Hi all: I'm one of the thousands of new sourdough bakers in this coronavirus isolation period. I've been baking two or three times a week for four weeks now and am confident that my starter is lively and strong. But, my dough doesn't at any stage seem to resemble the elastic, smooth resilient mounds that I see on various youtube videos and sites. I've tried hydration levels between 65% and 80% with little perceptible difference. I carefully watch to ensure that the dough isn't over proofed. I have tried a long overnight autolyse and more standard 1 to 3 hour autolyses. The very long one yielded an initial dough that seemed to have more resilience and extensibiltiy than the others, but it quickly disappeared and never reappeared at each fold and turn. I'm typically using about 400 grams of bread flour (harina de fuerza) , 50 g of whole wheat and 50 g of rye flour.
I'm wondering if it might have something to do with the spanish flour I'm using? Might I need to make some adjustment from the (mostly) American recipes? Could the flour I'm using be less thirsty?
Or perhaps I am simply not working the dough enough?
Any suggestions would be very appreciated.
Good evening. Could you possibly share some additional specifics on the flour you use? Could it be Harina de Fuerza from Mercadona? Both their regular (blue) and bread (red) flours are beyond useless. I'm afraid you'd be wasting your time if you're going down that alley: there's simply no way to get a decent gluten development out of any of those two, at whatever hydration level.
You can PM if you want to discuss more specifically your case. I'm (European) Spanish too. Buenas noches.