Hi there!
I hope you will bear with a newbie who's struggling a bit. I started making sourdough in the summer, and have had varying degrees of success. But I'm finding a particular struggle with hydration. Forgive me if I get the lingo wrong, but...
One recipe I have had the best success with uses 80% hydration, but recommends 70-75% for new sourdough bakers. Early on, I tried it at around 72% and I got some good oven spring. Beginner's luck, maybe? Since then I have tried this recipe again with higher levels of hydration, and other recipes as well, and I always find that the dough is SO sticky. I know sourdough dough IS sticky, but what I read is that if you work the dough and then let it bulk ferment long enough, it should end up being smooth and not sticky, but mine is always somewhat sticky. The last time I tried at 80% hydration, it was really quite hard to work with (for me) and my loaf also ended up being quite flat. I have tried the higher hydrations because I read that you can get a BETTER oven spring and a more open crumb that way, but that has not been the case for me. Do I just have to find the optimum hydration level for me, based on my flour, climate, etc.? Or am I just missing something?
Also I know early on I didn't let the dough rise as much as I should, and seemed to do better then. But I am searching for that great open crumb and oven spring, and so now I'm trying to let it go longer but never quite sure if I'm getting it right. If I watch YouTube videos I can see the 'life' of the dough, but the videos never look quite the same as mine (partly because mine always does look wetter, as per the above). Any tips?
Thanks so much in advance!
Tracy
“ Do I just have to find the optimum hydration level for me, based on my flour, climate, etc.?”
Yes…
What flour are you using?
If you want to pursue higher hydrations, that’s fine. But realize that it is not necessary for baking great breads.
Thanks for the reply! I'm using Robin Hood bread flour, and my most commonly used recipe has a bit of regular whole wheat flour as well (20% of the total flour).
Ultimately, I don't really care what the hydration level is if I can get a nicely rounded open loaf in the end, I just can't figure out the optimal levels to make that happen.
Tracy I’m familiar with Robin Hood Bread flour and have baked sourdough with it as a component of the dough. If you’re using it at 80% of the dough and 20% is whole grain, you might find that 80% hydration is too high for that combination of flours, especially during the summer months when it is more humid in Canada. You might be able to get that high hydration into that flour during the dry months of the winter.
If I were you, and I was about 2.5 years ago, struggling to get good bread and some consistency, I would not worry about going for high hydration. Get your feet wet at lower hydrations getting a feel for what the dough should feel like. How it should respond to your touch. I would bake the same formula over and over making small adjustments with each bake to see what changes result in what outcome. That is a good way to learn. So going back to hydration, bake repeatedly with 72-76% hydration range starting low and with success gradually increase the hydration as you gain confidence. That’s what I did, if you look at my blog you’ll see I baked repeatedly with theperfectloaf.com beginner’s sourdough until I was able to get decent results and a bit of confidence. You’ll get there.
Benny
Thanks for the tips. I will try what you suggested, Benny, in reducing the hydration and trying to get more comfortable with the dough and what to expect. Yesterday I did a loaf at 75% hydration, and I think I need to lower it even more than that. The dough was sticking to my bench scraper quite a bit at the end.
To get a handle of stickiness here are some tips
- reduce amount of starter (slow it down)
- reduce amount of water (hold back 20% and add as necessary)
- reduce amount of bulk fermentation time
More open crumb, consider how you work the dough. ie. slap and folds vs beating it with a mixer
Thanks for the tips, Happycat. I was wondering how you prefer to work the dough? I have tried slap and folds, and also a couple of other methods. Have not used a mixer much, except for one recipe I tried that recommended it.
I use a mixer due to personality:
- slap and fold sprays droplets all over my kitchen probably because I am too vigorous with it
- I have low patience and tend to want to do other stuff during the bread making process
I have decent aeration and relative consistency in my crumb that I am satisfied with
However the experts here seem to do hundreds of slap and folds to produce amazing results and my hat is off to them
I find that the stages during which stickiness is most troublesome are pre-shaping and shaping. Don't know if your experience concurs? But if so, you can try using a very small amount of oil on the countertop, your fingertips, and your bench scraper before turning your dough out after bulk fermentation. If the thin film of oil on your fingertips wears away before you're done with pre-shaping, don't be afraid to re-oil with just another tiny drop of oil. It won't impact the final bread. Ideally, the dough will just cling to your fingers, but prefer to stick to itself, so that after being folded over on itself the dough will let go of you. Dough also seems to stick less to plastic bench scrapers and more to stainless steel bench scrapers.
For shaping, I generally switch to flouring the surface/my hands. But if you have flour on the top surface the dough doesn't want to stick to itself anymore, yes? At this point a pastry brush is invaluable to get rid of the excess flour.
Stickiness and slackness can be related to gluten development (assuming the hydration is reasonable for your flour). If you hand knead, you should be able to feel the dough becoming less sticky and start to pull away from the surface/your hands as the kneading goes on. Slap and fold is really great for experiencing this. If you've already tried, you may be underestimating the number of slap and folds necessary to get your dough to the appropriate level of gluten development. For a mostly white flour dough, I typically knead for 10-ish minutes, which comes out to about 300 slap and folds.
Regarding the length of bulk fermentation:
Technically, bulk fermentation is for developing strength so that when you go shape the dough will hold its shape. Yes, passive gluten development will continue to happen, gas will be produced, but neither is the primary purpose. So the end of bulk ferment should in theory be determined by the strength of the dough. However, I think longer bulk fermentations can be...unhelpful...if one is in the process of learning how to handle the dough. This is because the more gas is trapped in the dough, the more one will need to handle it delicately when shaping. It's not a beginner friendly process. So I would say if anything, err on the side of slightly under bulk fermenting. If you final proof the dough in a vessel (a banneton, a sieve, a bowl) then you can get away with it. This also means you have more wiggle room to push the final proof further than you might otherwise, which can be helpful for better/more open crumb.
A great crumb, and great oven spring:
This is a topic I've been ruminating about a lot lately. I've come to no definite conclusions (and am by no means an expert on the topic), but I suggest that the two do not necessarily go hand in hand. For example, you can get excellent oven spring by slightly under-fermenting. The breads come out of the oven looking very visually appealing, but when you cut them open, the crumb is usually denser than ideal. On the other hand, many loaves with moderate to low oven spring (perhaps because of slight over-fermentation or less-than-ideal shaping) actually display excellent crumb.
But all of that aside, there generally cannot be good oven spring without good shaping, nor good loft without sufficient gluten development.
When you say an open crumb, do you mean many irregular and large-ish holes? Or just a light, well-fermented crumb, that could be fairly even?
Thanks for the good tips!
I may need to get myself a plastic bench scraper. I can try the oil. I have very lightly oiled my finger for doing a poke test, but hadn't done that for handling the dough.
I do use a banneton for final proof, so perhaps I will go for under bulk fermentation for a bit. I have also found in my limited experience that what you say is true: oven spring is improved with under bulk fermented dough.
This is what I'm going for in terms of the crumb:
That, ironically, was from my first or second loaf, and since then it's just been downhill! But it is a visual reminder, as I went back to find this image, that perhaps lower hydration is better for me. I have a loaf in the oven right now with 75% hydration that looks promising. Fingers crossed!
Whatever hydration produces the final loaf and crumb you're after. No need to go as high as possible - just because! If you are getting great results with 65% hydration for an all bread flour loaf with the variety of flour you're using then that is the correct hydration. No need to ever say "well it's great at 65% hydration so let's push it to 70% hydration".
The loaf in the photo above looks absolutely perfect to me. If it's perfect for you then there's no need to alter the recipe.
Couldn't agree more with Abe. The bread in the picture has lovely crust and lovely crumb. Do what gets you to your ideal bread.
Although in the sourdough world high hydration has become some sort of norm and almost nobody thinks 70% is high, 70% is actually already high for white flour. The 1-2-3 sourdough formula is 67% hydration and can produce great open crumb with appropriate handling.
Definitely recommend a plastic bench scraper if you can get one. I think they're often labelled as bowl scrapers.
Awesome, thanks for the feedback! It is really frustrating that that picture is from early attempts and I can't seem to get that back!! But I will decrease hydration and work incrementally to find the best hydration levels and methods for me. :-)
My loaf on Wednesday was a bit more hydrated than my early attempts and it was a little flat with moderate crumb. But it sure tasted good. I'm enjoying the end result of these experiments, even if some of them aren't as good as others. :-D
Another way to search for the hydration level that works best for you/your flour is by feel rather than observing a strict percentage. Mix dough at only 60-65% hydration or just enough to form a dough with a few dry bits. Rest for 10 minutes to let the flour fully hydrate. Then mix by hand in the bowl for a minute or two, feeling for how wet it is. Add water by the teaspoon. Stop adding water when the dough is just slack enough to knead by your preferred kneading method (record amount). Keep in mind that if total flour weight is 500 g, then a difference of 5% hydration is only 25 g water i.e. less than 2 tablespoons.
Including wholegrain flour can also be a variable with hydration. Try scaling back to 5-10% wholegrain in your formula until you feel you understand the characteristics of your white flour and are producing loaves you're happy with.
Retarding the dough during final proof can be a strategy for better oven spring/taller loaves. I don't know if you've tried it? I hesitated to suggest this method before because retarding makes it difficult to judge when fermentation is at the ideal stage and you should bake. Cold dough is also stiffer, so you also get less feedback from your dough about whether shaping went well or not. But cold dough + hot oven can result in explosive oven spring (although it's difficult to quantify how much of that is directly due to the temperature differential).