Katie's Mess

so sorry it turned out like this🙃, Katie, tho the finished faux focaccia with onion looks really tasty.

I'm nonplussed. there's no reason I can think of why using less yeast would do this, particularly because your photos show some stretchy gluten development.

Honestly, my thought would be to treat the dough much more harshly and to do a messload of Richard Bertinet-style slap & folds. If you google slap & fold you'll find some vids of him turning dough that looks like yours into an obedient boule. Might be worth a try once you are done with your break.

Rob

Don't give up yet!  go back to my suggested water - 7 1/2 oz.  You way overshot. In the meantime, enjoy the foccacia!

Hi Katie,

I feel there is a tidier way that you might find helpful. I devised it 2 years ago when I decided to bake bread again, and practically had to re-learn everything. I had no mixer at that time. But it requires you to have kitchen scale on hand.

It's one bowl method, with no bench work

It's not necessarily better, just a lot tidier. You might find this helpful. Happy baking!

Pain de campagne

Jay

Sorry Katie for the disappointing results. Don't give up. You might be closer than you think to a good loaf.

The pictures remind me of a time much earlier in my quest for a descent home made loaf when I picked up some flour from a local Polish deli and not knowing Polish it turns out I had bought some pasty flour with little gluten. No matter what I did, the dough was always the kind of consistency of your dough, even at low hydrations. I am wondering if there is high enzymatic activity in your flour which might amplify the problems with low gluten content, even when using commercial yeast. The way that it becomes more runny and sticky during the fermentation makes me think this might be the case.

The other thing the pictures make me think of from my experience was once when I was trying to make some bread in a much warmer environment than at home (ambient temperature about 28-30C compared to 21-22C at home on the UK). Again, even with commercial yeast, the dough would soon become like what you show in your pictures.

For the possible enzymatic activity, there is not much you can do apart from changing the flour you use. I stumbled on a way of fixing that with sourdough by adding a tiny amount (1tsp in 400g) of pulse flour (chickpea in my case) to the dough mix. 

For the low gluten the only thing to try is reducing hydration till you get something you can work with. With the lack of scales, I would suggest to try and go with your senses rather than something measurable. That's what I do when I don't have scales. Following your story, I would take the quantities you used for the least bad of your bakes so far, and add a little at a time of either flour (if a little too slack, or water  (if a little too stiff) until you have the kind of dough that holds its shape, comes off the sides of the mixing bowl reasonably easily, and you can pick up and handle and make a not of how much extra water or flour you added. From your pictures above, the one where you are pouring the dough from the mixing bowl on to the floured surface, the dough looks to me like a really nice preferment. Take that and mix in some additional flour, 1-2 tsps at a time, till you have a dough that comes off the sides of your mixing bowl and that you can pick up and stretch and fold, and use that for your final stage of your fermentation and proving.

For the warm environment, what I would suggest is to maybe refrigerate your flour before mixing and using cold water. Even with commercial yeast, I would aim for a dough going into fermentation of no more than 23C. Try and keep that temperature throughout your fermentation. Find a nice cool place and leave your mixing bowl there. If you have a digital roasting thermometer, that can be good for monitoring the dough temperature.

I am only going by my own experiences and your pictures, so take my suggestions in that light. There are much more experienced bakers here than me who might have other suggestions or ideas or experiences, but this is what I would try if I had the kind of problems you are facing.  

I'm not going to give advice, but I want to point out that you're doing an amazing job working through an extreme set of challenges. It probably doesn't feel that way when you're the one faced with all the disappointments, but you really are. Your perseverance is admirable; people give up on things all the time over much more minor obstacles than what you're dealing with.

You've done great so far and also think you're much closer to your goals than you realize. I hope your break restores morale and that you figure out how to achieve a happy result soon.

Reiterating, the issue is just a matter of mixing / kneading. Please understand, resting, stretch and folds just ain't gonna cut it with this flour. Stretch and fold it's a passive technique used to manipulate the dough structure, it doesn't really develop gluten. As I said, passive techniques work better with flour richer in gluten.

I second Rob's call for some Bertinet slap and folds. Active, energetic kneading / development is a must here.

What you really need is this:

Gluten development is a factor of energy, not just hydration and time alone.

...are you going to make us come down there?!!

Hi, Katie, I have a couple of suggestions you may want to try. 

The first suggestion is, do you know anyone in the area that is a baker and has worked with this flour? Maybe they have already gone through the headaches you have experienced and can give you some tips. We are blessed with the availability of a wide array of flours that we can use to get around your difficulty, but others in your area are in the same boat as you are, and may have a solution.

The second suggestion is to abandon this recipe and method and try something different. When I was faced with an intractable problem as a process chemist, it was time to think outside the box I was in. This also applies to bread baking. A few years ago, I was having similar problems in my first attempts to make whole wheat and rye breads—they were very sticky and didn't hold their shape. I decided to try some batter breads that didn't require any kneading. Both Fleischmann's and Red Star have yeasted batter bread recipes that only use an electric hand mixer or stirring by hand. I haven't made the white breads but I have made some of the whole wheat and rye versions:

Homemade No Knead White Bread

No Knead White Bread

King Arthur Baking also has a pan bread that doesn't require kneading:

English Muffin Toasting Bread

If you don't have a loaf pan, Fleischmann's also has a bread you can make in a casserole:

Easy Casserole Bread

Also, I'm currently without a large oven (it died) and while I'm deciding what to replace it with, I only have a small toaster oven to make bread. I tried one loaf in a regular loaf pan but it burned because it was too large for the oven. I have mini loaf pans and they fit better in the oven. I could try scaling down a yeast bread, but instead I have been baking quick breads leavened with baking soda and/or baking powder. You might look for recipes for soda or baking powder breads; they can often be just as satisfying as a yeast bread (this is one of TomP's):

High-rise Soda Bread

Good Luck!

I was reading a NYTimes article about the development of the Lahey-Bittman No-Knead Bread and this caught my eye:

…Mr. Lahey first saw it in use in 1991, while working on a farm in Tuscany, when he was 23. A friend baked him a pizza made from a dough he had formed without kneading the night before, then gently balled up before stretching and baking the next day. Mr. Lahey explored the technique further the next year in Miami, where he had been hired by the restaurateur Joe Allen to open a bakery. There, he noted that the dough lost cohesion as he kneaded and proofed it.

An analysis of Miami water indicated high levels of magnesium sulfate, an inorganic salt found in most tap water and used commercially as a fermentation aid. It speeds up the action of amylase, an enzyme that breaks down starches into simple sugars.

“The bread was overproofing, and the solution was to just knead it less,” he said. “Eventually, I started doing it without kneading it at all, just a few folds here and there to give it some structure.”

Does this have any bearing on Katie's difficulty? VerdigRegis's suggestion of adding an acid might help. Maybe a tablespoon of lemon or orange juice or cider vinegar?

but my first thought is the dough might’ve just been too sticky from the start. Could you list the ingredients in grams?

Yippee