September 12, 2019 - 5:05pm
dough sticking to the banneton when using diastatic malt powder
I have made this loaf with this recipe 3 times now - once without the diastatic malt and twice using that WEE bit and even with preparing my bannetons well, the dough sticks. This time so much so, I have no idea what mess I will see when I take off the lid. What a waste of 2 days of preparing these loaves to just have them get stuck!
In the directions, it mentions uses liners in the banneton. Could that possibly matter?
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OMG... the bread seems to be mostly OK, but then I went and left it in the oven too long because I forgot to turn on the timer while watching this debate. It should be still edible, but wah!!!!
Melissa, if sticking is a problem, try the liners or if you don’t have them a diaper or smooth (no knapp) dish towel works at least as good. Dust the dough and the liner with rice flour or something similar.
For dough that are not super wet and sticky, and you want the cained look, you can use rice flour since it is gluten free and prone to not stick. I think you have a mill. If so, mill some rice and use it.
Danny
I dusted them with half white flour and half rice flour and my dough is very wet - 93-94% hydration. I had to pry them off the bottom to bake them. And I have some flour cloth - I think that's what it's called. I don't know if that would be better or worse.
High hydration like that (unless using a lot of whole wheat) should use a liner of some sort. Just stay away from terry towel and the like.
Actually like towels in the bannetons better than the liners. Because you can open the towel and fold the edges behind the basket when removing the dough. Invert and remove the basket, then peel back the towel. Another trick is to wrap the towel tightly around the long sides of the dough to make it stand up better in the basket and on the stone when removed.
Light weight diapers work well.
Dan
Good to know. And the dough is sourdough with 50% whole wheat (freshly milled).
50% whole wheat sounds doable in a naked banneton. But a liner is safe.
Despite MASSIVE sticking to the banneton AND overbaking it, it turned out well enough to eat! :-)
Melissa the crumb looks great especially for 50% WW. Great outcome despite the sticking. I have a question though something I’m not sure about. I’ve read other people using a blend of rice and wheat flour for the banneton, is there an advantage to a blend of flours vs just rice flour? I’ve only used rice flour to dust my banneton and since switching to only rice flour haven’t had any dough stick.
Benny
I don't recall where I saw it, but I saw on some videos (more than one) of the baker doing a mix of wheat and rice in the bannetons and it made the finished product look more appealing - artsy, so I decided to try it a few bakes back and initially that seemed to be fine, but I had SLIGHT sticking last time and MASSIVE sticking this time, so I'll probably go back to rice flour. I still have quite a bit of bagged white rice flour, but once that is gone, I'll use freshly milled brown rice flour.
Hi Melissa! I noticed your last 50% whole wheat bake.
Just recently I started doing in-oven slo-mo video. It has taught me some valuable lessons. After bread baking for over 2 decades I came to the realization that my dough is constantly over proofed. I believe I fermented it too long because I wanted that precious gas. But, slo-mo taught me different.
In order to produce the phenomenal loaves that some baker constantly produce, it is necessary to get tremendous oven spring. If the dough is allowed to exhaust its gas producing ability BEFORE the oven, the massive oven spring can’t happen. The energy was expended during the ferment.
I encourage you to try (what most people consider) under bulk fermenting. Once the BF dough shows a slight dome and the upper sides are curved upwards slightly, shape it and retard overnight. Not longer than 12 hours or so. Spritz, slash and bake it cold in a preheated hot oven.
Retardation - a fact that many bakers don’t take into account or are not aware of. A room temp or warmer dough takes about 4 hours of refrigeration before it normalizes to 38F. During this time fermentation continues until it reaches 38F and then slows considerably. When the dough is cold the gas is absorbed into the dough because cold temperatures reduce the volume of the gas. In other words, the dough is not plump from the gas, but none the less the gas is still very much there waiting to explode when it hits the heat. Heat makes gas increase in volume.
Study the videos on this page, paying special attention to the second one. If you watch closely, you’ll notice that the skin near the slash MUST RUPTURE before an ear is form. This takes a lot of gas! http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61181/tip-have-faith-oven-spring
Most of us are grossly over proofing/over fermenting our dough.
I thought this would interest you...
Danny
I really do appreciate all the help I can get as there is so much guesswork with each bake.
So, in the last few bakes, I've been afraid I've been under proofing them. I am following the directions to a T for timing and temps (as I have a Brod and Taylor proofer) and it will always say, "it will have grown quite a bit" and I simply do not notice growth. I notice yeasty bubbling as they show, but those bannetons are half-empty before and after proofing and then the spread and grow in the oven.
Now, since I started making this latest recipe https://www.theperfectloaf.com/fifty-fifty-whole-wheat-sourdough-bread/, I wasn't seeing much oven spring at all and now I see the loaves are twice the size they were when I put them in the oven, but I'm having a HECK OF A TIME with this super, duper wet dough (that I've had problems with sticking to the bannetons the last two times) with getting a good slash - especially this last time on the second loaf especially because it got so stuck to the banneton.
I was just thinking at breakfast - maybe I should make a white sourdough and see if I have the same problem as that might point me to something.
But when I look at the pictures (as this post is great at showing the stages and what they look like), mine looks like that - except the end. So you think maybe I'm over proving? And since I don't have an eye for that yet, how can you tell?
Maybe that's why I like baking bread so much - it's a challenge, but even with not being completely happy with it, it's still a tasty disappointment (so far).