December 5, 2019 - 7:01am
Anyone familiar with this type of Splitting & remedies
Hi all,
Anyone here familiar with this type of splitting? Overall my loaves have been coming out consistently with a nice grigne and usually a decent ear, but every now and again I see this shape of split:
Also, this was NOT the seam side of the bread, the seam side of the boule was placed down in the dutch oven. This dough was bulk fermented about 9hrs between 80 and 70f until it tripled, then preshaped, shaped into boules, and proofed about 11hrs in the fridge in bannetons. I left them on the counter about an hour or 1.5 while the oven preheated. Any thoughts?
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They certainly look like shaping artifacts.
Looks like you used too much flour to dust your work surface, so when you did the letter-folds prior to shaping, the folds never joined or melded together properly. Plus there could have been an air bubble created, that when it expanded, pushed out the un-joined folds.
That the flour between the last folds never got reabsorbed into the dough during the 12.5 hours post shaping, could also indicate too low hydration in your formula. If you like the hydration as is, try using less flour during the final folding and shaping.
That sounds super plausible actually and would make sense because I did use flour on the bench for my shaping! The recipe for these was:
700g white bread flour
300g whole wheat
750g H2O
30g Salt
250g levain
So that would be about 77-78% hydration before I shaped etc. I also experimented with kneading the dough after the first S&F of Bulk so when flouring the bench for that (though I didn't use much) I could see another 40g or so working it's way into the dough... so maybe my final hydration was as low as 73% after kneading and the shaping process! Would that be low enough for the flour to not bind after a 9-10hr proof in the fridge? Thanks for the insight!
Based on the amount of white flour still sticking to the loaf after baking, if you were equally as generous with flour when doing the final fold and shaping, I can see how excess flour might have got into the folds.
That has happened to me, as I pull down the sides of the boule with cupped palms, pulling the skin tight, and moving the dough down and towards the center, it picks up flour as I tuck the dough in towards the center.
However, I usually work with rather wet dough, so it eventually hydrates/absorbs and fuses all together. But, I can sometimes see those fold boundaries when I cut open the baked loaf.
Your hydration percent seems okay if your levain is all white flour, and at 100 % hydration. But based on the ear or score line, it does look like your dough dried out a lot during bulk ferment and during proofing in the fridge. Did you cover the banneton with plastic to help reduce moisture loss in the fridge?
Also, your salt % looks high, assuming 100% hydration levain: 30 / (700 + 300 + 125) = 2.66%
I've seen bread formulas for as much as 2.5%, but they were for high hydration mostly whole wheat dough.
Salt tends to sequester water. Is that the right word?
At only 30% whole wheat, I would have thought you'd want to stay more near 2.0% salt. So, in that sense, you had 7.5 g more salt than theoretically needed, and I could see how that might have affected the flour getting the moisture it needed at shaping time.
It's also possible your flour had lost some of it's natural moisture by not being sealed up sufficiently while just being stored.
So those are my guesses: 1) go easier on the added flour at fold/shape/dust time, 2) up the hydration by 2 percentage points, 3) back the salt down closer to 2%, 4) avoid creating air pockets during fold and shape.
Bon appetit.
Thanks for the advice friend, I'm interested on how you're saying the flour types in the levain may affect moisture levels in the dough (my go-to starter is 50/50 White and Dark rye, I keep a white starter for the occasional baguette bake or pure white sourdough but I tend to favor blonde and ww loaves for our daily bread around the house). Can you elaborate on that?
And yes, I do tend to like the flavor of breads higher in salt content (I used to bake consistent boules around 3% that came out awesome but I cut back to help my young starter along). Of course that's more a matter of preference but I've found its another way to help retard the bulk ferment when I don't want to cool it down.
I did bulk ferment this loaf warm in the oven for most of it's bulk with a damp kitchen towel over the bowl instead of plastic so I could see what you're saying as far as drying out. What signs are you looking for to show that when you're looking at the score-mark? These loaves did their proof in a banneton wrapped in a plastic bag so I don't imagine it happened there. I'll be doing another bake this weekend I imagine so I'll take your advice and try to post some pictures!
Thanks!
Whole grain flours are thirstier than white flour.
suppose, just for a starting point, that your white flour needs 72% hydration to make a good loaf, and your whole grain flour needs 88%.
You have 700 g white flour: 700 * .72 = needs 504 g water in the total dough.
The 300 g whole wheat flour needs 300 * .88 = 264 g water in the total dough.
if your 250 g levain has 125 g water and 125 g white flour, that white flour needs 125*.72= 90 g water in the total dough.
So your total water would need to be 504+264+90 = 858.
If your 250 g levain has 125 g water and 125 g of whole grain, that flour needs 125*.88= 110 g water in the total dough.
Hence, you'd need 20 g more water in the total dough. And that's merely because a slightly larger percentage of the total dough was thirstier whole grain.
since you're levain was 50/50 white and whole grain ("dark" rye is usually whole grain), then the difference would be only 10 g more water needed compared to an all white flour levain.
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if the starter was 100% hydration then you had, 750 + 125 = 875 g total water. Which is in range. But it would not have been a very wet dough. And if the dough lost moisture during fermenting and proofing or too much flour snuck in during fold/shape or what was used to dust the banneton, then it would have been too dry.
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Breaking it down like this (how much does white flour need, and how much does whole grain need, for your individual method) is also useful for estimating a starting hydration amount when asking "How much water would I want for a 50% whole grain loaf, or a 75% whole grain loaf?" Maybe not exact, but a ball-park figure.
in the second picture, top view, the edges of the score line, both sides, indicate a thick dry skin to me. The "cut", after baking, is too clean, sharp and defined. It even looks like the thick dry skin has pulled away somewhat from the inner moister crumb. At least that's my interpretation.
Just keep one white starter and use it for everything. I have recent proof that the starter does not care what you feed it so long as the amylase can break down the starch and make maltose.
See this post from earlier this evening for the data.
When you were shaping, the folds were too dry to bond face-to-face and remained that way all the way through proof and baking. And when the slash opened, the individual layers could slide separately rather than expanding as a single mass. Actually kind of decorative. There is a loaf that is really beautiful that is made with a boule inside a sheet of dough that is then slashed carefully to get the design you want. I remember seeing it on the Home Page a few years ago. Really spectacular. If you work on it, this might become a rival.
Your dough is stiff enough to shape without much flour on the bench at all, and you may want to take the hydration up a point or two also.