The Fresh Loaf

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Spongy bread - theories?

preppymcprepperson's picture
preppymcprepperson

Spongy bread - theories?

So yesterday I tried to bake a 50% WW loaf at 68% hydration.

Autolysed the flour for an hour, mixed it by hand, and let it bulk ferment just 4.5 hours at which point it had grown to 2.5 times its initial volume and was bubbly all across its surface. Did 4x stretch and fold over the course of the bulk ferment. At the end of the 4 hours it was very elastic, but also so wet that when I poured it out on the counter it was almost as runny as cake batter, far too wet to take any kind of shaping. I decided it might be best as a tinned loaf, and got it into my oiled loaf tin. It expanded faster than I expected in the second proof (40 minutes) but it was a warm day, and so I slashed and baked. Usually a 500 gram loaf takes about 55 minutes in my oven; this one was in for almost 90 minutes at which point it clocked 205F on my thermometer. I took it out and let it cool overnight.

Sliced into it this morning and I'm confused. From the outside, it rose a bit in the oven but hadn't opened at the seams, so I was expecting density, maybe even a brick, inside. But instead it's got a lot of pea-sized holes all throughout the crumb. Yet somehow it still tastes 'wet' and spongy, like it wasn't cooked through, and it leaves a faint residue on my bread knife. Despite the fact that it was cooked for so long and was registering at over 200F on a thermometer. 

Thoughts?

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

If this was a yeasted dough (as opposed to a sourdough), 4.5 hours for the bulk ferment may actually be a little long for half whole wheat. It sounds a lot like the enzyme activity turned the dough to soup as will happen sometimes.

preppymcprepperson's picture
preppymcprepperson

Yeah, it was a yeasted dough. 50% WW isn't a ratio I make often so I don't have as much of an intuitive sense of it. My standard weekly bread is 75% whole wheat (80% hydration) and that takes about 5 hours on the bulk ferment, but it was warmer than usual in my house yesterday, so it may have gone too long.