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Tunnelling in top of sourdough, lack of uniform crumb structure HELP

RichardW1988's picture
RichardW1988

Tunnelling in top of sourdough, lack of uniform crumb structure HELP

Hello,

 

hopefully you can help me out.

 

my recipe is

 

600g strong Canadian wheat white bread flour 

100g light rye flour

2.5g dark roasted malt

266g 100% hydration starter 

650g water

 

I mix all the flours and 600g of water and autolyse for one hour. Then I mix in the rest of the ingredients and bulk ferment at room temperature(currently around 27c) for around 10-12 hours. 

 

I then put the dough in the fridge to firm up for around one hour. 

 

I then shape the loaves by tipping the dough out carefully onto a well floured surface and fold the dough over itself four times to create the height and strength in the dough. It’s high hydration so don’t mess with it at this point.

 

i then retard in the fridge for around 10 hours.

 

finallly, I have my oven on 250c with a metal baking tray inside. I put my bread onto the hot tray straight from the fridge and score it. Then place into the oven with hot water to create steam.

 

I cook for 20 minutes at 250c and 30 minutes at 180c.

 

flavour is insane, texture is great, but I’m looking for the uniform crumb that will make this bread world class. 

 

ifs201's picture
ifs201

I don't use much rye so I don't know how it behaves, but the bulk ferment time seems really long to me. I would also think you'd need to do some stretch and folds or slap and fold during the ferment to help strengthen the gluten. 

calneto's picture
calneto

I'm impressed that you can shape the loaf at all. Your hydration is close to 94%. The higher the hydration and the temperature the faster the dough ferments. You are also using a lot of levain: 38% (I use 20%). I usually bulk for 6 hours at 25 Celsius and a hydration of 82%. If I had to guess, I would imagine your loaf is over proofed.  a picture of your crumb would help

RichardW1988's picture
RichardW1988

Thank you for the reply.

 

ive added a photo of the crumb.

 

RichardW1988's picture
RichardW1988

yana's picture
yana

but to me it looks underproofed, although 12h at 27c with that much starter seems like a lot, so maybe it's overproofed. How many folds are you doing?

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

and repeat everything the same just to see what happens.

calneto's picture
calneto

Why not drop the levain amount to, say 25%? The current recipe is way different than the usual in many ways.  I'd try a more orthodox approach first. 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

please.  :).  I know it is tempting.

RichardW1988's picture
RichardW1988

New recipe;

 

700g strong Canadian white bread flour

100g light rye flour

a sprinkle of dark roasted malt

650g water

16g salt

90g starter (100% hydration)

 

Flour and 600g water - 1 hour autolyse

rest of ingredients mix in

4 hours at room temperature with a couple of folds

dough into the fridge overnight

shape the next day and proof for two hours before baking. 

It now seems to be not proofed enough before baking. But this recipe is superior to my last. 

calneto's picture
calneto

So, you dropped the hydration to 82%, but also dropped the levain to 11%. The result looks much better already,   in my opinion. Like I said in my previous post, now I'd try with 20% levain. This should fix the under fermentation

RichardW1988's picture
RichardW1988

I’ve done a different recipe and change the way in which I make it.

 

It’s come out perfectly it’s just my shaping skills that I’ve made it look mad. See below

julie99nl's picture
julie99nl

Just tell everyone it's a ciabatta ?
If open crumb is what you were going for, you got it!