hard crusts in this thread.
Lily.
Thanks for your ideas. My starter came from someone else, who brewed it several months ago. I had it for several weeks before I settled on a schedule that would fit with the rest of my life. My three attempts have been spread out over about a month or six weeks, I guess.
I've been feeding my culture only once or twice a week, keeping it in the refrigerator. I'd been encouraged by lots of books, articles and personal advice that this would be okay. The culture certainly looks and acts very active, right up to the proving stage, but I daren't ignore your success, can I! The flavour is really something else and I've taken that as an indication the culture has matured.
Anyway, I'll stew over your observations as I steel myself for the next attempt.
FlourPower
Cheers,
Tony
I read in Dan Wing and Alan Scott's book The Breadmakers that the starter needs 3 refreshments before you mix the preferment (I take this to mean the expanded sponge before mixing the final dough.) Without wanting to confuse or bore you with more schedules, perhaps you could experiment with giving your (obviously mature) starter some more feedings?...
Good luck FlourPower, this is interesting!
What is puzzling me is that my starter shows great activity except during proving and baking: it easily doubles during the other rising periods. Perhaps I'm somehow mishandling the dough when I divide and shape it?
As to keeping it in the frige, I always let it warm up when I take it out to feed or use and it seems to respond as I've read it should. It has also matured enough that it shows signs of activity even _in_ the frige.
FP
What I've been doing is feeding the starter one night, letting it double, then refrigerating it until the next night when I add water and flour to increase the volume ("expand"?) for the following day's baking. I let it rise overnight at about 20C (68F), when it doubles in volume.
On baking day I mix in extra flour, salt and sugar and let it rise for about 2 hours at about 20C (it easily doubles during this period). Then I fold it and let it rest and double over another 2 or 3 hour period. My next step is to divide and shape it into two loaves. I've been expecting them to double in size again over about 2 hours. They do increase a little in size, but nowhere near twice.
I'd be happy to learn more about how _real_ sourdough bakers talk about this whole process. So far, I'm pretty confused (although I think I have reasonable idea of what's happening) and I know that using terminology you don't really understand makes everything worse!
Willing to learnFP (in Tasmania!)
"What I've been doing is feeding the starter one night, letting it double"
Don't put it in the fridge after it doubles but try and make it double while in the fridge. That way when you feed it again, the previous feeding will not have been completly exhausted. Then carry on with your recipe until this:
"On baking day I mix in extra flour, salt and sugar and let it rise for about 2 hours at about 20C (it easily doubles during this period)"
Then do this:
Skip the second rise and go right into the shaping. Maybe your loaves are sluggish at the final stage because the yeast has run out of food, food the yeast needs for that final push and oven spring. Worth a try.
T
Hmmm - getting to be too many possibilities
FP
T
FP
T
1st dough: as Tony suggested, do everything the same but skip the mid-rise punch down going straight to shaping.
2nd dough: maybe mix dough, fold after 1st, then after 2nd hour, then divide and shape after doubled in size.
It's great to follow Tony's and TP's logical pusuit to The Nub, although there are maybe more than one! It looks like the lack of activity after the mid-rise fold may be a crucial point?..
FP did you see the delightful program on SBS about apprentices, and the final program was about an unnamed bakery in or near Huonville using a wood-fired oven and sourdough formulae? Lovely.
Lily.
FP
Best
TP
I decided in the end that I needed to be a little more careful with my measurements and techniques. I did a little figuring and realised I might have been of in some of my weights (a new scale and attention to detail has corrected this, I think) and I read SourDom's tutorials very carefully, pored over Jack Lang's musings on proving and ponderedsome of Dan Lepard's stuff.
I found Dan's quick-mix approach very liberating and quite effective, much more than I imagined it could be.
Those were the changes I made _intentionally_, but some unintentional ones crept in (should have worked the dough for another cycle before shaping; should have proved it a bit longer; didn't shape the loaves onto baking paper - v. messy!)
The result, however, was still better than before. The baked loaves were larger than last time, the flavour was not as intense, but still good, the texture was much better, as was the crust. Mind you they didn't look like much - still too flat (gluten hadn't matured enough, I guess) and irregular. They were larger enough that I couldn't bake the two of them at the same time on a single 13 in. stone - the first baked a little too long, the second, not quite long enough (for pictures, anyway).
I'm satisfied they are a definite improvement, but I'll do even better next time. Unfortunately that won't be until October, since my wife and I are off to visit family in the US in a few days. Being summer there, I think I'll give baking a miss during our stay. :-)
Thanks again for your encouragement (one and all).
FlourPower
From the keypad of a novice: how soft is the dough? Maybe a bit more hydration. I've recently learned that a bit more water = bigger holes and an airier/lighter overall loaf. Think like this - those bugs producing gas are trying to blow up a balloon. The ballon skin is made up of your dough (gluten sheets). With a bit more water, that dough is a bit softer and the balloon easier to blow up. A baking expert also described it to me as the water "lubricating" the dough, to allow the larger bubbles. Either way, if the dough is a bit dry/hard, imagine how disappointed in their balloons the bugs will be... It'd be like you trying to blow up a coke bottle instead of a party balloon.
I don't know about the exact flour used, but 60% sounds a tad dry to me. It should feel soft and be quite sticky and hard to handle, although when kneaded very resilient/springy. If you work in so much flour that i's not at all sticky, my brief expereince is that it will be a bit too dry...
I'm not really disappointed with the texture of what I made yesterday, although the bugs' balloons were smallish. I like it... the bread holds more butter that way.
FP
Enjoy your holiday! Will you be anywhere near Jeremy (NYC)? I'm sure he'll be happy to show you some tricks.
CHeers
TP
Good one FlourPower - all that research and contemplating is sure to compost in your head over the next couple of months, until the next bake. May you taste some yummy bread OS and gain more inspiration!