First Sourdough and big flop

luckyissy
Just finish baking my first sourdough bread Pane Francese.  Got some nice flavour but flat and chewy more like doughy.  I did follow the recipe to the letter and well check for yourself.  Please can someone help me figure out what happen.  The starter was done following Sourdom recipe (unbleached ap flour and Rye flour) and I used Bread flour for the dough.

Isabelle


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Danubian's picture
Danubian 2008 November 29
[quote=luckyissy]Just finish baking my first sourdough bread Pane Francese.  Got some nice flavour but flat and chewy more like doughy.  I did follow the recipe to the letter and well check for yourself.  Please can someone help me figure out what happen.  The starter was done following Sourdom recipe (unbleached ap flour and Rye flour) and I used Bread flour for the dough.

Isabelle


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Hi Isabelle, I could ask you a whole bunch of questions and figure it out from your pictures but it'll save time if first give a breif outline of what you did exactly.
Do you still have the starter, yes? good. Keep that going and refresh at least every second/third day until we get to the bottom of the mystery then you can make another batch.
luckyissy 2008 November 29
I follow the instruction for pane francese from sourdom but I think I used too much water.

the recipe:

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Starter - you need 180g of starter at 80% hydration. This is what I did to obtain this:
15g starter
30g water
30g bread flour
(stir to paste, leave at room temperature for 12 hours)

Then add 50g water, 100g flour
Mix to a paste, leave for ten minutes.
Pour a teaspoon of olive oil onto a clean board or surface.
Knead the soft dough for ~10 seconds. Return to bowl, cover and leave for 12-24 hours. (This will yield a little more starter than is actually required for the recipe)

Dough:
180g starter (36%)
350g water (70%)
65g wholemeal flour (13%)
435g white bread flour (87%)
10g (2tsp) salt (2%)

On the second addition of water and flour I think I added the same amount of water and flour so 100 g of water and flour instead of 50g of water.  The dough was very wet add to use a bench scraper to fold the dough. 
Danubian's picture
Danubian 2008 November 30
Issy,

If you did in fact double the water in the second stage - 100g instead of 50g - then this still wouldn't account for the result. Yes, it would mean the hydration of the formula was 76.45% which is higher than you aimed, and it would make it a little difficult to handle for a novice. However,I'd recommend a little more mixing during the bread dough stage and perhaps check that your dough temps are not too cold. If your room temp is below 20'C or the sourdough & dough is subject to chilling from opening doors to cold from outside it would show a lack of maltose production & gas production, (which your bread does). Gas retention (which your bread does show a lack of) is affected by final dough mixing and microflora activity.

Finally, how old is your starter? By that I mean how many times have you diluted it with flour and water and allowed it to fermnent?
luckyissy 2008 November 30
Thank you Danubian for your input.  

Yes I am a novice in sourdough bread making but not in yeast baking bread.  Reading your last post the room temp was below 20'C.  

My starter is 3 weeks old and it's been feeding almost every 24 hours to 36 hours (house being colder at night and it takes longer to get so activities). 

Have a question about hydration.  where can I get more info on that I don't really understand that part or how you calculate it? 

Issy
TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2008 December 5
Check out the hydration calculators here, and, a thread on how to calculate here (the link at the top is broken...have sounded Maedi....but it doesn't matter as explanation follows).

Cheers
TP
davo 2008 December 5

don't we also need to know what happened with the dough - ferment/prove conditions and times?
luckyissy 2008 December 6
Well I decided to give it a try again and this time no problem (used the microwave as a proofer).

The problem was that I followed the recipe to the letter instead of waiting for things to happen and that my house is on the colder side (under 18C).

The bread I made was from Makanai website (http://www.makanaibio.com) 1.2.3 bread

measure starter lets say 200g
multiply by 2 the amount of water so 400g  (using the weight of the starter)
and multiply by 3 the amount for the flour so 600g.
Mixed all ingredient and folded dough for couple minutes and let it rest for 30 min.
folded dough for 10 minutes and rested for 2 hours (in microwave) with folding dough twice.
folded and let to raise for 4 hours.


It was cooked in a dutch oven for 1 hour with the lid on in a 450F oven


LeadDog's picture
LeadDog 2008 December 6
[quote=TeckPoh]Check out the hydration calculators here, and, a thread on how to calculate here 
[/quote]
Just as a test I put my spreadsheet that I use for calculating my dough online.  The spreadsheet is fully functional and anyone can use it.  The address for the sheet is here http://www.editgrid.com/user/leaddog/Sourdough_2_buildsThe first time I tried it I got an error saying it couldn't be found so hopefully it works now.  I have some ideas on how to improve the sheet but I'll see how this one works first.

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