Difficulties with Forkish
I have made several loaves in the past two months by following the instructions (timing and recipes) in Ken Forkish’s excellent book FWYS. I have used yeast and hybrid doughs – not yet tried only levain. I have had a few problems that I hope someone may be able to help me overcome.
I have varied feeding the levain to ensure a homogeneous blend: I add the 200g of water first, dilute the 50g of yesterday’s levain, then I add the 250g of pre-mixed flour and mix using an implement. I put the fed levain into a cupboard at a temperature of about 25C (summer in Australia). It doubles in volume in 24 hours. I’ve also used about 10g of salt, rather than ~20g for the dough. From my reading, these changes should not make much difference.
- · The height of the loaf is always less than half its diameter
- · My levain does not float when I want to use it at the specified time, so I wait until it does – which upsets the schedule but still I do not get enough rise
- · The loaves look good but the crumb seems too moist.
Suggestions to get it right would be appreciated, thanks.