I make bread for my family two or three times a week. It's good bread, but I'd like it to be higher and lighter. I've tried varying temperature and proportions, with some success, but I feel sure (especially after looking at some pictures on this site) that I can do better. If I describe the method I use, could someone comment on what I might try changing?
1) I keep 325g of "wet" (i.e. 50/50) whole-wheat fed starter in the fridge. (I measure everything by weight.) To make bread I take it out of the fridge, mix in an equal weight of warm water and whole wheat flour, put half back in the fridge, and leave the other half to double at room temp (66 deg.) which takes about four hours.
(It is Canadian grocery-store no-name whole wheat flour.)
2) When doubled, I mix it up to about 750g of "stiff" (i.e. 2:1 flour:water) dough by adding more warm water and unbleached white flour, knead a little, and leave it to double again at about the same temperature, which might take 8 hours.
(It is unbleached white flour labeled "Weston's" – nothing special.)
3) When doubled, I mix the dough to a proportion of 62% water to 100% flour (by weight): I add the water to the doubled "stiff" dough, mix it up with my hands until its a slop, then add white flour by weight. I leave it for an hour or so, then knead in 1% by weight of salt (i.e. just under 25g), and leave it to rise for a few hours, folding the dough every hour : this at about 80 deg. by warming the oven for a few seconds.
4) When it's starting to rise – usually takes two or three hours – I'll form a couple of long oval loaves, cover them, and let them rise overnight or eight or nine hours during the day. (They seem to rise very slowly at this point. I don't put them in a pan, just on silicone baking mats.)
5) I slash and bake at 450 / 20 min + 400 / 25 min. The result is crusty, chewy, wheaty – nice! – and the family likes it and eats it with relish...
But I want it to be higher and fluffier and I feel sure it must be possible, but I don't know what to vary next. Wetter? Drier? Organic flour? Harder flour and longer rise (16 hours??) Perhaps the only way is paddling the loaves onto a hot stone (which I don't have...)?
Any ideas gratefully received..
Replies
Perhaps try a wetter final mix, as 62% hydration, if that is the final total percentage of water, is fairly stiff I would think. I use 69% to 75% total water to flour in bread with a predominantly white flour proportion. Whilst my bread is never fluffy it has a loose open texture. Go to the Recipes section and follow the methods detailed by say, Lead Dog and Shaio Ping as they seem to use a multi-stage build like you (I think, from memory?) You can learn a lot by going through the motions of a different recipe.
Most recipes use 2% salt so that will be a matter of taste but salt does have a slight slowing effect on fermentation, and you might need to add a little more salt with more water added.
Also a great oven spring and crust can be achieved by baking your loaf in an iron, enamelled or clay pot preheated with your oven, lid on for the first 15mins or so, lid off to finish. See Sourdom's description in the Videos section. It really works. *Edit - it's not there. But check out 'Baking in a Cast Iron Pot - no Preheat' in the Forum section and do a search for 'baking in a pot' for further threads on preheating the pot and links to videos.
Depending on the temperature of your dough and of the room the fermentation times seem OK, but I always fold and turn once or twice earlier in the fermentation rather than throughout so as not to disturb the dough structure too much before dividing and shaping.
To get more oven spring there are a couple of things that you can do. Hydration can be increased and that will open the bread up. I will assume that lily is right and that the hydration of your dough is 62% I would increase the hydration to 66% or 67% at least. This will be a good starting point. I have breads that I make with hydration all the way up to 100% but you will need to learn how to work with a wet dough. A baking stone that is preheated in the oven really help with oven spring. The heat from the stone is transferred to the dough when it is placed on the stone this so much better than cooking the bread on mats. The heat causes the CO2 trapped in the bread to expand rapidly. The other thing that I can think of right now is someway of steaming the bread during the first part of the bake. Keeping the dough moist while it cooks allows it to keep expanding as it cooks. There are a number of very good ways to do this like using a Dutch Oven or just cover the dough with a pan during the first part of the bake. I cover all of my doughs for all of the bake except for the last 10 to 15 minutes. They are baked uncovered at the end of the bake so they will get a nice brown look to them. That should give you some things for you to try.
Well, Lead Dog – I'm tried your advice and Lily's. Now I've been making bread for years, although just using my mother's method (and cookbook) and commercial (dried) yeast, until about a year and a half ago (that's how old my starter is) when I started making sourdough instead...
And I've never tried to knead anything that sitcky before! Phew. Completely new experience. Couldn't really knead it at all, not what I'm used to calling kneading anyway. Sticks to everything, like ooblick, or glue in a Roadrunner cartoon. This is exactly 68% of water by weight of flour. (Well, I guess I added a bit of flour while pullin' it – so maybe it's down to 67% by now. Lily, I upped the salt very slightly, 26g for 2400g of dough – I think doubling the salt would be too much of a surprise to the domestic eating team.) I quickly learned to pull and fold with my fingertips, and eventually after ten minutes it was somewhat more coherent – but still very sticky. I'm most curious now to see what will happen: I 'm expecting some kind of long thin flatbread, but also expecting to be surprised! It's rising now.
Do you always get dough like this? Perhaps you use a machine to do the kneading for you? Or is kneading sourdough just a completely different thing from kneading "home-made bread" a la my mum?
Kind of freaky isn't it?
If I'm hand kneading I use one of two methods:
Dan Lepard's 10 minute rests, where the dough is mushed together til all flour is coated in moisture, the mass is plopped into an oiled tub/bowl, the 6 corners are brought into the centre firmly and it's rested for 10 minutes.
Repeat this using 10-20 second rapid stretching, pulling and folding to create a uniform shape (dip your hands in a bowl of water frequently if it's too difficult) - as you describe above. Rest 10 minutes.
Repeat, rest 10 minutes.
Repeat, rest 10 minutes. It should be more attractive and manageable by now.
Repeat, and if it looks smooth enough to leave, rest 30 minutes and then do your business-letter turns (stretch dough one end and fold 2/3 over into the centre, repeat with the other 'ends' until you've got four sides - there are better descriptions and videos eg Milawa's folding wet dough in the Video section).
If it's still on the rough side rest 10 mins and repeat the quick 'knead' before resting 30 mins and progressing on to the fold and turns.
2nd method is more energetic, where the dough mass is worked on a smooth bench top with the aid of a scraper. Use both hands to pick the dough up in the centre as if you are picking up a puppy or kitten. Stop thinking about puppy and kittens now because next it get violent. Quickly flip the floppy 'tail' closest to your body up, under and in front of your two hands and slam it down on the bench so the two floppy ends are now together and your hands are bringing their mass of dough up and over to join the end furthest away from you. You are stretching and folding very vigorously and rhythmically, capturing air right in the middle of the mass. It takes about 15-20 minutes to reach nirvana (!!) and it's very satisfying! You can grab the mass of dough with your right hand furthest away and the left hand closest to your tummy, ie, at right angles to the previous motion.
Another thing to try is bringing the dough together minus the salt and starter as best you can, resting 20 minutes, then kneading in the salt and starter. Don't worry about the salt touching the starter. This is called an autolyse and bypasses a lot of the required physical dough development as the flour particles soak up a lot of the water/ moisture and you will notice that a remarkable change in the dough has taken place while it has been resting. I use this method with a spiral mixer and aim for minimal dough developement with my doughs.
I hope you can work out these methods by doing them as my explanations will surely be lacking - I learnt through watching and giving it a try myself.
I have a mixer so I guess that helps me a lot. I only mix the dough for a very short time, maybe 2 or 3 minutes. I then place the dough in an oiled bowl. I do stretches and folds in the bowl ever now and then until I get the gluten development that I want. I use a plastic dough scraper to work with the dough. This makes it much easier to work with the dough. If you don't want the dough to stick to your hands wet them with cold water or some oil before you handle the dough.
Hi a.j.m.
I only hand-mix because I don't have an electric mixer, and my experience is that even the stickiest, highest hydration doughs are not too bad to handle once you've gotten used to them. Incidentally, even though some recipes specify electric mixing, I've never come across one that couldn't be hand-mixed.
People develop their own preferences over time. There are lots of techniques that work. Following is the method I use these days, for all sorts of sourdough bread:
1. Mix the dough up initially in your mixing bowl, using a kitchen knife at first, then switching to a dough scraper (this takes no more than 5 minutes or so). Don't mix in the salt at this stage.
2. Autolyse (ie: rest the dough in the bowl, covered) for 30-40 minutes...more if the temperature is cold.
3. Mix in the salt (I 'cut' it into the dough with the edge of a dough scraper), do a couple of quick stretches and folds in the bowl, then transfer the dough to a lightly oiled counter or - and this is my preference - an oiled 10L oblong plastic container, which keeps things cleaner in the kitchen. Stretch and fold as in the demo below: this video.
I find that stretching and folding once per hour during the bulk proof period is sufficient, but you might increase it to every 30 minutes for the first 1.5 hours for some doughs, if they look like they need it.
Tip: wet your hands with water just before stretching and folding. This will ensure the dough doesn't stick to them. Some people oil their hands, but I find water does the job fine.
Try this technique, and I think you'll find you quickly get used to sticky doughs.
Cheers
Ross
Well, that was less than impressive...
After about 2 hours of the dough rising as a single lump, I formed up two sticks from the dough, about 12" long and (at the time) about 4" in diameter, quite dusty with flour on the surface, covered with wax paper, and lying on a silicone baking mat (because that's what I usually do – no baking stone). They then rose overnight at about 68F. This morning they were maybe 3" high and easily 8" wide: didn't exactly "rise", more "widened". They sprung somewhat in the oven (20'@450 + 20'@400). But the resulting bread is much moister than usual, rather cakey even, small holes, and of course no loftier since its cross-section is like 8"x4". Like a big damp piece of biscotti.
Perhaps this wet dough needs longer or warmer rise? It's so slack. Or maybe it has to be baked it in a pan? (I hardly ever use bread pans, I always just free-form the loaves, but maybe I should change this.)
Thanks for all your helps.
Even wet doughs should proof to be like light pillows. I could be on the wrong tangent and LeadDog and Ross are good problem solvers, but it sounds like your gluten has become exhausted. An active ferment like this may need a shorter proof and cooler water temperature, maybe a smaller percentage of starter. Fermentation has two desired by products - gas and acids - which influence the dough structure, stretching the proteins - glutens - to produce strong cell walls encasing those bubbles of CO2. When too much acid is produced it starts to break down this structure and your dough just loses all it's strength.
Your ambient temp looks good, the one factor you can control is your water temp (if you want to look it up refer to Desired Dough Temperature). Can you take a temperature of your water, and then of your finished dough? Don't worry too much if you can't because you'll get to know this by feel.
What proportion of your dough is starter? I don't have much experience with stiff starters, and I realise you build on your starter in several stages.
I hope this gives you something to work with.
Well, back when I was starting with sourdough, that is certainly what was happening: sour, flat brick. I left one so long it had the texture of fudge (I threw it away without baking it - but that was years ago.) However this bread is certainly not too sour - I tasted, and I know.
The second (stiff, 1:2) "starter" contributed 250+500 (grams water+flour), and I added 750+970, for a total of 1000+1470, which is 68% wet, of which about 30% of the total mass was the "starter". The water was warm but cooler than what I used to use to proof yeast. Didn't measure it of course, but prob. about 80F.
It seems to me that my ordinary ap) flour never "holds" when it's wet, instead just slacks out flat (unless you put it in a pan). Perhaps it needs to be kneaded more? Admittedly, being new to kneading sticky-dough, I might have given up too soon. (My arms weren't hurting.)
Well, well, well. I vary something and back to square one.
I decided to try using a "wet" starter, based on the above advice, instead of the "stiff". So I woke-up my fridge-cold mix, with a little warm water and nice whole-wheat flour, which it loves, and sure enough it burst up, tripled, in about 8 hours. Great! I thought, nice and lively. So I took about 200g of it, and added 200g of warm (80F) water and 200g of white flour, to make a "wet" mixture to base my next loaf on.
Hah! 24 hours later and it's risen from 2 cups to 2 1/4 cups, with a few bubbles on the top. Is all. As though the culture didn't -like- white flour. Is that possible? I always used whole wheat before and add white only in the final mixture.
Perhaps I need to get from somewhere a second culture that wants to eat white flour.
Sometimes cultures do need extra time to become accustomed to different food. White flour will have less food for the culture to feed on as well (bran removed). You can convert your base starter into any kind you like over time...I converted a rye starter into a brown rice one. I always refresh/build my starter three times before the final mix as insurance, so you might have to refresh (feed) yours another time before mixing?
Keep going, keep trying..
Now I have a white-flour culture that works. Now I have a much better sense of how to handle wet dough. Now I know how much I have to keep an eye on the dough, and much more about the "race" between yeast and sour : with this starter, proofing warm encourages the sour way too fast! Now I really know what an over-proofed loaf looks like
.
Thanks for all you help.
So I used the above "working" white-flour culture and the many helpful suggestions (and video) above. I am happy working with wetter dough. I am happy keeping a more careful eye on the initial fermentation (which seems to go from pushing up to collapsed very quickly). I am happy building a couple of times before using it for making dough. No-one is complaining about the more salt. I have improvised a "basket" for them to rise in (always just left them on a flat silicone baking mat before) which seems to help when the dough is slack. What a lot of changes in my familiar method!
So I just made bread with it using: 600g of wet "white" starter, which had doubled nicely, 400ml water, 600g unbleached flour, 100g whole-wheat flour, 25g salt. That's 35% by weight of starter, 70% hydration. I mixed all but the salt and 100g of the flour and let it sit for an hour, then worked (can't call it "kneaded") the wet (78%) mix for ten minutes, then kneaded in the rest (100g) of the flour, and the salt, for another ten minutes or so, then left it for a couple of hours with a couple of folds, then I formed two balls of about 850g each and left them to rise over night in my cold (63F) kitchen. They rose for ten hours, until the following morning. I baked them for 15' at 450F and 15' at 400, on a preheated ceramic surface.
Result has a nice flavour, but they're somewhat too close-textured, at little dense, "claggy" or cakey, and I would like them to be more lofty and soft. And that was where this thread came in. Also they are rather pale: does their moisture keep them from browning nicely?