Why does my bread come out like this?
Hi,
first post in this forum. I hope someone here can help me figure out what's wrong with my bread.
I used to bake beautiful bread, but I stopped baking during the summer because I didn't want to
turn on the oven while it was too warm already in our flat.
About two months ago I revived my sleeping starter and haven't been able to bake a single loaf
that I wanted to eat. They all come out gummy and dense, don't have much oven spring and the
crust is uneven and soft.
The recipe for this bread (2 loaves) was:
100g whole rye
100g whole wheat
300g wheat Typ 550 (the "normal white flour" in Germany)
400g wheat Typ 1050 (a bit "stronger" wheat flour)
200g mature levain
21g salt
680g water (i.e. 78% hydration)
I did a 30 min autolyse, mixed for 5 minutes, and then did a bulk fermentation for 10 hours at 19C/66F. During the first three hours I did three stretch & folds. After shaping I placed the bread in the fridge and baked it the next morning. Even after 10 hours of bulk fermentation, I still have a feeling that the dough is underfermented. It was really easy to handle and did not spread at all.
Is this normal? Should I leave it out even longer? Or might there be a problem with my starter? It is reasonably active, I did a 1:1:1 feeding (half white wheat, half white rye) and it doubled in about five hours. The next time I will scale down the recipe and bake only a single loaf because I cannot fit more croutons into the freezer ...