The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Sourdough bread rose to much in the oven

Bothar252's picture
Bothar252

Sourdough bread rose to much in the oven

I successfully got a starter going after about two weeks of feeding I tried to make my first loaf of bread I kneaded it with a dough hook for about 10 minutes and put it aside to rise after about 45 minutes it had doubled in size.  this surprised me because everything that I read said that without commercial yeast the rising time would be longer.  I then knocked the dough down kneaded it and placed it into a bread pan and in about half an hour was an inch over the top so I heated the oven and put it in when I checked the bread 40 minutes later it had risen about 6in over the pan.  Why did this happen and would rising the bread three times instead of two help to prevent it?

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

Exactly.    Self-rising perhaps?    A bread mix instead of bread flour?

Bothar252's picture
Bothar252

Gold medal all purpose, should I be using bread flour?  

Portus's picture
Portus

..compared to total dough weight, and what hydration was the starter?

BreadBabies's picture
BreadBabies

Okay not really.  But take heart. This is a good problem to have.

Bothar252's picture
Bothar252

The book I used said to mix water and flour 1:1 for starter so that is what I did.  I keep hearing about percent hydration but not sure what that means.

Portus's picture
Portus

...  in the search box; plenty of words wiser than mine will reveal ;-).  Essentially hydration is water weight expressed as a % of flour weight in your starter, so 1:1 = 100%. 

What was the weight of your starter compared to the total recipe/dough weight?  it may just be that your starter was disproportionately large by comparison.

Bothar252's picture
Bothar252

I don't have a scale but have been considering one the recipe called for 2 cups starter at 100% hydration 2.5 cups flour and 1/2 cups water, but needed to add slightly more flour because dough was very sticky.

Portus's picture
Portus

A basic formula for a sourdough loaf is, by weight, I part 100% hydration starter, 2 parts water, 3 parts flour.  Converting cups/volume in a recipe to weight/grams can be a very random exercise.  But let's try these assumptions: cup 100% hydration starter = 240g, cup water = 250g and cup flour = 140g. 

So, whereas the basic formula would be 17% (1/6th) starter, 33% (2/6th) water and 50% (3/6th) flour, your recipe comes out at 50% starter, 13% water and 37% flour.  Thus it seems unsurprising that your bread rose as high and quickly as it did!  I would review the recipe for accuracy, though the overall dough hydration of 63% is about average for a loaf of bread.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

about right.  Especially with a high hydration starter.  Which is what the starter is if equal volumes of water and flour are in it.  Congratulations!   Everything is order!  I use AP or all purpose flour all the time... no problem there.  

Hydration is calculated by taking the water weight and dividing it by flour weight and then multiplying by 100 to get %.  Roughly one cup of flour (varies from person to person) is 130g and a cup of water about 240g  so if you want to figure hydration...  240 / 130 = 1.85       1.85 x 100 = 186% hydration  

A cup of starter is roughly 200g  so your recipe has 400g starter and (2.5 x 130) 260 flour with 120g water.  So you should be getting a fast rise with a ratio of 4 to 2.6   starter to flour.  That makes perfectly good sense.  :)

Portus's picture
Portus

... I missed the obvious "volume" rather than "weight" in the 100% hydration starter ;-)

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

of looking at it...  :)   

Bothar252's picture
Bothar252

The comments were helpful I will be getting a scale.