The Fresh Loaf

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Newbie, My sourdough story.

JonnyG's picture
JonnyG

Newbie, My sourdough story.

Hi all.

I'm a baker from Belfast, been in the bakery trade for 20 years.  I came to learn about sourdough when I took my latest job 2 years ago.

The head baker started a 100% hydration starter 18 months ago.  After a few months of growing, we tried several small batches, following a few different recipes, with not a lot of success.  We split our starter and converted one to a brown starter, by gradually feeding only brown flour.

Eventually we got both our sourdoughs consistently good, with a regular feeding, which as far as I can remember was always 1:1, and once a week we were making a batch for sale in the bakery.  Even flavouring them. (see picture)

We weren't ever discarding any of the starter, as we were hoping that we would be making a batch every couple of days, and wanted to build up the quantity we had.  Eventually growing it up to a full 5 gallon bucket, which we always keep in the fridge.

We are feeding it 2lb flour and 2lb water once a week, and the day before we bake a batch, we would feed it, then take out 2lb, add another 3lb water, and 2&1/2lb flour, and leave until the next day. We add the overnight starter to 7lb flour, 1/2oz gluten, 1/2oz salt and warm water to make our dough.  Rest 2 hours, then mould into bannetons, prove another 4-5 hours and bake.

This was giving us good results for a good few months, until lately we had very poor results in comparison.

As we didn't have any real training and were mostly using trial and error, we tried various things to try and revive it.  Discarding and refeeding, stirring it every day, changing the recipe, none has given us the results we once had.  It has been frustrating to see our bread struggle.

Does anyone have any ideas what has been causing our problems?

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

Crust,  spring, crumb or taste?

JonnyG's picture
JonnyG

The dough really struggles to rise after we have shaped it into the banneton.  When baked the loaf is very dense and heavy.  It seems like its lively when mixed, but only stays lively for a few hours.

Trevor J Wilson's picture
Trevor J Wilson

I'd say your starter has become too acidic. If I'm understanding your feeding schedule correctly, it sounds like you're adding a small amount of water and flour compared to the large amount of remaining starter in the 5 gallon bucket. Over time this would create an overly acidic starter, although I'd have thought you would experience problems sooner than you did.

And you said you've tried discarding most of the starter and then feeding it fresh? But nothing?

Without any additional information (or pictures of starter), what I would do would be to take a small amount of your starter (maybe a few ounces or so), feed it with twice it's weight in water and flour each (1 part starter, 2 parts water, 2 parts flour) and leave it out at room temp in your bakery. When it has doubled or tripled in 8-12 hours then expand it again in that same 1:2:2 ratio. Keep expanding it until it can reliably triple in 8-12 hours, then you can consider refrigerating it again.

Then you just need to find a maintenance schedule that keeps your starter healthy. 

Cheers!

Trevor

 

drogon's picture
drogon

a bigger bakery doing sourdough! Have you seen the real bread campaign? http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/

Anyway.. I'm at the other end of the scale from you - but I regularly bake up to 40 sourdough loaves a day of different types & sizes and my "low impact" method involves keeping just over a fifth of the starter I need in the fridge... So if I need 3Kg of starter for a bake (30% levian in each loaf) then I take one fifth of that from the starter in the fridge = 600g of starter from the jar in the fridge, add to that 1200g flour and 1200g water (2/5 each) to make it up to 3Kg. Then I top-up the jar with 300g flour + 300g water.

Then I leave them both at room temperature (usually in the low 20's in the bakehouse) for 4-5 hours before I go through the mix/knead/ferment stage. (and put the jar back in the fridge at that point) The dough ferments overnight - essentially from 9pm to about 5-6am when it's scale/shape/prove/bake time. Only needs about 1.5 hours proofing at that point, 2 hours max.

So re-reading your post, I'm thinking that the main differences seems to be that I'm refreshing (by using) my starter more regularly (although it gets a break sat & sunday nights!) I'm also using much less starter in the dough - about 30% bakers percentage starter where you're seems to be over 100% - 2lb starter + 3lb flour + 2-2.5lb water = 7lb levian + 7lb flour has a lot of pre-fermented flour in it. (although that might be not be a bad thing)

I also think Trevor might also be on to something - and I think you're keeping back rather a lot of starter - I only keep about 600g in each jar I have (wheat, spelt, rye), so when I do need over 500g wheat, I 'borrow' some from the spelt. When it gets to the stage when I regularly need over 800g starter I'll get a bigger bucket for the wheat one, but every day I'm using at least 300g starter from the wheat jar, so it's kept refreshed very regularly.

I'm not sure my regime would work for you though - not unless you ran a split shift system - starter -> levian build at 3pm, mix/knead 8pm, scale/shape/bake @ 5-6am ... which gets my bread into the shops by 9am.

Good luck getting it sorted.

-Gordon

JonnyG's picture
JonnyG

Thanks Gordon and Trevor.  You have both confirmed some of my suspicions.  I think leaving it out of the fridge to revive it for a while to get it working is a great idea, also only keeping enough stock for a few batches, rather than huge amounts. 

Also, working a routine, our work day is from 3am to 11am, so when we prepare our starter its usually around 10am the day before we make the dough, so its usually sitting at room temperature for 17 hours or so.   

JonnyG's picture
JonnyG

...update...

I discarded quite a lot of starter, kept out of the fridge for around 4 hours. I fed 1:2:2 ratio then left it another 2 hours.
I then prepared our starter for our dough, I used 1lb starter, 1lb our, 1lb warmish water, and left overnight (17&1/2 hours)
In the morning I used 7lb flour, starter, 2oz salt 1oz dry gluten, 32 oz warmish water, mixed in spiral mixer on slow for around 3-4 minutes. Bulk fermentation was 2 &1/2 hours, then, scaled and shaped, rested 5 minutes and shaped into bannetons. There wasn't much more rise from them, so after another 3 hours I put them into our bread proover with a bit of dry heat this did help them rise a little bit more. Baked with steam at 260 for 15 mins, then at 230 for 20 mins or so.

We were really pleasantly surprised at the oven spring this time.

things are improving.

Trevor J Wilson's picture
Trevor J Wilson

I'm glad things are improving. But ideally you want to be able to get a good rise going. How did your starter look in the morning before you mixed it into the dough? Had it risen well?

Trevor

JonnyG's picture
JonnyG