Trouble with Hamelman's Sourdough Preferment
In reference to the Whole Rye recipe on page 210 of Hamelman's 2nd edition.
The sourdough preferment was prepared and incubated as directed from a very active all rye sourdough culture (his recipe) that was at the height of vitality when used to make the preferment.
The preferment just lay in the bowl with no perceptible expansion. No evidence of unmonitored rise and then collapse.
It incubated overnight (8 hr.) at 68-70 F, (then inspected) then the next nine hours at 70-76 F as the day warmed up. I let it run for 24 hours, no change in the very dense, inert mass at the bottom of the bowl. I refrigerated it, hoping to use it for something else but threw it out the next day, noticing a collection of honeycombed bubbles and a looser consistency involving the bottom 1/3 of the culture.
I used very fine, whole rye organic flour.
I googled "hamelman" and "sourdough" for this website and got 3000+ hits, so, although this question must have been asked before, I cannot access it: it is 'concealed by virtue of dilution'.
I have made most of the breads in the yeasted and levain portions of his book with v. good success (except for the sunflower seed bread with pate fermentee, which others have also had trouble baking), so I have some experience with his recipes.
I can switch to Mini's recipe or another, but I thought that 5% inoculation was much too sparse and I would like to be successful in his rye paradigm.
BB