January 16, 2017 - 11:51am
Flat wholemeal sourdough. What did I do wrong!?
Hello there. I am fairly new to sourdough (and this forum), so I apologise if this has been covered somewhere else.
I have been using a TFL pain de campagne with satisfactory results. My oven spring and crumb size is ok, but would like to improve. Scoring is always a bitch, which I thought may be due to under proofing or high hydration.
Anyway, I altered the above recipe as I wanted to mix things up and increase the amount of wholemeal (recipe below). It turned out very flat, flatter than anything I have baked before. Maybe it is over proofed, maybe my ratios are wrong? Any idea why this is happened? I cooked in my lodge dutch oven and it had doubled in size prior to baking. Oh, and I topped the loaf with the sifted hulls (see photo).
Levain- 35g starter (100% hydration)
- 70g water
- 70g whole
- All the levain above
- 245g water
- 1/4 tsp diastatic malt
- 35g rye
- 155g sifted whole
- 75g plain (AP)
- 80g strong white
- 7g salt
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Whole grain makes the yeast beasties super happy and the eat through that stuff faster than plain flour. So the gluten structure just couldn't hold up and your loaf collapsed.
Ah, that makes sense. Thinking about it, I pushed fermentation further than usual, plus is appeared collapsed when it hit the dutch oven. Will adjust for next time.
Thanks for the info!
If you usually feed your starter plain flour and then take a portion of it to build a dough with wholemeal flour, it could behave differently. As previously mentioned, there's more nutrition for your yeast to consume if you feed it a wholegrain flour so your cycle timings may be off. In my experience, a levain used after the preferred time window will not give you the results you want at all.
Thanks for the info Aly. My starter started off on strong white (maybe 4 months ago) and gradually moved it over to whole meal. I usually give my levain around 13 hours (during Winter) before adding to the main dough, although this time I left for longer as it seemed that there wasn't a lot of activity. Still learning :)
mill and whole grain flours don't need any so the addition of diastatic malt is probably not necessary. It is just going to make things run amuck rather than make things better. Just too much of a good thing. Red non diastatic malt would be great in this bread though - about 10 grams.
Thanks Mr DaBrownMan. I have been adding diastatic malt out of habit recently, even when using dried yeast. It seems to give the bread a nice malty taste. My 'diastatic malt' is crushed and sieved maris otter/2 row (beer malt). I will keep an eye out for non-diastatic red malt, but doubt I will come across it in the UK. Will omit from the next wholemeal bake and proof less.