The Fresh Loaf

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First Real SD Loaf Turned Out Like a Brick!

philm63's picture
philm63

First Real SD Loaf Turned Out Like a Brick!

Ok, so I thought I'd try some new "more advanced" techniques (this normally gets me into trouble!) and, well... things didn't go exactly as planned. Here's the story...

I've had a starter going for a few months now (all AP @ 100%) from which I build my levain for each bake. Until this past weekend I was baking only regular ol' white bread in a 1.5 Lb loaf pan and have been experiencing increasing success with my loaves getting better each time - learning curve not too steep - progressing nicely. The only advanced techniques I'd been using thus far, in my humble opinion, were maintaining a starter, building a levain, and working with increasingly higher and higher hydration dough (my "white bread" is up to 70%).

So I decided it's time to pull all the stops (this also normally gets me into trouble...) and make a full-blown sourdough loaf. I procured an earthenware bread dome (basically a clay Dutch oven) and researched a recipe that looked like something I could make, and off I went.

This one involved several new "advanced" techniques but I though what the heck - if I'm gonna do this I may as well go big. It was a recipe for two 900g loaves so I halved it because I really only wanted to try this out on one loaf. It involved building the levain - check. It was a 78% hydration recipe - challenge accepted. But it also included a 4-hour autolyse step - never done THAT before... and a bulk ferment stage - never done THAT before... and shaping the dough - never done THAT before... and an overnight proof in the fridge in my new banneton - never done THAT before... and baking in a Dutch oven - never done THAT before... Learning curve all of the sudden got real steep!

Most of the process went seemingly fine, but I think I've got some work to do on my hand-mixing - wound up with lumps in the dough after the autolyse step - guess I didn't mix it well enough. Then the bulk-fermentation step; that seemed to go OK but I was asking myself if I was doing those stretch-and-folds correctly the whole time... maybe, maybe not? Again; more work to do to get the "feel" for the dough and be able to tell when it is properly developed. 

Slash, cover and bake. Internal temp = 211 F - done! Fast-forward to a cooled loaf, er, uh... brick! "Well, it kinda looks pretty..." I thought to myself, reevaluating that thought and settling on the inevitable conclusion that the loaf appeared much smaller than I anticipated considering the 900g of dough that went into it. Felt relatively heavy, too. What happened?

So I sliced into it to see what it looked like. Gummy. Dense. What's a good word for NOT light and fluffy? Yeah, that's it! What went wrong?

What I think: The dough did not seem to rise as much as I expected. The levain went swimmingly, the flour was fresh, the water good, the proportions were according to the recipe to the gram, temperatures were measured and monitored throughout the process. Seems my levain just didn't do its job like I expected. Maybe it was too little an amount of levain for that cold of a retard?

Recipe - One 900g Boule:

460g AP Flour

350g Water

10g Kosher Salt

90g Levain (at 100% Hydration - 6 hours old - single-stage - AP Mother fed with 50/50 AP and WW - 1:2:2)

The recipe showed 78% Hydration, and used 10% levain.

Should I be using a higher percentage than 10% for the levain if proofing at 37 F? I've done an overnight on-the-counter proof (72 F) with around 10% levain with excellent results. Are any other issues popping out at anyone?

Maybe I didn't develop the dough well enough...?

 

 

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

I make my family wait a minimum of two hours and preferably 8 hours before slicing. That allows the moisture to redistribute within the loaf and prevents gumminess. 

The other thing is that you might not have baked it long enough. I bake till I get a minimum internal temperature of at least 205 and usually closer to 210F. 

joc1954's picture
joc1954

what went wrong. From your description it looks like the dough was overfermented (guess of course) with 4 hour autolyse. Was the autolyse together with levain or just water and flour? 

The retarded dough in the fridge takes a while - at least several hours if proofed in a wooden banneton - to cool to the temperature in the fridge. So retarding most likely was not the problem and with underproofed dough you would still get much better results. Obviously there was almost no oven spring as the result was a "brick" what again would lead me to the conclusion that due to overfermentation the gluten network started to fall apart and the dough didn't get the texture you were expecting. Poor shaping can contribute to almost no oven spring but still not so much that the result would be as you describe.

During the bench rest was the dough tearing or was it tearing when you shaped it?  How runny was the dough as it was @78% hydration? 

For the next try I would suggest you to decrease the hydration for 3-5% and be more in safe water regarding what you are familiar with from your previous baking. High hydration at the beginning causes a lot of failures and disappointments so it is better to start with lower hydration and gradually increase it while getting more familiar with high hydrated dough.

Just my two cents!

Happy baking, Joze 

 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

in the bulk-fermentation step:

Observations:  A 4 hour autolyse is usually done with whole wheat and instant yeast but not always.  My guess based on the posting would be that the bulk rise/retard wasn't long enough, too little information.  need to know more about the timing and details, when the folding was done etc.  When did you add the salt?

The dough hydration seems terribly high.  Especially when you write you had to work up to 70% on earlier loaves.  Could be the AP just isn't absorbent or sturdy enough for higher hydration, would be totally different with a higher percent gluten bread flour.  What's the name, protein and fibre content of the AP?

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

Why would this loaf be more "Real SD loaf" than the others you baked using the SD starter?  

Maverick's picture
Maverick

78% is way too high to be dealing with in this case. Especially with all AP flour. Drop the hydration by 10% and give it another go (so closer to 300g water). What you were dealing with is basically what I use for my ciabatta (but I use commercial yeast for that one). Don't get me wrong, I know people push the envelope like that, but I wouldn't recommend it until you have some good practice.

f you want to go higher in hydration, I would say a 1-2-3 sourdough is about as far as I would push it to start (71.4% hydration). Take 1 part starter (or levain), use 2 parts water, and 3 parts flour. Then add 2% salt of either the flour portion or the total flour including the flour in the starter (I prefer the latter). Personally, I prefer bread flour for the 1-2-3 sourdough, but have used AP flour.

Example:

125g starter
250g water
375g flour
9g salt (really 8.75g, but rounded up)

Total dough weight: 759g

This is 71.4% hydration with 14.3% pre-fermented flour

philm63's picture
philm63

...and the AP was KA. 

Salt was added to a small portion of water held from the autolyse step, and was added to the dough after the levain was incorporated just before bulk ferment.

Bulk ferment was 4 hours with 4 sets of 4 stretch-n-folds spaced by 30 minutes, then a rest for the remaining time. 

Retard in the fridge was 16 hours at 37 F after shaping and putting into the banneton - no rest between shaping and the fridge.

It cooled for several hours before I decided to slice into it - I waited to be sure the moisture had redistributed as much as it was likely going to.

Perhaps the flour, as suggested, was not up to the task for a 78% hydration level. Can I use Bread Flour instead and still do the 78%, or are the prevailing suggestions still to start lower at, say, 73%-ish and work my way up?

Jane Dough's picture
Jane Dough

It is so often the same story. Everyone wants to make their bread with maximum hydration right away.   It seems there is a belief that the best bread can only be made with 75%+ hydration. In the years I have been reading these forums pretty much daily you see it again and again. There are a few people - I was not one of them  - that can handle high hydration dough very early on in their dive into bread baking.  In actual fact it is a much more gradual process.  It takes practice and a knowledge of your flour to achieve satisfaction with a higher hydration.  

In retrospect i would have been much easier on myself had I realized that earlier. As it was I eventually figured it out and began to make lovely loaves with less hydration.  Once you can do that it's time to start adjusting your hydration. 

Ps...  I'd consider dropping the hydration to 70%.  That's still plenty wet.  You could go lower yet. 

Maverick's picture
Maverick

Totally agree with this. One other thing is that everyone seems to want to do this higher hydration with a sourdough starter. Why not try your hand at one that uses commercial yeast first? It is not exactly the same, but at least you can see how things are supposed to progress. Just use between 0.25 and 0.3% instant yeast and things will still go slower. I would also recommend a poolish though.

Oh, and another thing is that everyone seems to want to try the high hydration with all white flour. Whole wheat absorbs a lot more water, so the dough acts differently when you add some whole wheat to it (I like to add some rye for the extra "sour" taste).

philm63's picture
philm63

..when I decided to do this, but that's also how I learned to brew all-grain - dove right in and started doing it, learning along the way. This is also why I did not go into this bread baking thing alone - I've got all of you fine folks and your experiences to tap into every step of the way. I feel like you've got my back and will help steer me in the right direction. Much appreciated.

Ok, so lower hydration, and perhaps an adjustment on the types of flour I use. I do have some nice organic rye flour, and some Bob's Red Mill WW in the pantry. 

And to Mini - you're right; my regular ol' white bread does in fact use SD starter, and my white bread does have just a hint of sourness to it, so I suppose I should call it as it is - sourdough.

I see so many SD recipes on-line, and for beer; I've always been one to develop my own recipes from scratch so I'd really like to try my hand with bread recipes, too. My regular white bread loaves are of my own recipe, but really it's just someone else's recipe tweaked to my liking.

So, that 1-2-3 looks interesting, perhaps I'll give that a whirl at 70%, maybe even experiment with different flours. Any ideas for a good beginning ratio of AP/WW/Rye? Fermenting time? Levain build and %? Proofing/retarding temperature/time? Yes; I want to steal your recipes and make them my own!

Arjon's picture
Arjon

You might want to consider starting your non-pan learning curve from square one, maybe something like an all-AP or BF loaf with 65% hydration. This will give you a dough that isn't too hard to handle, which is a good thing when you're learning to shape, which is more important when you're making free-standing loaves. And starting with all-AP or BF will give you a baseline that will let you see how differently your dough feels and handles when you substitute part-rye, WW, etc.

After you gain a feel for various flour blends, you can try raising the hydration - or vice versa, but in keeping with the KISS / step by step learning approach, it's more straightforward to do one at a time, not both together. It's not as if we're talking about hundreds more loaves; more like a dozen, maybe two. 

Filomatic's picture
Filomatic

As a former brewer, the comparison ends with the passion for working with yeast to make magical transformations.  You can start at all grain brewing if you have a good setup, and it's only slightly more difficult than syrup or partial mash.

But with bread there are many variables and steps that take time to learn, and the bench work is not easy.  So I agree with Mini that you should practice at 70% hydration until you get consistent results.  I bake quite a bit from Hamelman's Bread, and after I started having regular success, I began adding hydration to the dough on the fly, and incorporating other methods learned here or in other books.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

up and let the wee beasties win.  Better to keep at it and make then pay with their lives baked into a great loaf of sourdough bread even if it takes a bit of learning curve,  If I can do it so can you!  The rewards cone to those that wait for success!

Happy SD baking 

philm63's picture
philm63

...a lot with this exercise, as was my intent. Several new and important techniques were experienced and while I am no where near mastering any one of them, my feet are wet now and there's no turning back. Those beasties are in for it, now! Let the fun begin...