The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Overproof?

Shin's picture
Shin

Overproof?

450g white flour, 50g whole grain and 72% hydration. Autolyse for 2 hours and bulk fermentation for 3 hours, and overnight in the fridge for 16 hours, 7 to 9°C. Oven spring not good, and bread is flatten. Is it possible that overproof or gluten not form enough 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

burnt bottom?  What temp was the bake and for how long?  details?

Shin's picture
Shin

Slightly burned, temperature is 200c for 20 minutes, cover. And open lid for another 20 minutes 

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Shin, If your 3 hr BF was not fairly under proofed, your dough in most probabilities over proofed. I say this because 8C (46F) is most probably too warm for a 16 hr retard. A fully bulk fermented dough will require cooler temps (~3C / 38-39F) for a 16 hr retard.

If 8C is your coolest available temp, consider a shorter BF or a shorter retard.

IMO, your bread looks very nice, but less fermentation will give you more oven spring.

Danny

Shin's picture
Shin

Thanks Danny. It is any way can to safe the overproofed dough? 

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Shin, are you asking if the dough can be saved? I want to be sure I understand your question.

Generally, no. Once the dough is over proofed (the yeast have exhausted their ability to produce gas) not much can be done. But baking an over proofed dough generally produces great tasting bread if you like the sour flavor.

Some bakers will reshape an over proofed dough in an attempt to reinvigorate the remaining yeast. You could give that a try.

It is a very nice bread that could be improved with a little less fermentation in order to get more oven spring.

Danny

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

as a sourdough starter.  

Hanan's picture
Hanan

can we transform a discard starter into a mother-dough?  I didn't like using the discard to make pancakes as they turned out to be sour for my taste but was wondering if I could add water + flour to the discard and turn it instead into what is called a mother-dough. I know the terminology can be confusing but what I mean by mother-dough is a mixture of flour + water + starter mixed, kept in the fridged for 2-3 days and then added to bread dough as a type of pre-ferment to give the bread a more tasty flavor and makes its crust more "shattery.  

Also, does anybody have experience with incorporating "mother-doughs" as described above into bread recipes? I imagine I would still use a starter in the dough but should I decrease the amount of starter? the amount of flour? or both? Any tips will be appreciated.

Thank you lovely people of the Fresh Loaf :-) 

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

Hanan, yes.  What you describe is essentially feeding the discard as a separate starter, a firm one.  "Starter" does not have to be wet/liquid.  Another name for "firm starter" is "biga".  Maybe some technical differences, but more or less close.

Just keep in mind that your mother-dough/firm-starter/biga will have leavening power of its own.  And as you feed that "discard", you need to add (at least) twice as much new flour as there is old flour.  When we say to feed a 100% starter, at 1:1:1 (1 part by weight starter, 1 part flour, 1 part water) , that 1 part starter is only 50% flour.  Otherwise, without at least doubling the flour with a feeding, acid builds up too much.

So, you're not actually "discarding", but splitting your starter into two starters.  And that's fine.  Some people use a firm starter as their starter.

There are plenty of discussions on this web site about liquid (poolish) versus firm (biga):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/search/node/biga%20poolish

Here is another web site where I first learned it:

https://www.ilariasperfectrecipes.com/mother-yeast-recipe/      and follow the links to more of her pages about it.  

Another Italian name is "lievito madre" or "pasta madre", and there are several kinds and techniques.  But there are also technical differences betweeen that and "biga".  Again, closely related, and not exactly the same.

Hanan's picture
Hanan

Just fancier naming :-)

Thanks for the link, I went through the information there and yes that is the method I want to try: a preferment that does not include yeast fresh or dry, hence I didn't try biga or poolish which were more easily understood.

One thing I need clarification on still:

The mother dough recipe I followed today called for:

340g flour + 170g water + 170g active starter (My 100% hydration starter is in good shape it doubles in aprox.4 hours). I mixed it and let it ferment for a couple of hours on the counter and now it's resting in the fridge.  I will wait 2 days and then use it in my recipe.

My typical recipe which fits well into my banettons is as follows:

500g flour + 380g water + 50g starter (ignore the salt for now)

So If I followed the method described in the link and wanted my dough to double in 3-4 hours should I "substitute" OR "Add" what equals 40% of my original 500g flour of mother-dough to my recipe? 

To make it clearee, will the modified recipe be:

1) 300g flour + 200 mother-dough and NO starter?

OR

2) 500 flour + 200g mother-dough and NO starter?

 

Thanks a LOT for keeping with my trivial questions :-/

 

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

If you can find a pre-exsting recipe that does what you want with the ingredients you want, that would be best.

Here are some of the variables, which in some cases are merely guesses by the baker.  So you will just need to experiment.

so much depends on:

1) what you want to end up  with.

2) how you will bake it in the oven.

3) bulk ferment time AND temperature.

4) final proof time AND temperature.

5) what kind of flour(s), whole wheat versus white, and percentages.

6) Whether you machine knead, hand knead, or let _time_ develop the gluten for you.

7) How active/strong/old/acidic your pre-ferments are, which are also based on what you feed it, the feeding ratios, time between feedings, time since last feeding, final temperature, and temperature "along the way" during the time it sat fermenting.

--

And those things _interact_ with each other. Change one, and something else changes.  Use a stronger more active pre-ferment, and your ferment time will need to go down, and that might mean less gluten development.  Use some whole wheat, and ferment speeds up, but gluten development slows down.  Use too much mature/old pre-ferment, and you might get too much acid, or too much degraded gluten.  Use immature ferment, and you might need more of it.

So a certain amount of pre-ferment "might" work, but it depends on  3 to 5 other things all at the same time.

So, if you are using someone else's formula/recipe, the best an internet-friend can do is help you with understanding _principles_ so you can experiment, judge what happens, and then use the principles to make adjustments for next time.  Pictures help, both of the whole loaf and of individual slices, as some things can be judge by visual clues.

And by "experiment", you want to document everything, so you can vary one variable at a time, and hold the others the same.  I am bad at that. I keep tinkering, and changing more than one thing at a time.

If you look at my blog here, I've done 17 bakes since joining TFL, and I'm still learning.

--

so, the question of 300 g flour + 200 g mother dough, versus 500 g flour + 200 g mother dough....  depends on:

1) how much flour do you want in your final loaf?

2) how strong/active is the mother-dough, what was the last feeding ratio of it, how long has it been since last feeding, what is the current hydration level, and what temp was it kept at?

And.... even if you can answer all that, the best someone else, who has not used the same formula and timings you are using,  can say is "I don't really know. Try it and see."  Because all we can share is specific published or self-invented/tested recipes/formulas, our own experience, and the principles involved.  

I have two books that have biga recipes:  The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and Crust and Crumb, both by Peter Reinhart.

If you do Kindle ebooks, Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, and Crust and Crumb, are currently on sale for US $5.99 each, Kindle format.  www.amazon.com/Peter-Reinhart/e/B001H6W6I0?sort=price-asc-rank&tag=froglallabout-20

I suppose there are plenty of free biga recipes on TFL.  I would suggest studying them, and using one of them, or at least gleaning the principles from it if you want to customize your own recipe. 

Also closely related to biga is "pate fermentee".

Welcome to the bread adventure!

Hanan's picture
Hanan

Truly appreciated. 

I am asking about the principle and was giving an example of a recipe to make my question clearer but it seems I did the opposite.

I searched for biga here in the forum and found a recipe that says you can substitute the dry yeast with sourdough starter which is what I was looking for, I do not like yeast and didn't know that if you use sourdough instead of yeast your preferment would still be a biga!

Thanks again for your thorough reply!