April 9, 2020 - 3:57pm
Floppy dough after shaping
I have been making my way through Ken Forbish's Flour Water Salt Yeast. My problem arises at the shaping stage. I follow the instructions for folding the dough and then pulling the ball toward me on a surface that grips the dough, but it never forms a firm ball. After proofing, when the dough is ready to be put in the oven, it is quite loose and floppy--not a nice firm ball.
Today I used biga for the first time, and after proofing, when I picked up the dough to put into the dutch oven, it practically oozed off of my hands.
What am I doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Could be a few things, but more notably, you're not looking for a firm dough in many of Ken Forkish's recipes. They have a lot of water in them, generally above 75% hydration. Do you have a picture of your finished bread?
Thank you for your comment. In Forbish's pictures, the dough always seems to make a nice, firm ball. My dough ends up like a thick domed pancake. Below is the finished bread.
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Feel free to cut back on the water. It won’t hurt your bread.
I baked my way through his book and I was very fortunate to have similar flour and room temperature. My bread always turned out. Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case for many people. Base your proofing times on his descriptions rather than times and cut back on the water. That will help a lot.
When you get to making your own sourdough starter, do yourself a favour and come here to look up the pineapple solution. You will save yourself kilos of flour, not to mention a lot of frustration. Once you got your starter going, just feed it enough to make what you need for the recipe and to save some for the next bake. I love Forkish’s book and recipes, but he sure wastes a lot of flour!
Thank you very much for your comment. I'll have to try less water. I usually use King Arthur's unbleached white flour. What brand of flour do you use? Your advice sounds like it would make for a more structured dough at the end. The bread ends up tasting pretty good and doesn't look terrible, but it's often unpromising looking prior to baking.
The pineapple solution? How did it get that name? Someone on this site a long time ago suggested something similar. I've never understood why tons of flour much be discarded in the making of starter. It's been compared to "spent fuel," but since any portion of the starter can continue to be used, it's clearly not "spent."
And we have amazing flour. I use a strong bakers unbleached flour that is made by Ardent Mills.
The pineapple thing is a couple of posts that detail out what happens when you make a starter. It uses pineapple juice instead of water for the first couple of days to make the solution acidic enough for the right bacteria to grow more quickly than straight water. When I did it, it never went through the “stinky stage”. Do find those posts as they are super informative.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10856/pineapple-juice-solution-part-1
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/10901/pineapple-juice-solution-part-2
Thanks! I will do that.
Btw, I love Canada!
My first thought when reading about your situation (Forkish recipe, floppy dough) was that you have joined the ranks of those who followed the time lines in FWSY. For many of us, letting dough go through a bulk fermentation anywhere near as long as he sets forth in his book will result in a slurry that is not capable of being formed into anything. (Been there, done that.) The dough will have broken down and lost any structure that it once had.
The solution is to watch the dough and not the clock. Part of baking is learning how to judge the time to transition from one phase to the next. Stop the bulk fermentation too soon, and you will lose some gluten development; stop it too late and you will jeopardize the ability of the dough to rise. It is all part of the process that makes a nice loaf so satisfying.
My suggestion is to do the same recipe again, but this time keep an eye on the dough.
Happy baking -- and stay safe and healthy.
Ted
Thats why bread bakking is a art.
Thanks very much for the advice. That's interesting about potentially too long bulk fermentation, I go by how much the dough has risen and whether it looks sufficiently bubbly. How do you judge besides those criteria?
I'm also going to try less water, as per the commenter above.
To determine when to shut off the bulk fermentation and move on to pre-shaping, I do go by the increase in size of the mass of dough and whether bubbles have formed (especially on the sides and bottom -- I use a transparent Cambro tub). In addition, I know from the feel of the dough during the final stretch-and-fold how it was progressing, and I note how long it takes for the dough then to spread out in the container (slower spread is an indication of getting to the right point).
What you described, however, sounds like a situation where the bulk fermentation had gone too far. It is also possible that you are not sufficiently mixing your dough at the outset. My shaping improved greatly when my initial mixing developed more gluten. For that I watched videos by Trevor J. Wilson and realized that I was getting the dough wet, but was not working it enough at the outset. The difference was pretty striking.
Happy baking.
Ted
Thank you, Ted. It's possible I've let the bulk fermentation go on too long. I've been following Forkish's timelines, as well as attending to how much the dough has risen and is bubbling.
During the initial phases, I mix pretty well with a lot of pinch method and folding. When I do the folds, I don't just go around once, as Forkish seems to advise, but twice or even more during each fold. Perhaps I should do more of that, if the dough feels too loose. I'll watch the video you recommend. Thanks for taking the time to advise!