Help troubleshooting my first attempt at a sponge
Hi! Newly obsessed, first time poster. I'm hoping someone can help me troubleshoot my experiment with a sponge.
So I thought I made a pretty much spot on sandwich loaf from lesson 1 of abreaducation (https://www.abreaducation.com/content/lesson1-first-loaf).
After making a couple of these, I read through (all but the recipes) the BBA. Then looked at Reinhart's white bread recipe (variation 3 with the sponge), and attempted to apply the principles of his white bread sponge variation, plus some stuff I read online about sponges, to this abreaducation loaf.
To that end, I made a 100% hydration sponge with bread flour, water, and yeast (I used all of the water from the recipe, and an equal weight in flour), and let it sit at room temperature for 5 hours. Then I put in the rest of the flour and other ingredients, and proceeded as I usually do, with everything else being the same.
The picture shows the results of this experiment. The left is the original. The right is with the sponge.
The taste is better with the sponge. The crumb is chewier, slightly sour, and a hint of sweetness. Even though the taste of this new loaf is very mild, when tasted side by side, it makes the original loaf seem almost tasteless. However, it came out denser of course, because of its failure to rise (the failure to rise was in the proofing stage, the oven spring I think adding an inch or so of height in both cases).
I feel there’s another hint. The crust didn’t brown nearly as much on the sponge-based loaf. I think this is telling me there was less sugar in the final dough maybe (so less caramelization)? I wonder why it ended up tasting a little sweeter to me. Maybe the little bit of sourness brings out the sweetness and makes it more noticeable?
So this was kind of a naive attempt. What do you guys think went wrong? I tried to keep everything else exactly the same, so I’m guessing I did the sponge incorrectly?
Nice to have you on board.
Here's a couple of thoughts. For a sponge, and by no means is this a steadfast rule, for best results up to 50% of the flour is the norm. If you have used the recipe in the link and used all the water then for the flour you must have used more than 50%.
You then used all the yeast if I'm correct. This would be fast sponge - or a flying sponge. Should have taken quicker but you left it for 5 hours.
If I were to approach this recipe incorporating a sponge I'd probably do something like 50% of the flour with its equal weight in water. Then if using fresh yeast I'd use 1% of the flour in the sponge or divide by 3 if using dried yeast. Then let ferment all night, about 8-10 hours. Come the morning I would then add the rest of the ingredients and an optional pinch of yeast. It wouldn't need the extra yeast but if you're strapped for time then to speed things up a bit you can add a little.
Yeah, you're absolutely correct. The sponge was about 66% of the total flour. I didn't know about the 50% norm...I'll keep that in mind!
I left it for 5 hours because I had to go out and do something for those 5 hours, so I wasn't actually watching the sponge develop. It may very well have peaked early, which would be consistent with what you're saying.
So I guess the final theory is that the yeast exhausted the food supply? So next time, either don't let the sponge go for so long, or reduce the amount of yeast. I'll follow your specific suggestion and see how that goes, and play with it from there. Hopefully, I can find some time to actually be around to observe the sponge develop.
Thanks!
How much yeast are you adding to the sponge and to the main ferment?
Also I notice that in the recipe you link to, the instant yeast is added to the liquid. It is better to mix it with the flour before hydrating. If you do wish to add it to the water, then you should mix it with a small quantity of water at 100 F and leave to stand for 10 minutes ( a process known as rehydrating), before adding to the rest of the water at 76F.
Adding it directly to 76F water may reduce its activity.
Lance
I added 100% of the yeast to the sponge. No additional yeast went into the main ferment.
Good to know about the yeast. Somewhat related, is it okay to add the instant yeast to the flour, mix thoroughly, and then also salt to the flour/yeast mixture, before hydrating? Or should the salt be added after hydrating? I read that concentrated salt will kill yeast. I'm not sure if adding salt to a flour/yeast mixture (assuming the flour and yeast is well-mixed) counts for that.
Yes, no issues doing it that way. There's a lot of confusion about yeast and salt. You could actually mix dry yeast with dry salt and no harm would come to it, short term. (not that you would want to); but as soon as you add moisture, the dissolved salt would seriously damage the yeast.
I'd redo your loaf, following Lechem's excellent linked sponge post.
Lance
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/54099/bakers-math-trying-use-sponge
Overproofed the sponge (poolish), probably.