Sourdough: Hard crust, sticky tacky insides after baked!
Hi community, i am new to this forum but have been reading a lot of advice from fellow bakers here while my sister and I are trying out our very first sourdough.. We have gotten to "Charlie" (we name our sourdoughs alphabetically hoping to get it right before the alphabet "Z"), but our sourdoughs were never right. Our problem was with the tacky, rubbery, sticky insides of the baked bread (I could press a piece of the inside between my fingers and it would stick on without falling) no matter how long we bake it for (Charlie was baked for 40 mins in the cast iron and 20 mins on a rack, and the picture attached shows the insides). We would like to share the recipe we used here, hopefully to get some help from the experienced bakers around! Thank you in advance!
150g bread flour, 150g all-purpose, 90g whole wheat flour with 350g water (slightly warmer than room temperature by the touch), with 90g of starter and 9g of salt.
Steps:
Autolyse for an hour before adding the starter (rest 30m) and salt (rest 15m) all by hand using the folding and pinching method. We performed up to 6 sets of stretch and fold during the first two hours of fermentation before leaving it to bulk ferment for the next two hours. Even though our dough doubled in size at the end of four hours with visible strength around the rounded sides, there weren't bubbles on the surface of the dough. Nonetheless we ended the bulk fermentation when the dough doubled in size (at the end of two hours after the last stretch and fold), and performed the pre shaping and final shaping. Throughout the shaping, the dough felt aerated and light and bouncy and it was easy to handle after dipping our hands in water. We retarded the dough for 16 hours. We preheated the oven (which was constrained at 480F) for an hour, and baked Charlie for 40 mins (tried 25 mins for Betty) in the cast iron, and 20 mins on the rack. The exterior was perfectly brown. Sliced through the bread in an hour and it left sticky residue on the knife and the insides was tacky. In our previous attempts, we thought it was undercooked, hence the longer baking time for Charlie this time round. But we are utterly puzzled by the outcome again. Would really appreciate some pointers, thank you in advance!!