Different grains, no spring. Confused beginner
Hi all. First post. I heard this is a helpful place for new sourdough bakers.
I’ve successfully made about 20 or so loaves with King Arthur bread flour. They more or less all came out beautifully.
Once the family started to get constipated from too much white bread, I tried switching over to small %s of whole wheat. Once I switched I could not get any spring in the oven.
Figuring it’s a whole wheat thing, I converted some of my starter to spelt and tried spelt. Same issue.
I’ll map out my process for white bread here. Hopefully someone can help. It’s so frustrating to put all that effort in for a flat dense loaf.
white loaf:
feed 1:1:1, wait 4hrs.
Mix 150g starter, 500g bread flour, 35g oil, 10g salt, 300g-350g water (bottled,room temp)
let that sit 30-45m, then fold every 30m for 2-4 hours
Shape, put in basket, fridge overnight, preheat oven to 500f, bake in Dutch oven 20min, lower to 450 for 40m. Pull it out, let cool 4hrs+
——
for whole wheat I do the same but 450g bread flour and 50g whole wheat
for spelt, I did 100% organic spelt flour from deans greens. Same process but flat.
i know I’m missing something obvious, but being that i don’t see my process online anywhere I don’t know how to adapt to the other grains. Thanks in advance hopefully
Your process for all-white flour seems very normal. A small percentage of whole wheat should not have much effect. Even 40 - 50% WW shouldn't produce loaves that dense. But I can't tell from what you wrote whether in the case of using WW whether you used a WW starter like the all-spelt starter you apparently did with the spelt loaf.
I'd suggest for the time being that you use an all-white flour starter, preferably using bread flour, for both WW and spelt loaves. If you want higher percentages of whole grains in the bread, put it in there as flour, not starter. Also, start with a small percentage of whole-grain flour and work your way up as you learn how to work with the dough.
As general advice, pay more attention to the condition of the starter and dough and less on the clock. Also, all stretch and folds are not alike. If your dough is very slack and extensible, work it harder with more stretching (not necessarily mode S&F sessions - I've been doing well with only 2 S&F sessions with 20%-ww doughs).
If the dough is too floppy and extensible to hold its shape well when you shape the loaves, you need to stretch it a lot more during shaping. Stretch it, fold it up, and repeat until you feel some real resistance forming.
As you add in more whole-grain flour, it will be helpful to sieve out the larger bits of bran. If you feel that you really must include them, hold them back until after the gluten has gotten a good start on developing. Even better, soak them in water, or better hot or even boiling water for a few hours. Then add them into the dough after it's mixed and started to develop the gluten. This will improve the texture and flavor of your loaves. Remember to account for the soaker water when you figure out how much water to use in making the dough.
There have been many posts on this site about high-percentage spelt loaves, so do a search and see what has worked for other people You shouldn't need to change your own methods much, though. It will be harder to get an relatively airy spelt loaf than a WW one but it can be done.
TomP
That’s confusing. I tried 465g white and remaining WW and it still was flatter than normal. Perhaps the cold weather?
1. I assume from your second photo that you still get good oven spring and a nice crumb if you return to baking solely with bread flour. This would indicate that the problem is NOT your starter (and ps: you don't need to convert your starter to spelt to bake with spelt; in my experience, no matter what flour you use for your starter, as long as it is rising well and full of yeasties, it will leaven whatever bread you want to make.)
2. to me, the crumb shot of your whole grain loaf suggests that it's a little underfermented and the full loaf photo suggests that you might take more time with folding and shaping.
Whole grains require a somewhat different way of working dough. For instance, I just baked 2 loaves that were 40% whole rye / 60% bread flour. Though the original recipe called for, I think, 5 minutes of kneading, I hand kneaded for 15 minutes because that's how long I have found it takes to get it to smooth out and to develop the gluten in the white flour. I also did 3 sets of folds at 1/2 hour intervals. When I cut the dough in half to form 2 loaves, I shaped the first one quite firmly. But the second stuck to my work surface and, as I had run out of flour for dusting, I simply wet my hands, formed the dough into the best boule shape I could, let it proof, and baked it. The result: though they were the exact same dough, the firmly shaped loaf rose an inch higher than the haphazardly shaped loaf and had a much flakier, crunchier crust.
Rob
Thanks for your input. What do you mean by shaped firmly?
also the brown loaf is my spelt.
I can try kneading it extra to get the doughy texture sooner. It was very grainy and loose through the process, but ended off nicely.
As you are baking batards here's Maurizio Leo's page on shaping a batard:
https://www.theperfectloaf.com/guides/shaping-a-batard/
also, spelt is a super-sensitive grain. Spelt's gluten is much more fragile than commercial wheat. It requires pampering to get a good rise and a good gluten sheath to support that rise and create a crust. Ten percent spelt shouldn't be a deal-breaker (though, to be honest, to me your pic looked dark enough to be more than 10%.)
one other thought: old flour can impede a good rise. I have had problems with some whole grain flours -- even from reputable producers -- long before their 'sell by' dates. These days, I seldom hold whole grain flour for long at home. I buy the freshest small bags of locally produced flour I can find as I need it for baking.
Rob
Oh, it’s one hundred percent spelt. Not ten. I’ll check the link. Thanks !
Ah! 100% spelt. That's a completely different thing. Try this process: a little more time consuming as it calls for a multi-stage levain, but it really works --
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/64417/100-sourdough-spelt-bread
R
Cool! Ok I’m going to try this, except I’m going to use my spelt starter as levain stage 1. Dark honey might be the key there.
let us know how it goes
Bit undercooked using the handwritten note and drill bit flat. But room for improvement. I botched the salt thing and put it in with the rest of the mix. Also I used my spelt starter and fed it from levain step b
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Putting the salt in at the start is actually a good thing with spelt because it tends to tighten up the dough, which you need with spelt.
I suggest that you start with something easier to work with than 100% spelt with a spelt starter. Start with a white starter and 50% WW, for example, work up to 100% WW and a WW starter, then move on to 50% spelt and so on. Jumping right into all spelt can be hard.
I also suggest sifting out the bran before using the flour, whether WW or spelt. It will help with gluten development, which is a weak point of ancient grains like spelt. Eventually if you really want the bran you can make it into a soaker and add it in later, after mixing and gluten development.
first off: no it doesn't suck. Compared to your earlier photo of your 100% spelt bread, this looks great. How do you like the flavor?
--underbaked? when I first tried this formula (you can find my attempts chronicled in my comments from Dec. '22 and Jan. '23), I found it required 15 more minutes in the oven than the called for in the recipe. That's normal. Every oven is different and performs in different ways.
--ovenspring? For sure, you got a better rise & crumb than in your earlier photo. Also, Maurizio Leo remarks somewhere that boules can provide more structure -- and thus give more height -- for largely whole grain loaves. This was certainly my experience: my first attempt at this recipe was a boule and came out great. My second was a batard, and I got much less rise.
finally, though he's a much more experienced & better baker than I am, I'm gonna risk disagreeing with tpassin's advice and suggest that you keep baking whatever you want to bake, no matter how complicated or demanding or unusual. This is how I learned everything I know about bread-baking. For the first 2 years I was doing this, I baked an insane amount of bread and I seldom made the same formula twice. And what I took away from the experience is that I learn the most when I mess up.
Enjoy the process as well as the eating.
Rob
: ) If we all agreed all the time things would get boring! Anyway, Rob's advice is always good to get.
I tried my hand at making glass bread (pan di cristal) and it was one of the most helpful things I've done in a long time. I'm now able and willing to work with any kind of dough no matter how sticky or pasty, and I understand much better what we're trying to achieve with stretch-and-folds. This freed me up to stretch and work the dough in many different ways rather than slavishly stick to, for example, coil folds.
If you want demanding or unusual, watch some videos on glass bread and then try it yourself. It's very worth doing.
Spelt is a difficult flour to work with, whether wholegrain or white. It has a different balance between glutenin and gliadin (two proteins that combine to make gluten when flour is hydrated) than wheat, and this makes it much more extensible and this extensibility increases the more it is left to ferment. Extensibility and lower resistance from the glutenin compared to wheat means that it doesn't tighten up once it starts stretching, so tends to become flat as you leave it to ferment after any stretching and folding action.
Maybe start with some wholegrain wheat rather than spelt when moving to wholegrain and then move to more challenging types of flours once you have more confidence and experience.
My first spelt loaf was more like a pancake or flatbread!
My 20% whole wheats are flat too. I’m a bit clueless. I guess I have to knead it more?
here's a 20% ww recipe that featured a bit more kneading: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/67761/20-whole-wheat-sourdough-my-ideal-crumb
If you poke around this site you'll find more.
Rob
Just to encourage you, here are some pictures of a 20% rye loaf I made the other day. This was an experiment in pushing fermentation and proofing about as far as they could go, and you probably don't want to go this far every day. Still, it shows you that a 20% rye loaf doesn't have to be flat - and a 20% WW loaf should be easier to work with.
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As you can see, this loaf is anything but flat.
For this loaf, which used only 300g of flour, I used 80% King Arthur's bread flour, 20% Bob's Red Mill medium rye, 30% of a 50%-hydration stiff levain, and 200g of water (plus salt). I mixed everything roughly by hand, rested it for half an hour, kneaded and stretched it until the dough was moderately elastic, and went into bulk ferment. I only did two S&F sessions during BF, but I made sure the dough became fairly elastic (springy) each time.
Here are my notes on the shaping:
You can see I went to some trouble to develop a lot of elasticity during shaping. The loaf was able to hold its shape free-standing during a 2 1/4 hour proofing period.
The slash pattern favors upward expansion over sideways spreading,
Beautiful! Thank you
: ) Just to be clear, the fact that I used a 50%-hydration levain is not very important here. You can get similar results using a 100%-hydration starter, as I think you said you use. As Phazm wrote, you do want to make sure your starter is nice and active. And allow plenty of time for bulk fermentation and proofing.
Work on the starter - it doesn't seem to have the power it needs. Enjoy!