The Fresh Loaf

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First Time Sourdough Attempt - Need Help

Renee16's picture
Renee16

First Time Sourdough Attempt - Need Help

Hi All,

First just want to say what a lovely resource this site is, thank you.  I keep reading up on starters and feedings, etc. but I'm not sure if it's because I hated math class, but I'm getting super confused on hydration levels, etc.  (I know it's super easy for others, don't hate!)

I've been baking bread for about 3 years with great success - from prefermented dough to sweet dough, etc - literally everything except natural starters.  I bought a book and followed the steps to a T to make a firm starter.  here's the recipe - now I forget the initial amount on day one (I think it was 100%), but here is the feeding schedule, every 24 hours for 10 days:

69 g active starter
153 g room temperature water
270 g unbleached all purpose flour
30 g whole wheat flour

so - you can see that this makes a total of 522 grams of starter which you have to toss 453 grams of it in order to keep feeding, le sigh. Food waste kills me.

Now after the initial 10 days, I started keeping 69 gram portions in the fridge in little plastic containers in the event I had an epic fail so all that work over the past week and a half wasn't for not. 

So 10 days were up on a Thursday morning - bake day was Saturday so I actually fed for another 2 days - so 12 day fed starter ready to go Saturday morning.  I used this Pain de Campagne recipe:

126 g firm starter
506 g water at 80 degrees F
704 g unbleached all purpose flour
19 g fine sea salt or non-iodized table salt

Recipe is basically: mix, autolyse (i think that's the right word) for 20 minutes, then add salt, mix for 6 and then rest for 30.  Then, 3 sets of folds and stretches every 30 minutes followed by a 2-3 hour bulk rise.  After that, pre-shape, sit for 10, shape into boule and put in colander for another 2-3 hours.  

Saturday - total epic bust.  I do not have a banneton (I used to, but it got infested with bugs, yuck) so I used a towel lined colander.  Well the bread stuck so bad to the towel that I basically had to rip it off, 20% of the bread coming with it.  I went into panic mode and just threw the bread into the 450 degree oven on a stone.  Well, it didn't turn out.  Flat like a pancake and SUPER gummy and like iridescent inside.  Top crust though, delicious.  

Sunday - after reading the forum, I bought rice flour and dusted a linen towel instead of a cotton towel.  I also decreased the final rest to about 45 minutes since I was nervous that I overproofed the dough.  The bulk rise I kept at about 2.5 hours.  This one looked okay great oven spring- although it did spring mainly on one side in the oven - it broke on the bottom left even though I scored the top in an asterisk.  The scores also filled in.  For steam, I used a bread pan filled with water and a dish towel (which I read keeps an even steam going) and I also spritzed the oven with water when putting in the dough.  I also raised the temp a bit.  I was SO excited to cut into the bread - but when I did, there were GAPING holes like 3 in a row from left to right.  The dough had a very glossy iridescent look and was gummy on the bottom.  Into the trash it went.  It was a rough weekend since I typically have SO much success making bread - I was really upset and haven't attempted again (it's been almost 2 weeks). 

Starter is resting in 69g portions in the fridge.  Does anyone have any suggestions on a. does this recipe look okay, b. what did I do wrong, c. how could I improve, and d. are there better recipes since I can't stand throwing away so much flour?  I went through a 5 lb bag just from making the starter, and I don't want to do that in the future.

I really appreciate any help you can give, thank you!!

Renée

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

alefarendsen's picture
alefarendsen

I was reading about your starter feeding and you're working in big batches and tossing a lot compared to what I'm doing here. If I'm not baking, I toss half of mine twice per day and then feed it 2:1:1. So, if it's 50 grams, I toss 25 and feed it 12,5 grams of flour, 12,5 grams of water. It more then doubles in 6 to 8 hours on this feeding.

Your starter is approx. 150 / 300 = 50% hydration.

The recipe has 42 (starter) + 506 = 548 grams of water and 704 + 84 = 788 grams of flour. This means the dough has a hydration of 64%. Nothing wrong with that, so I don't have a clue why it would stick so much. Did you flour the towel enough?

Going with a banneton always works best for me, but in some occasions I've had to resort to a plastic bowl that I floured (without a towel or anything) and this worked okay'ish...

The holes you're getting and the off-sided oven spring sounds like shaping has not gone that well... Not sure though.

Curious what others have to say about this.

 

hreik's picture
hreik

1) the bulk rise? how much did it rise

2) The final rise? Ditto and what about the poke-hole test? did you do that?

3) Any pics to share?

hester

Renee16's picture
Renee16

Hi,

Thank you for helping!!

Hreik: The look/texture of the dough during the stretch and folds was perfect. The bulk rise was done in the oven with just the light on - it definitely doubled in size.    After the bulk rise, the dough felt great - but did spread a bit - forming into a boule it wouldn't really hold, I had to quickly get it into the colander to retain the shape.  It felt like it was really hydrated and was going to give wonderful ovenspring.  After the final rise, which was just about 45 minutes - I did that on the counter while the oven was preheating.  (I had taken it out of the oven a bit before preshaping so that I could get the oven on)  When poked, the dough slowly popped back out.  In general it did look like if I handled it hard I would completely degas it - which is why I was nervous on Day 2 with the rice flour lined linen, but that did the trick no sticking like on the day before.  But when I transferred the dough to the peel, it did spread a little.

Unfortunately no pics - I know silly.  I couldn't document the failure! But lesson learned to do that in the future as I'm sure that would help immensely.  

Renee16's picture
Renee16

Hi,

Thank you for helping!!

Hreik: The look/texture of the dough during the stretch and folds was perfect. The bulk rise was done in the oven with just the light on - it definitely doubled in size.    After the bulk rise, the dough felt great - but did spread a bit - forming into a boule it wouldn't really hold, I had to quickly get it into the colander to retain the shape.  It felt like it was really hydrated and was going to give wonderful ovenspring.  After the final rise, which was just about 45 minutes - I did that on the counter while the oven was preheating.  (I had taken it out of the oven a bit before preshaping so that I could get the oven on)  When poked, the dough slowly popped back out.  In general it did look like if I handled it hard I would completely degas it - which is why I was nervous on Day 2 with the rice flour lined linen, but that did the trick no sticking like on the day before.  But when I transferred the dough to the peel, it did spread a little.

Unfortunately no pics - I know silly.  I couldn't document the failure! But lesson learned to do that in the future as I'm sure that would help immensely.  

hreik's picture
hreik

For how long did your oven preheat? You want the stone to get frighteningly hot. So at least 45 minutes. Also, for me naturally leavened dough should not have a 2x bulk rise.  In my experience it is overproofed if I let it go to 2X.
Have you tried refrigerating it during one or other rise?

Sounds to me like the dough is being rushed and maybe over-proofed. Way to slow things down: use cooler water or refrigerate for some of the rise.  Right now I have a 71% hydration dough in a space that is 50d F. It's rising slowly and in an hour I'll shape it and put it in the fridge for the night, baking in the a/m.  I find a cooler dough is easier to score.
Keep us posted.

hester

Renee16's picture
Renee16

I have not tried refrigerating, that sounds like it will help retain it's structure.  The scoring definitely deflated the dough both times I tried it.  For the bread you are making, will you go directly from fridge to hot oven, or will you bring it back to room temp before scoring and setting on the stone?

Is the overproofing the reason for the gummy-ness and iridescence that the dough had? It kind of looked sticky even though it was cooked and at 200d F.  I also let it cool for about 4 hours before cutting it.  

So right now I have a couple 69g portions of starter in the fridge.  How would I bring it back to the 126g needed for the recipe without making 500+ grams and throwing 80% away?  

I plan on trying this again this weekend but assume I need to get a couple feedings in.  I will take photos after this go around.

Thanks!

 

 

hreik's picture
hreik

Take out 20 grams of your 69 for the first feed. Feed it 20 gm of water and 20 of flour to total 60 gm. Leave out to rise. Then feed it 60 gm of flour and 60 of water to total 180 gm. Then after it's risen you can use the 126 gm for your dough. (don't forget to fee the starter in the fridge when you remove the 20 grams).

I do not let the formed loaves warm up at room temp. They go from the fridge onto the peel where I slash them and then I dump them into the preheated dutch oven, put lid on and then back in oven. I turn it down then remove lid after 1/3 of the baking time has elapsed let the dough bake the rest w dry heat. So make sure 2/3 of the bake is in a dry oven.

Take a look at the archives on how to score/slash the loaves. Angle is important.

Can't answer about the crumb.

good luck

hester

hreik's picture
hreik

If scoring deflated the dough it was over-proofed.

Renee16's picture
Renee16

Hi All,

Thanks for all your help!  I used a different recipe this time - a vermont sourdough with a levain from a 16g portion of starter.  I did retard the dough in the fridge after shaping and baked it this morning in a dutch over - 30 minutes covered, 15 uncovered, and then 5 on a stone to get it a bit more browned all around.

The scoring was much better on this loaf with a nice unintentional ear :) 

Are those air pockets indicative of something I did wrong? 

Taste is great - overall very happy!  Please provide any suggestions.

 

Thanks again!

 

hreik's picture
hreik

as a separate topic.

 

hester

Renee16's picture
Renee16

Hi Hester,


Thank you so much - I will take out one of my starter portions tonight and go for it.  I hope the starter isn't dead.  I'll keep you posted-  will be busy weekend of baking!  

Renée

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

on the 'waste not want not' theme - being thrifty is s virtue especially when it comes to wasting food.  Thankfully there are other ways to maintain a small amount of starter and build larger levains from it to make a loaf of bread.  I was wasting a huge amount of starter and levain too, more than i was using in the actual bread by far, si i came up with the No Muss No Fuss Starter (you can search for it on this site) where there is a small amount of stiff, rye starter kept the fridge for up to 16 weeks with no maintenance and no waste.  A small amount of it is  used to make a 3 stage levain build of increasingly larger amounts of flour and water with  no waste to get exactly the amount of levain required for a loaf of bread.

If you bake a couple of days a week or more you can also use 'old dough' method.  This is where you save some of the dough in the fridge after the gluten is developed, but before bulk ferment, to use as the levain for the next bread you bake a couple of days later.

If you use rice flour in your baskets or on the cloth liner, nothing will stick to it.

Your dough at 64% hydration is pretty low.  I would get it to 68% to make netter bread and eventually as your skills get better up to 72% for white bread -even more for whole grain.

Happy Baking  

Renee16's picture
Renee16

amazing - thank you!  The comments about converting white to rye are also great.  I am excited to get this going for this weekend.  Using the rice flour with the linen lined colander did work perfectly on my second try, it's just the crumb was very gummy and shiny - the crust tasted great though!  For this weekend, I'm going to take people's advice and retard the dough overnight.  I hope that there will be no sticking with it being in the fridge for so long, but I will dust the linen HEAVILY with rice flour.  I'll keep my fingers crossed!

I have received so many great suggestions, I can't wait to get to work this weekend.  Thankfully I have so many portions of starter in the fridge I can try a couple different methods. 

I'll be back with reports! Thank you!