The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Greetings and first experiment

Leveret's picture
Leveret

Greetings and first experiment

Hello all,

First I wanted to thank the community here for the fantastic content you've developed.  This is my first post, but I've been reading a massive amount of the contributions and they have helped me immeasurably.

I have a couple of loaves ready to go into the oven in the next 90 minutes.  Before that, a brief history of what I've been doing before today.

I made my starter (Stanley) on December 23, 2016, using a 50/50 mix of Bob's Red Mill ("BRM") Artisan Bread Flour and BRM Whole Wheat Flour (hereafter, his "Food") and an equal part bottled Ozarka water (all water referenced is this water).  I let it sit on the counter, undisturbed, for 48 hours, then began regular feedings of 50g Food and 50g water daily, for 14 days.  Thereafter, I've generally increased the feedings to twice daily beginning on Thursdays.  I bake bread on Saturdays and Sundays.

I've baked around 12 loaves following the Tartine recipe in the New York Times, first to the letter, then adding between 3-5% water as I found the dough a bit stiff.  My results were a little mixed until I began using the fridge for the final, slow proof.  Both my crust and my crumb improved after moving to the cold fermentation.

I baked a couple of loaves like this yesterday, and they came out great.  I have plenty of bread for the week, so I figured today was ripe for experimentation.

The loaves that are proofing in the fridge right now are 50% BRM bread flour, 25% BRM WW flour, 15% BRM spelt, and 10% Hodgson's Mill Whole Grain Rye.  It's at 95.45% hydration, which is based on exactly nothing except my desire to make a very high hydration loaf.  The levain makes up 18% of the mass, and it is only at 1.8% salt because my starter seems very sensitive to salt at this point.  I mixed the flour and all but 50g of the water (@180F) and let it sit for 2 hours before adding the levain, then salt and reserved water, before I started the stretch and fold.

I'll update this when it comes out of the oven; I have no idea what to expect.  I bake in a dutch oven and use parchment to transfer the loaves after scoring--I don't yet have a low-wall dutch oven that I can use yet so the parchment is my best method to prevent damage before baking.  Fair warning, this could be ugly.  I'm just hoping right now that it doesn't stick to the bannetons.  

Thanks again for the community. 

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

I was wondering how you were going to move that very wet dough from your baneton to your DO but you answered the question with the parchment paper. Even with refrigeration and the parchment paper, it could be tricky. 

I realized yesterday that I no longer aim for super high hydration. I add enough water so that the dough is a pleasure to handle. I have gotten to the point that I don't enjoy fighting with dough that is too stiff or too slack. I also have found that I get a better crumb and better oven spring with dough that holds its shape after a cold overnight proof. 

I am curious if you are going to get a more open crumb in your case. Ditto with the oven spring. 95.45 % hydration is really up there! 

Leveret's picture
Leveret

It was, as you expected, incredibly sticky.  I did not even attempt to handle this dough with my hands--everything on the workbench was done with the scraper, which had the happy result of me not needing to add virtually any flour during the shaping process, but I believe that will end up having a negative effect on my structure.  Either way, this is just for fun--I won't be crushed if it's a total loss.  Although I'll still eat it!

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

welcome to TFL. Happy you have joined us and are sharing your experiences with us!

Leveret's picture
Leveret

Well, I got some tasty bread.  The crumb is pretty awful.  I'm not experienced enough to know why I got the void zones, but I assume it was due to an undeveloped gluten structure?  The crust was quite soft as well, which I was sort of expecting.  It was a fun detour from the norm, but I think shooting for hydration in the high seventies might be more my speed at this point in my development, unless I made an easily fixable mistake at some point in this process (I do like the texture of the crumb with this hydration, despite its horrifying distribution).

  
Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

The experts will soon weigh in on why that happened. Glad it still turned out to be tasty!

Leveret's picture
Leveret

I noticed during the initial 20 minutes in the DO that the middle did not spring.  It only rose in the first few minutes after the top was removed.  It looks like there was quite a bit of gas in the loaf and the extra heat allowed it to overcome whatever structure was holding it down.  Which leaves me with the question: did I overwork it?  I did a lot of work with the dough when I incorporated the levain and the salt/reserved water, and I stretched and folded pretty aggressively since the dough was so wet.  I'm a little stumped.  I have a hard time believing I underfermented this--it had a 2-hour autolyse at room temp with a 3 1/2 hour period at room temp after incorporating the levain (including the S+F), plus a 12 hour cold final proof.  So the only things I can think of are (1) I overfermented it; or (2) I either overworked it or underworked it.  Of course, it might also just be a terrible recipe.

inumeridiieri's picture
inumeridiieri

cold final proof is not enough. Underproof.

Gaetano

inumeridiieri's picture
inumeridiieri

I think that your bread is underproof. I would have waited even two hours in final proof.

What is the final temperature of the dough at the end of knead?

Gaetano

 

Leveret's picture
Leveret

I haven't gotten into the habit of taking the temperature during the proofing process, although I plan to start.  If I make this again, I might take it out of the fridge after 12 hours and let it sit on the counter for a couple more hours to add some time and to bring it close to room temperature.  

I've experienced the void zones before due to underproofing (mostly when I was trying to figure out a way to shorten the process), but it was a little bit different from this.  I would get the huge cavities much the same as I did today, but the reset of the loaf would be incredibly dense.  The remainder of the loaf here is actually fairly nice (for my purposes at least), which is why I thought it might be something else.  But again, I'm just starting out, so my experience is very limited.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

couple 3 reasons here are some  http://artisanbreadbaking.com/problems/  Go down to tunnel between the crust and crumb.  Do you put your shaped dough in plastic bags for the cold retard?  The fridge is a very dry environment otherwise.

Leveret's picture
Leveret

Thanks for that link.  When I put them in the fridge, I wrapped them with several layers of cling wrap (they don't fit in our freezer bags).  The tops of the wraps had a significant amount of moisture on them, and I actually dabbed the top (bottom) of the loaves after removing the wraps.  

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

replacing some whole wheat flour with whole grain rye flour and raising the hydration will speed up fermentation for sure.   I'm in the camp of over-fermenting.  The fermenting weakened the structure and it just couldn't hold up to rapid expansion in the oven. The top crust set from the heat and stayed up.  The lower crumb without the added weight of the top crust stayed up and didn't fall or compact into a dense lower crumb layer speaks more for proper fermented.  

Chill sooner and get the salt into the dough from the beginning to protect the protein bonds.