Hello Dear Sourdough community members,
I am a newcomer to the world of sourdough, and I have followed the directions on this web site for cultivating my own sourdough starter. Now, I have a happy and healthy starter living in the fridge. I have a question that I am hoping you can help me out with.
I found a no-knead sourdough recipe on the internet, and I baked bread twice following that recipe. The recipe calls for 1 cup sourdough, 1 cup water, 2 teaspoons salt, 3 cups flour. Mix, let rise about 8-12 hours, then bake at about 475F -- first covered for 20 mins, then uncovered for the rest of time. The resulting bread was nice, but I found that by the time the inside was done, the crust too strong and difficult to bite through. The bread did have very nice flavor though.
The other day, I made no-knead sourdough again, but made a mistake with the proportions. I used 1 cup sourdough, 2 cups water, 1 teaspoon salt, and about 3 1/2 cups flour. I realized the mistake but didn't have any more additional flour at home, so I let the mixture rise overnight, and baked it the next morning, about 40 minutes covered, and the rest of time uncovered. I think I used about 430F as the temperature. The resulting bread had a wonderful crunchy and easy to bite through crust, but the inside was still a bit moist. I sliced it after cooling, toasted it in the oven, and the slices were truly delicious and got lots of compliments.
But, I am a bit confused now. I understand that I made a mistake with the recipe, but since I liked the outcome much better than the original recipe, I would like to continue using my "mistake". Should I try baking it for a longer time while covered? And also decrease the temperature?
I apologize if this is a basic question. Many thanks to anyone that responds!
Replies
One thing that would really help for comparing recipes is to work with bakers percentages. You may already know something about this, and there is plenty in the forums dealing with it, but basically, everything is measured as a percentage of the weight of flour. So to make it easy if you have 100g of flour in the recipe, and 60g (mL) of water, you have 60% water (or 60% hydration). salt is normally about 2% of the weight of the flour.
Also, it is a lot easier to work with weights, and a decent set of digital scales is a good investment. It is especially useful for measuring out your starter. One cup of starter can mean very different things depending on how many bubbles are in your cup! And when people say i cup of starter, what sort of starter do they mean? how wet is it? Often home bakers use 1 cup water, 1 cup flour to feed starter (which is about 166% hydration). You will find many bakers prefer to use 100g of water to 100g of flour (or 100% hydration).
Anyway, all that aside I'll try and convert your recipes to bakers percentages so they can me compared.
I'm going to guess you have a 166% hydration starter, and I'm going to guess that a cup of it weighs about 200g, which means in 1 cup there is ~125g of water and ~75g of flour.
you also have 3 cups of flour. I'll assume 160g each, to make 480g, and a cup of water is 250g.
Overall we have 555g flour and 375g of water. That comes to 68% hydration.
For your "mistake", it adds up to 625g of water and 635g of water, which is 98% hydration. At this point I think either one of my assumptions or your measurements are wrong (probably my assumptions), because I have never seen a wheat dough above about 80% hydration. It is possible, but it would be VERY wet. Although maybe this is what you did, it would make for an unavoidably moist crumb when baked.
I would suggest moving to baker's percentages and having a play around to see what hydration level you like. Maybe find a formula for ciabatta (which is a very wet dough), and trying it out. Incidentally, 68% is a little on the low side for a no-knead bread, and 80% would be quite normal for that.
The other thing that can be really helpful for baking wet breads is a probe type digital thermometer. I picked mine up for $25 and it really helps you to know when the loaf is underbaked or just moist. You want about 190-200 F for these kinds of breads.
If your mistake was about 98% hydratioon, then probably no matter how you bake it will work out very moist. Try bringing it down to 80%. I'm not an expert at crust, but I think you are right that a longer bake with a lower temperature will give a softer crust.
Hope that's all helpful and not too technical, please yell out if you need a hand calculating formulas.
Jem
Dear Jem,
Thank you so much for this informative answer! There is definitely a lot of information here, so I will print this out and try to slowly digest all the information in your reply. I did hear about baker's percentages, but am not using them, and am realizing that it's important to start using them. I will spend some time trying to learn them this week! Thank you again! Next time I try to bake, I will post a picture!