FWSY fermentation times WAY too long!
I'm about three quarters of the way through FWSY, just before starting the pizza section. I'm studying all of Forkish's formulae and procedures without baking them (so far). The problem is that there is no way that I could let dough ferment/proof for as many hours as he says that I should (I'm sure of this because my loaves have been overproofed more often than not).
He has a section of "Hybrid Leavening" recipes where both sourdough and commercial yeast are used. If I tried to make these loaves, even if I OMITTED THE YEAST from the recipes, but followed them in all other respects, these times would still be too long and my loaves would be overproofed.
But if I were to follow the procedures in the "Pure Levain" section, the results would be not bread... but soup!
I've been having this problem since I got back into bread baking last October. My first attempt last year was following an America's Test Kitchen recipe. I followed it as closely as I could and the resulting dough was catastrophically overproofed. Totally broken down. I baked it anyway and the "loaf" was more like a large biscuit...
His levain builds are the most insane though.
Forkish is in Portland, OR, and his ambient temps are pretty cool.
But like DB says, his builds have some well know "idiosyncrasies".
His regimen for beginning a starter is a little... extravagant.
I have been working through FWSY, simply because I figure that exposure to more technique should be "good for me". But the truth is that having used Tartine as my jumping off point a few years ago, i think i have developed some instinct for what works and what doesn't. And so far I am just not feeling the love when it comes to FWSY. It seems... over complicated. Maybe that is just my bias toward simplicity showing through. But humanity has been making bread for a long time, and this complexity seems to me to be a recent development.
I agree that his starter build is crazy but I used his book to make my first loaves and they all came out perfect. You say they don't work but have yet to make one?
I'm certainly not criticizing his formulae, just the excessive times which he specifies for bulk fermenting and proofing.
I understand there is significant variation among starters. Maybe his does require all of that time. As dabrown said, "watch the dough and not the clock". My starter is quite lively but gives mild tasting bread (unless overproofed). C'est la vie. I will experiment later with a smidgen of starter in three pounds of dough, for now it is enough that I can get home at 5:30, start mixing at 5:40, autolyze from 5:50 to 6:10, do stretch and fold sets (x3) every 25 minutes, then envelope folds (x3) every 20 minutes, and then into the banneton and (before 8:30) into the refrigerator for nine hours. At 5:30 AM it returns to the counter for an hour while everything is preheating. Baking is at 6:30 AM - less than twelve hours after I started mixing.
Compare that with Forkish's "Pure Levain" schedules.
Two weeks ago I was watching baseball and drinking beer and I got all lackadaisical with the intervals between sets, extending the room temperature bulk ferment by two hours. The next morning, the loaf was overproofed.
During the Winter I would do everything at room temperature. Mixing to baking (without overproofing, which happened often) was five to six hours, max.
What’s your “inoculation rate”? That is, what percentage of your flour comes from your levain? I don’t have FSWY to check.
5-6 hours mix to bake seems pretty short — even when it’s warm, it’s more like 7 hours, minimum for me (when 10% of my flour comes from the levain). Normal, both at home (TX) and at school (IA) at room temperature is more like 8 or 9 hours, stretching out to 10+ if it’s really cold (only an issue at school).
Maybe you just have a crazy strong starter or really warm room temperature, but my starter is quite strong, and I can easily stretch to 24+ hours if I retard before shaping.
but as I said, the flavor is mild. I'd rather have a slower starter with more flavor.
In all of my formulae I use 16.7% fermented flour, or 1/6. In the Winter everything was always room temperature and I wish I had been recording the data points of post-mix dough temperature, that really is critically important isn't it? But I believe that room temps in our apartment were around 75 F most of the time (except at night in our bedroom where it usually felt like 90 F or higher grrrrr damned building heat...). With summer approaching I will probably chop the fermented flour to 1/12 and possibly refrigerate (some of) the spring water I use for mixing as well...