Poor gluten development?
I've been trying to make a Tartine loaf for about seven months now and am still struggling to get any consistency. I'm not used to working with high hydration doughs (this is 85%) and so maybe I am overlooking something.
After the bulk fermentation it's usually pretty clear that my dough doesn't have the consistency I've seen in some of the videos of Chad Robertson. See this video at 2:30 for what the dough is supposed to look like ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIIjV6s-0cA [1] ).
Here is a picture of my dough after bulk fermentation. It is not smooth like Chad's, it's lumpy and grainy, and has very poor gluten development:
This is actually the 10% Rye loaf, which is similar to the one in the video but substitutes 10% rye flour for some of the bread flour. I've had similar issues with the country loaf in the video but this is a particularly bad example.
I think the lumpy texture is due to underdevelopment of the gluten? Usually I knead with the dough hook for 5min or so and the dough has a much better consistency. This time I followed the instructions in the book and only mixed until incorporated, leading to this lumpy mess. The reason I did this is because I can never get a really open crumb structure and I thought maybe the kneeding was making things too tough prohibiting oven spring.
One thing I did do is that I put the dough in the refrigerator after bulk fermentation for 3 hours. I don't think that should have this effect though? Here's some details on my process for this loaf:
* Mix until incorporated (no kneeding), let dough rest @80-deg for 45min, add salt and hand kneed for a few minutes.
* Bulk fermentation ~3.5hrs @80-deg folding the dough every 20-30 minutes
* Put in refrigerator for 3hrs (it rose quite a bit in the fridge)
* Divided dough and took the picture above
* Shape, final rise for 3hrs, cook
I got no oven spring out of this one, it's a dud...
Frustrated,
Jason