Hello from Montreal, Canada šŸ

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krupalipatel21ā€¦ on 24 Sep 2025 at 08:25
Loaf didnā€™t rise, it was pretty flat, when you knock it is hallow

Hello from Montreal, Canada šŸ 

I am new to the sourdough committee and after months of watching lots of videos, I pulled the trigger and made my first loaf. Unfortunately it was not success. Please see picture attached and let me know if you have any recommendations on how to improve my next loaf. 

Could you post the formula, your process, and a picture of the crumb?  Oh, and some information about your starter's age and activity.  That would give people more information to work with.

My first impression is that the dough fermented so long that there weren't enough sugars left in the dough for it to brown evenly.  At the same time, it doesn't appear to have risen very much at all.  That would suggest that the starter's yeast content isn't high enough to successfully ferment the dough.  However, that's all guesswork based on just the picture.

Paul

Of course so this is the information I have regarding my process 

Ingredients

  • 150g active sourdough starter (100% hydration, bubbly and fed)
  • 350g water (room temp, filtered if possible)
  • 500g bread flour (or a mix of bread flour + whole wheat for flavor)
  • 10g salt

 

Process: 

  • Sat at room temperature for an hour
  • 4 stretch and folds every 30 mins (first two were stretch and folds and last two were coil foils)
  • Shaped dough using the candle cane shaping technique to build surface tension in the dough (I had no rice flour though so opted out of using that). While shaping it did seem runny. Let that sit for 30 mins than redid shaping and popped it into the fridge (covered with a plastic bag)
  • Was in the fridge from 5pm to 9am

  • Using a Dutch oven which could have been too large for the dough (I donā€™t know if that matters)


     


 

I think you are describing (and showing) two problems: loose, floppy dough; and an underbaked loaf.  I think these two are related.

Accounting for the water in the starter, the final dough had a very high hydration, around 85%. With that hydration a dough is going to be wet, sticky, and tend to flatten out and ooze. Four S&F sessions early on aren't going to change that much. Basically, you had a ciabatta dough but you worked with it as if it were a more ordinary dough.

Second, the cross section looks very underbaked (and maybe underfermented but that's harder to be sure of). With all that water, baking would have needed enough time to heat it up and drive it out but it didn't happen, leaving some partially baked dough. To me, the crust also looks underbaked, though if all the sugars had been used up it might look similar (that wouldn't happen with underfermentation, though).

I suggest that for your next bake, cut back the water so the total water including the water in the starter is in the range of 65 - 70% of the weight of the flour. Or watch a video on baking Glass bread (aka Pan de Crystal), which are usually at 100% hydration. That should give you some ideas on handling a very wet dough. Even if you don't want to try one, you may be able to notice some similarities to your dough, and get an idea of how it could have been handled.

TomP

Oops, I made a basic mistake in working out the hydration.  I added the water in the starter but not the flour in the starter. So the hydration was

water: 350 + 75 = 425g
flour: 500 + 75 = 575g
hydration: 425/575 = 72%

That's not especially high, though with some flours it might seem higher than that.

Sorry for my blunder.