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need help troubleshooting crumb texture

m3phisto's picture
m3phisto

need help troubleshooting crumb texture

Hello everyone,

I am still young in sourdough baking as my starter is.

This is the second time my loaf successful going in and out from the oven.

Still confused with the term levain and mature starter sometime but here is what i did to produced the outcomes as in the picture: -

recipe called for pain de campagne roughly about 70%

final ingredient:

360g bread flour

40g rye flour

280g water

50g levain (100%hydration)

9g salt

 

making the levain,

15g rye mature starter (beautifully ripe & pass floating test *doesnt sink at all) (100% hydration) (feeding method 1:2:2)

180g bread flour

20g rye flour

left to be fermented at around 24-27*C until pass floating test before mixing into the final dough.

the total hydration for this bread including the levain would be 280(water)+25(levain) / 400(flour)+25(levain) = 71%

 

climate information,

hot & humid as in south east asia, malaysia to be precise.

dough affecting temperature could range from 26-29C if left in uncontrolled temp.

but most of the time i keep my dough close to me in an aircondition room at temp of : 19-23C

kitchen temperature at night would be around 25-26C.

 

Timeline:-

Day 1

11AM - Autolyse (6 hours)

5PM - Mix the final dough by S&F (rest 1 hour)

6PM - S&F

7PM - S&F

8PM - S&F (rest in fridge 10C-12C)

9PM - S&F

10PM - S&F (rest in fridge 10C-12C)

10.30PM - pre shaping the loaf, left on the kitchen counter

***accidentally falling asleep

Day 2

5AM - wakeup and panic & did the final shaping & let the dough rest in the fridge

8AM - poking test doesnt seem to be over fermented & bake at 230C 20minutes with the cover and 25 minutes without, until golden brown.

crumb dissection happen after 1 hour cooling down. cant wait any longer since i thought this would go down the thrash bin.

result:

crumb

 

crust was good however the crumb texture aren't.

taste wise a little sour but acceptable to my palette.

 

how can i make the crumb less chewy/gummy/doughy and a little bit soft?

 

any helpful links or suggestion would be really appreciated :)

thanks

  

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Terminology can be flexible and it all depends on how you keep, maintain and use your starter.

Starter = Seed. The petri "dish" for your culture.

Levain = a preferment made from the starter (an off-shoot starter if you will). The beginning of the recipe!

Both are made out of flour and water and contain the cultures used to make the bread. However the starter is the mixture you keep to build all your breads from. It is not necessarily built to the requirements of the recipe yet! When you begin the recipe you take a little starter and preferment some of the flour from the recipe and here is when you start planning what you want from the final loaf.

It does get confusing as some people do skip the step of building a levain and keeping the starter "seed" separate. They just keep a jar of starter, use some in the dough and top it up. Then terminology begins to fuse.

Your bread looks great by the way. I'd be very happy with that but then again I do like chewy sourdough. A more even crumb will come with shaping. For less chewy and a softer crumb then go lower hydration and use flour with lower gluten. instead of 14% + (string bread flour) go for 11-13% protein like AP flour. If your AP flour is too weak then go for a mix of bread flour and AP flour.

m3phisto's picture
m3phisto

Thanks i will give that a try with 70% (50/50 wholewheat and bread flour) 30% APF ratio, see if the dough can handle 70% hydration.

Last i tried with AP 90% and rye 10% it's too runny after the few last round of S&F, final shaping is impossible as it get more runny when the time goes by.

I was thinking of using rye starter as the levain instead of premix new one with various flour. what do you think?
or if there is a science behind it and i should cultivate the wild yeast from the same kind of flour :o