Final rise not good enough
Am using a wholewheat starter and feed it the day before my first build, then let it sit for 3 hours. Then back in the fridge.
Next day it's 11 ounce starter plus 4 pounds of whole wheat and almost 2 quarts of water. Basically this is the Hamelman approach with a different flour mix. This concoction will double in volume within 10 hours. Then I mix 4.9 liters of water plus 8.5 kilos of unbleached, unbromated flour, 12% protein. I add salt, 190 grams plus less than an ounce of yeast for back up.
The mix rests for 24 hours at 41 fahrenheit, resulting in a good rise, though not doubling in volume. Then stretch and fold, portion and final shape one hour later. Usually two hours later my Bake is at 500 F for 10 minutes, including 10 sec steam, done in a convection oven, plus 420 for another 35 minutes for 650 gram loaves.
I never get a good rise out of this and i wonder why. Anybody could help me with this, please nicely ? i tried different approaches for a year now and none works.
Thanks,
Stefan
with the back and forth between metric and English units. There's no doubt that I would punch the wrong button on my scales at some point.
My first thought is that the starter is not sufficiently active. Why refrigerate it again so soon after feeding? That will just about guarantee that it is not ripe when it goes into the dough.
The first dough (sponge?) amounts to nearly a 6:1 flour to starter feed at slightly less than 100% hydration. That ferments (at room temperature?) until it doubles for about 10-ish hours. Is your container marked so that you can measure the doubling or are you eyeballing the amount of expansion?
Assuming that the starter is at 100% hydration, we now have 5.5 ounces + 64 ounces = 69.5 ounces (1970g) of prefermented flour out of a grand total of 1970 + 8500 = 10470g of flour. That's just shy of 19% prefermented flour, so nothing odd there. Hydration of the final dough comes in at about 65%, give or take a couple of points depending on your "almosts" and my assumptions. Is the yeast dry or fresh?
After a 24-hour cold retard (is the "not doubling in volume" a measurement or an estimate?), one hour of room temperature before shaping, which means a mass that size probably won't have warmed much. Then two hours of bench time after shaping. That might be the problem right there. Even if the dough is still cold at shaping, the individual loaves will warm up more quickly than the big mass would have. They may be overproofing before they go into the oven. What do you do to assess readiness?
My initial thought was that the bread didn't get enough lift from the starter, which might be true. Having worked through the full process, my impression is that the loaves may overproof before they are baked.
Sorry not to have a clear-cut answer but hopefully some of this will be of use to you.
Paul
lift from the starter is there. One thing i would try is to divide right out of the fridge and quick pre-shape with the S&F for each loaf - then rest an hour. Then do the final shape and let it proof 50% -60% (not 90- 100% ) about an hour before putting it in the oven. This should give you better spring and bloom. . I'm guessing the 2 hours after shaping is the problem so less is probably more. It certainly is an easy thing to check this way.
Some pictures would help though
It really sounds overproofed to me. Or it could just be the order of how things are done. Perhaps the gluten in the dough might not be able to take all the handling after such a long time in cold storage.
I suggest you go through the bulk ferment with stretch and folds over the course of 2-3 hours, pre-shape, rest 15 minutes, then shape before retarding. After that you can either let it sit out an hour or two before refrigerating or go straight to the refrigerator since you are looking to push it 24 hours. You can bake directly from the refrigerator if you do the former, but I am not sure about the latter. It might be worth trying one loaf straight from the refrigerator and the other can sit out for 1-2 ours (or even just the time it takes to bake the first one).
Another thought would be to use a little bit of commercial yeast in the bread to give some insurance for the rise. Plenty of formulas use this hybrid method. Just a thought.
Thanks y'all ! i used half the starter and kept everything else the same. See picture on top of the page. Am convinced it is over proved again, since it hasn't not risen properly in the center, even with the latest approach.
or any pictures.