Soupy dough!
Hi everyone, this is not the first time an issue like this has been posted before, and I think I more or less can guess the problem, but I thought it would be good to lay it out and get opinions from more experienced bakers.
Background: I have been baking sourdough for a while, since 2016. After a whole string of failures I suddenly managed to bake my first successful loaf, and it's been great ever since. I have had problems from time to time of course, but I reached a point where I'm pretty comfortable and confident in my baking.
Today though... I had soupy dough.
The dough formula - 80% bread flour, 10% AP flour, 10% rye flour; 75% hydration; 20% levain. Short autolyse for 20 mins, then I added salt and gave it a couple of stretch and folds before putting it in the bowl to bulk ferment. The dough was looking nice and good and strong at this point. Due to timing issues, I didn't do more s&f during the BF (which I have done before, with okay results).
I was shooting for about 5 hours bulk fermentation at RT, which from past experience was fine. I ended up overshooting this slightly to 6.5 hours instead. This is where I got the soupy dough.
After reading some threads, it seems the cause is overfermentation - so I can definitely point to the extended bulk fermentation (coupled with the levain percentage).
However, some questions I wasn't sure of:
1) Could it also be a starter issue, ie. is it possible that a not so healthy starter could cause the problem?
2) On that note, could the flour also be an issue? Since the pandemic broke out, it has been harder for me to find the usual trusty King Arthur Flour (I live in Asia). For this bake, I used a "stoneground white baker's flour" from Australia that I was trying for the first time. I have also been using it to feed my starter and I noticed it hasn't been rising like before (it will still at least double, but not as high as before and the texture is a bit more soupy than tacky).
Is it possible that certain flours would degrade faster than others, whether because of protein percentage or some other reason? I did not think it would be an issue when I bought it, since it was labelled as baker's flour. :(
Apologies for the long post and thank you in advance to anyone who can share some insights!
1 - yes, but without more info can't say, so what's its feed and schedule and everything else.
2 - could be but it would have to be pretty bad, and believe it or not that's pretty rare.
1) I usually keep my starter in the fridge. For this bake, I had taken it out and given it two feeds on a 1:2:2 ratio (using the same baker's flour) (about 8-hour interval). For the "final" feed I did a higher ratio 1:4:4 feed to build more of a levain over a longer period of time (about 12 hours). At the point of use the starter looks like it had fallen from peak - it smelled sour but not overly so. (I usually use a starter either at peak or slightly over.)
As mentioned in the original post, the starter's behaviour was not too different from normal but it did not rise as high as before and the texture did not feel as nice, which is why I am now suspecting if maybe I need to look into the health of the starter.
2) I appreciate that - I dont mean that the flour is bad, but I just wonder if differences in type of wheat could cause differing fermentation behaviour. I'd assumed there wouldnt be too much difference, but I have been baking with this starter for a long time and I have not encountered a problem like this in a while, and I wonder if the flour is a key variable here.
1 - it sounds like the starter was ok, but the part about not rising as high and loss of consistency, which could also be different flour (probably is), could also be a sign of an out of balance starter. Too acidic and gluten formation gets inhibited and a bowl of soup is usually the end result. A starter can get this way over time with a slight deficit of food.
2 - oh yeah, different wheat, hence different flour can make a big difference. What's the protein content?. Ka ap is 12%, but that's not the end of the story. That's a sign of how much gluten may be formed, but doesn't tell us anything about the quality of the gluten. Ie, hard/winter wheat has more and stronger gluten. Soft/summer wheat the opposite. The latter would be more sensitive to a little over proof/ferment in the same time frames.
Try again, maybe less starter to keep close to original timings or less ferment/proof time to keep same starter amount - something like that. Changing a major component of anything is bound to cause some change in the norm, here it is. Enjoy!
But a couple of things stand out. First, is the the first time you have used rye flour in a dough? Rye ferments much faster than wheat, especially if you used whole rye. That extra 1.5 hours of BF may have done it in.
You also changed your white flour. I don’t know a thing about Australian flours, but it may not have the same protein content or protein structures as the KA flour, and it may not be able to take the same hydration. Did your dough seem to have the same strength as dough with your previous bakes? Your experience with the comparative growth of your starter with the new flour would imply not. You may need to cut back a bit on the hydration to achieve a comparable dough.
-Brad
Thanks Brad. I don't think the rye is likely to be the main cause because I have used rye in higher percentages before (eg. 15-20%) and it hasn't caused this type of issue. But you may have a point about it being a contributing factor to the over fermentation.
The hydration is a good point too. It definitely didn't have the same strength as previous doughs I have worked with. I have a little bit of this flour left so I'll try using it to feed the starter at a lower hydration ratio and see if it behaves differently then.
It's hard to know for certain without more info, but from what you have posted, over-fermentation seems like the likely diagnosis. If that is a very likely explanation, I'm not sure that second-guessing your starter or flour should occupy a lot of your time and attention. Another loaf with the same starter and more carefully managed BF will quickly answer the starter question. Whenever things are off for me, I go with a process of elimination to problem solve. By your own reckoning you went over your usual BF time, so the next step is to try again without the time slip. The next loaf will tell you if that was the issue. If it still has some trouble or is not like past bakes, that would for me be the moment to start thinking about starter. One step at a time trouble-shooting can try your patience, but it's the best trouble-shooting method I know of. Good luck with the next bake!
I'm betting that the difference in performance is due to the Aussie flour. See the links in a previous comment of mine, that link to an Australian bread-baking web site.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/442575#comment-442575
What you need to know about Australian flour is in the links in that comment.
If you carefully read the ingredients and specifications of your flour, then you can match it to what is talked about in those links.
It could go either way: you might need to add diastatic malt, or... else treat that flour as partial whole wheat.