Promising dough turned to soup. Help!
Hi all! This is my first post but I've been lurking for a couple weeks now and you guys have saved my bacon more than once. I'll keep this quick. I've been playing with a sourdough recipe from The Perfect Loaf that's based on a Tartine formula. It's 78% hydration, mostly AP with about 12% rye. 1 hour autolyse, 4 hour bulk ferment with 4 sets of stretch and folds spaced 30 minutes apart. Then shape and proof in the fridge overnight. My first attempt at this recipe went pretty well (other than the part where I dropped the dough on its SIDE putting it into the dutch oven):
I think I took it out of the oven a bit too soon, but I was super proud of myself and it tasted great.
I just finished fermenting another batch and tried to shape it (after watching about 10 videos specifically about shaping high hydration sourdough), but this dough is SOUP. Any structure it seemed to have after stretch and folds is gonzo. No amount of flour kept it from sticking to my hands and the counter. Then I tried wet hands but that didn't work either. So no it's in time out in its bowl while I cry to you friendly people for help. What did I do wrong? Can I fix it?
I would add some flour (and maybe some water), add some salt to keep it at balance, mix it, ferment it for a short time. Now the fermentation will be very quick as you have all that yeast and LAB already developed, so keep an eye on the dough. Then proceed as normal.
The dough needs more fresh gluten as it is soupy due to gluten network breakdown (guessing). Maybe protease activity was too high and as result the gluten was destroyed.
Reasons: could be the overfermenting, could be different flour which dos not support so high hydration, etc.
As said, add flour and salt, that will resolve the problem.
Happy baking, Joze
Thanks Joze!
I autolysed longer than specified in the recipe. Could that have caused this problem? Does a longer autolyse mean a shorter ferment time?
Sounds over fermented to me. Youve made 1kg of starter. The only way to save this now is as Joze says.
Now when you disclosed some facts I am quite sure that prolongated autolyze caused protease to kick in more that you would like and caused gluten break down. So go and add more flour and watch the dough, you have now 1 kg of starter. Hope that you will be able to recover from this. Let us know the result.
People put the dough in the fridge during the night when they do an overnight autolyze. The reason why is now known to you :-(
I usually autolyse overnight, but i leave it in the fridge overnight and only take it out, about two hours before mixing, just to let it come to room temp.
I've left dough out to autolyse for long periods of time, it didn't quite turn to soup, but i could feel that something was wrong with it. The resulting loaf wasn't the best either.
I hope this loaf turns out well for you.
I too would point to the autolyse as the culprit in this situation; a long autolyse at a slightly elevated temperature could throw off the enzyme activity and inhibit the formation of a good gluten network. Otherwise, I might point to the flour as perhaps being enzyme-deficient, but if you've been using (roughly) the same flour all along, that's probably not the case. I had a very similar tragedy befall me this past weekend, but I am convinced that it was not simply the duration of the autolyse but the temperature. Enzymes are temperature sensitive and will go to work differently depending on the climate. Unfortunately my autolyse was sitting in the window where the sun passed over, and it was a little too warm for the enzymes to work correctly. So be careful of duration AND temperature when autolysing !
Is for flours like durum wheat which degrades quicker than normal wheat.
While you haven't used a flour which degrades quickly you can see how autolyse should be measured and can't go on indefinitely.
When it comes to bread flour 30-40 minutes is quite enough even though you will have more time before it degrades. Whole wheat will benefit with a longer autolyse. Durum wheat will degrade quite quickly. Generally I don't autolyse durum wheat but if I do it'll be about 30 minutes.
Thanks everyone for the advice! I did my best to salvage it but it's not a winner. I can't seem to upload an image today, but I will try again after I've cut into it. It's pretty flat and sad looking.
So far I've been doing my best to estimate temperature which I'm sure is a big part of my problem here. I have an ambient thermometer on the truck for delivery today which should make a big difference! I'd love any comments or suggestions you all might have on the previous bake I posted pictures of yesterday. I'm so fascinated by this group's ability to "read" a loaf of bread.
Your previous bake just looks great and it looks like that you know how to make good bread. The crumb and crust are fabulous.Just keep going.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) everyone of us had some not so good or even very bad results. Making mistakes is normal as we are learning all the time. What is important is that we learn something from those mistakes. Then mistakes turn into success.
I had almost similar problem today because I had done a very long autolyse in the fridge. During pre-shape I noticed that the dough is tearing. Fortunately the end result is still good, but could be better. Mistakes are and will always be part of our learning.
Happy baking, Joze
Can you post a link and I'll look at it asap tomorrow (it's late here).
As Joze says... I've been there and done that with every mistake :)
83% hydration dough is no joke. I just prefer to convince myself that lower hydration is better. I can find pros and cons with both.
Oh what a numpty I am. I blame this on the glass of wine I just had. It's above!!
I was actually meaning to compliment you on that bake and got sidetracked with the question. Damned perfect crumb you have there. Excellent crust. I'd buy this bread any day.
I understood that the above two pictures are from his previous bake.
Happy baking Lechem!