Clammy/rubbery sourdough crumb
First of all, hello! I've been lurking for a few months since starting my new found hobby. I'm a new baker but I've been reading mostly about the techniques and science behind bread as opposed to blindly following recipes (hence my name). Because of that, I've had a lot of good breads come out of my oven. Stuff that I'm surprised by... with the exception of my sourdough.
I have tried 4 or 5 times now to get a 75% hydration sourdough to come out to my liking, but clearly my understanding of how to make sourdough is missing something. My yeasted 75% doughs come out amazingly so I'm sure that my technique for handling a sticky dough works.
I've tried quite a few permutations of ferment times, and gluten-forming techniques. Slap and fold, stretch and folds, long warm ferments, short warm with long cool ferments, 20%, 10%, 0% whole wheat. In all cases, the bread has come out with a rock-hard crust and a dense, sticky/rubbery crumb.
The most recent experiment:
100% KA Bread Flour
75% water
20% fed starter (50% white/50% rye 100% hydration at the peak of rising)
2% water salt
I made a small batch (325g flour) because I hadn't made a large batch of levain, plus this was more about the experiment than making bread to eat.
Dissolved started in water
Mixed in flour until shaggy
Rest (autolyse) 40 min
Added salt
Slap and Fold until smooth and elastic
Let rise at 65F (18C) until it actually doubled. This isn't normally what I do, but the sourdough never feels as "alive" as my yeasted doughs so I wanted to try. What really happened was I left it all day while I was at work. Probably 10 hours.
When I got home, it had slightly more than doubled.
Degassed and preshaped
Rest for 30 minutes
Sharped and put in bread form
Rest for ~1 as oven preheated with dutch oven
Baked 470F (240C) covered for 20 minutes
Baked 420F (215C) uncovered for 30 minutes
Let cool 2 hours before cutting
Cutting into it, same old story. The crumb is shiny and looks plastic. The texture is best described as damp, clammy, rubbery.