Help with lighter crumb -Improvements made!
Hi all,
Firstly thankyou to everyone on this forum, it is my go-to for troubleshooting bread problems and there is a wealth of information to be found!
I've been having trouble getting as light a crumb as I would like, and the air pockets seem too small and regular. It also seems to be denser in the centre compared to the edges. After some research I've found that my bulk ferment was not long enough and extended it a fair bit. Resulting dough was beautifully textured and well behaved. I was happy with the crust and the flavour was good, however little change to the crumb. Any thoughts on what I could do to improve the crumb would be very much appreciated!
Recipe:
100g mature starter (100% hydration)
160g AP flour
160g bread flour
80g WW flour
9g salt
289ml water (75%)
-Autolyse 3 hours, add stater and salt, knead with stand mixer ~8mins
-Three rounds of S&F 40 minutes apart followed by bulk ferment in a cool kitchen, ~12 hours
-Preshape, shape and proof for three hours (last half hour in fridge)
-Bake in ceramic 'dutch oven' at 250C 20 mins, on wire rack for 20mins at 230C
looks like an old school lacy crumb to me. I love lacy crumb. Prefer it to huge non edible holes. In Ireland we'd say 'theres good eating in it'...
My only question is... at 25% starter how did you manage a 12 hour bulk ferment? Just how cold was your kitchen? I'd never get away with that.
Thanks folks.
There is plenty I like about this bake, and it certainly did not go to waste. I'm not necessarily after impractically large irregular holes (thought it would be nice to be able to achieve them), just some larger air pockets evenly throughout the loaf to lighten it. The centre is still quite dense and feels a bit tacky/gummy
Regarding the bulk fermentation- my kitchen was probably around 7-8C overnight. Total dough weight was 800g so around 12.5% starter. But yes, 25% starter by bakers percentage. Is that considered too high? Possibly my starter was a bit weak which slowed it down?
More starter is probably going to have a detrimental effect on crumb because the starter doesn't really have the gluten development ability in itself and you are starting with a large amount of levain in comparison to the total dough. I'd try something between 6-10% of total dough weight (in your case, 50-100g). Also, make sure your starter is healthy and active. Mine doubles or triples in about 4-6 hours after an overnight and morning feeding from the refrigerator.
Also, how strong are you making your folds? Maybe try stronger folds initially and backing off the amount of stretching for the last set of folds to reduce the amount of handling of the delicate air pockets.
Be gentle with the dough handling during pre-shape and shaping and give tension, but not overly so. Otherwise, your dough will be trying to push against the tension.
Finally, for gummy crumb, just extend the 2nd half of the bake and optionally lowering the temperature if you don't want a dark bake (425F, ~218C). Maybe for like 30-35 minutes. Then let the loaves sit in the oven with the door cracked and turned off for another 5 minutes to let it fully dry out.
Good luck!
Thanks Leftcoastloaf, I reduced the starter to 10% of total dough weight and extended the second half of the bake at a lower temperature which seems to have helped.
I also found that I was not proofing the dough anywhere near enough. I find the poke test very difficult, and there does not seem to be any difference between me poking it at the start or end of the fermentation. There seems to be some spring back and a small amount of lasting depression whenever I try it, so clearly I am doing something wrong!
Until I get that sorted I have tried to achieve the majority of my lift during the bulk where I can actually see and feel the amount of gas trapped in the dough. Shaping is done very gently, followed by a brief proof with some encouraging results. Still a little tighter in the centre compared to the edge, but far superior to the original image.
77%, 2:2:1 AP:BF:WW
Looking good!