Sourdough fail...what happened?
Years into making sourdoughs, I've finally hit on a dough formula and method that doesn't work at all, but I'm mystified why it doesn't work.
Here's what I did (my notes during the "experiment"):
0730 15SEP14 - separated out 200g of active 60% hydration levain, added 200g water, 300g bread flour, 40g whole rye flour. (basically made a big batch of 60% hyd. starter). Final mix of levain was at 80 degrees...too warm, but noting I can do about that. Let it go for 24 hours.
0730 15SEP14 - added 425g water, 430g AP flour, 100g whole wheat, 40g rye. autolyse 20 minutes.
add 20g salt. couple of folds. really wet and really sticky, though should be just 70-75% hydration, which I work with all the time.
1230 15SEP14 - the dough is wet, slack, and sticky with no strength, it’s like the gluten didn’t develop. so weird. i tried to shape the loaves but it was hopeless. added 100g of BF and gave it a couple folds. Let it proof another four hours while i was back at work.
1700 15 SEP14 - Here I am home again trying to shape these loaves, and the dough has no strength at all. It's super sticky and has zero elasticity. More like a really thick pancake batter. I've made literally hundreds of loaves of bread with the same overall ingredients and never experienced this. Shaped loaves just slowly flow out onto the counter, and the normal smooth skin on the surface of the loaf just erupts in a pock-marked sea of craters.
Obviously, I won't be doing this again. Ha!
But what caused it? I can only assume it has something to do with the fact that the dough is basically a big bowl of starter, but why should that prevent gluten from forming?
Is there any salvaging this mess? I thought about throwing in yet more flour and making bagels or something, but I don't want to waste yet more ingredients.
Chris
Did I read correctly that you fermented the levain 24 hours, with a starting temperature of 80F? No cold fermenation? Ambient room temperature was approximately __F?
My first guess is that the long (24 hour) fermentation at warm (80F to start with, anyway) temperatures allowed the development of a lot of acids and acid-producing bacteria in the levain, which led to gluten destruction. Hence, the lack of structure in the dough.
Compound that with using a fairly, though not impossibly, high percentage of pre-fermented flour, and there isn't much hope for the final dough to hold together.
Options for future bakes:
1. Lower the temperature of the levain by using cool/cold water if aiming for a 24-hour fermentation
2. Some or all of the levain fermentation in a refrigerator, if aiming for a 24-hour fermentation
3. Take the levain just as it begins to collapse, if aiming for a room-temperature fermentation. This will probably be much shorter than 24 hours; perhaps as few as 4 hours if using warm levain and warm ambient temperatures.
4. Use a lower percentage of prefermented flour; perhaps something in the 10-20% range.
One, or perhaps a combination of some of those options may produce results more to your liking. Best to try one at a time to see the individual outcomes before trying combinations.
Best of luck.
Paul
I've never read that the acids that are produced by the bacteria in a levain destroy gluten. Is there some scientific basis for this? There must be some science behind it...I just don't know it.
Forgive me, but I've read enough conflicting information in the baking literature to know that a lot of the truisms of baking are based on wives' tales and conjecture.
I like the explanation above, and all of the advice is sound. I'd just like to know the science.
I know this was a silly thing to try to do, but I was just wondering what the limits were. I normally use a very small amount of starter.
There is a great deal to be learned about sourdough starter in the TFL archives, in particular from Debra Winks contributions. For the matter of proteolytic breakdown I suggest you start with this thread, keep reading!!:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14913/very-liquid-sourdough
Lots to be learned about sourdough from this one too:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10375/lactic-acid-fermentation-sourdough
and of course from her sourdough starter 101s too:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10856/pineapple-juice-solution-part-1
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10901/pineapple-juice-solution-part-2
Cheers, Robyn
While a proper dose of acidity will strengthen gluten bonds, too much acidity will break them down. As a sourdough culture ripens it gets more and more acidic. The build you are doing as Paul mentioned is in a range to peak in as little as a few hours if the culture is warm. So with the significant additional time that the levain was out of food it developed a lot of acid due to over fermenting.
Furthermore your % of levain is quite high at 45% pre-fermented flour and 71.5% levain. With this level of inoculation a warm 5 hour bulk ferment would be much too long. Even with a proper starter this could cause gluten degradation as well. The overall hydration of the dough is 67.5%.
Paul's given quite a few options for better results above. I suggest looking into the science behind sourdough bread before creating your own formula so you don't run into these problems. There is tons of info right here and some great books on the market as well.
Cheers
Josh