Help for a newbie HELP :):)
I'm new to the hobby and was drawn by the lure of a good, homemade sourdough. I brew beer at home, so fermentations don't intimidate me. I have a nice, healthy sourdough starter, so I'm good there. I purchased Forkish's FWSY and tried my hand at the Overnight Country Blonde. It didn't go well.
This is dough was so sticky that I simply couldn't perform the handling techniques prescribed in the book. For example, after folding, Forkish's says to turn the dough over So the seams are at the bottom. But it's so sticky that I can possibly get the dough out of the bowl to turn. It aslso sticks to my hands so bad that simply removing my hand makes the dough tear. Come loaf shaping time, I couldn't do the streching technique that requires the baker to "pull" the round dough toward himself. And even if I could, the dough is hopelessly bound to the counter. Bottom line, the dough so strongly binds to everything that I can't "work" it. Am I possibly doing something wrong? So very frustrated by my first two attempts. Any advice much, much welcomed!!
I mean not only the people-addicted-to-baking-good-bread club, but the I-can't-deal-with-FWSY-high-hydration-dough club! That is not an easy place to start. Check out my latest blog post for my solution> http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/48681/reduced-hydration-fwsy-harvest-bread-success.
I suggest you start with something a little less wet. Try a 1-2-3 bread (100 grams of starter, 200 grams of water and 300 grams of flour, with 6 grams of salt). Check out this excellent post for a description. Get used to this level of hydration before tackling FWSY recipes again.
Thank you for the welcome and the tips! One thing I'm not clear about with the 1-2-3 bread. Should I target a certain hydration for the starter? My guess is that the goal is a 66% hydration for the actual dough, so if I use a 100% hydration starter, it would throw that off, no?
Excellent question! If you read Flo's post, you'll note that she uses 100% hydration starter (or a 'liquid' starter). That means the finished dough will have 400 grams of flour and 300 grams of water, making it 75% hydration, which is still quite high. To learn how to handle this dough you can either change the formula for the dough or use a lower hydration starter.
Try this - take 15 grams of your starter, add 35 grams of water and 50 grams of flour and let it sit until bubbly and active (and passing the float test). Then use this as your 100 grams of starter for the 1 2 3 formula.
Once you feel comfortable using this level of hydration then try a 100% hydration starter in the 1 2 3 formula, and see how it changes both the dough handling and the finished bread.
And don't forget the salt. Many people get so caught up with the 1 2 3 bit they forget the fourth ingredient! :)
Astute readers will have noticed that maths are not my strong suit (even a little bit). Of course, using the 123 formula with 100% hydration starter will result in 350 grams of flour and 250 grams of water, meaning a finished dough hydration of 71.5%. This is a great place to start.
My bad...
...the fact that you aren't alone! So many people have struggled with a particular bread recipe. This means that everything is going as it should! You might want to start with an "easier" recipe, like Lazy Loafer suggests -"easy" meaning less hydration not meaning, "You can't handle this!" Keep at it. When you get frustrated, take a break, think about the reasons behind the problem and give it another try.
One other thing...before shaping the final loaf, I keep dough proofing in a oiled container. I usually proof the dough slowly in the refrigerator overnight. Working with cold dough is quite easy. When it comes time to shaping, I put the wet dough on a floured counter, stretch and fold it several times until I get a tight, ball shape. I place the ball shape on a piece of parchment paper, seam side down (I know Forkish says to put the seam side up but I slash my loaves where he doesn't do that). The parchment makes lifting the dough easy. I put the dough and parchment into the bowl for a final proof and once it has doubled and the oven and Dutch Oven are up to temperature it's easy to remove the dough from the proofing bowl, slash it on the counter and then pick it up and put it into the Dutch Oven. Best of luck to you!
Thank you for advice and words of encouragement!
partly to learn how a basic dough feels and acts instead of starting at a level where even some pretty experienced bakers aren't fully comfortable. What's more, you might be pleasantly surprised at the quality of bread you can bake with plain old AP at as low as 60% hydration.
Yeah, I'm starting to realize that may be necessary. I guess I just didn't realize when I set out to do that recipe that it was particularly challenging. I foolishly thought getting the starter going was the real "challenge" here. Live and learn . . .;)
It's not all that hard to make a decent basic SD loaf. But to go from that level to making good, them very good, then excellent ones involves considerable learning at each step, especially for home bakers whose working environments aren't constantly controlled.
It's not like cooking or even baking cakes where, for instance, whether the room temp is a couple of degrees warmer or cooler is pretty unlikely to require making any adaptations or changes to the timings.