Dough forming problem
Hi! I've been growing my own starter and baking a few loaves of sourdough for around 3 months and the more I bake the more i start to see the nuances of it all. Recently, I have noticed how I am never able to come up with a cohesive dough (flour+water+starter). Whenever, I've mixed it all together its always appears really wet compared to pictures/videos that Im referring to when making certain bread with my sourdough starter. Here's the journey of trying to fix my problem:
1. Not kneading enough
I realized after my first few loaves that I wasnt kneading at all which made the crumb of my sourdough more akin to cake then something thats more open that I really hoped for. So i started searching different ways and I learned that this helps develop gluten and is what makes the dough so smooth and plump prior to fermenting, baking etc. So I tried slap & fold for a sourdough donut recipe ( a bit brioche-y) and it worked without me trying to add flour in the middle although it took really long. However, when I tried it with other recipes, the mixture remained wet and I couldn't get it to that point of smoothness and cohesiveness. The picture I uploaded was honestly a surprise to me and the only bread that came out ok. I used the same methods but I had to add flour in the middle of the kneading. I guess the problem with this one is that it didnt really expand? So i thought it could be the climate in my country (Philippines) and I had to more conscious of how much water mix in. Note: i bulk ferment for roughly 4 hours with stretch and folds every 30min than cold ferment overnight.
2. Adding less water due to humid climate
Pretty self explanatory but it didnt work either. My mixture remained a mixture despite slap & folds, stretch & folds, "hooking" the dough with my hands and going at it back and forth stretching and pressing it back (this sort of worked but only to a certain extent. It could stretch well but it would still rip sometimes or it was still lumpy and not smooth)
So now I'm concluding that maybe my starter is the problem. I've been feeding it 1:1:1 for a while now and then tried 1:2:2 but it didnt feel right since its was incredibly liquid which I thought would be counter intuitive to what I was trying to achieve (please correct me if I am wrong to think that the starters should be more viscous or anything)
Would really appreciate comments and feedback. I feel like I've researched too much on my own and lost my way. Looking to somehow empty my cup on this matter and hopefully start marking great sourdough and bread. Thanks
Feel free to add less water in your starter if it's hot and humid. I personally would feed 1 : 3.5 : 3 (10g starter, 35g flour, 30g water) in the summer when my room temp is above 25C and finds the consistency easier to manage and avoid terrible over-fermentation of the levain.
I do have to say during the sub-tropical climate (what we get at Eastern China) it's very easy to miss the mature point of a levain. And when I am scared that the levain will over-ferment, I usually use it before it collapses, which result in under-fermented bread. Adding a bit more flour makes it grow slower but you will also have a longer time period that it's mature but not too mature that it becomes overly acidic. You can try it out to see how your starter reacts, and figure out the best ratio to feed your starter :) Hope that helps!
Perhaps the flour you're using is on the weaker side and/or you're still not kneading it enough. If you're doing it by hand, it takes a good half hour to get a smooth, elastic dough that doesn't stick to the counter, it's a workout!