October 5, 2010 - 12:29pm
Super dense bread. What is going wrong?
Hi everyone,
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Me and my roommate have started trying to bake our own breads, but they just aren't turning out too great. For instance, he made some sourdough and it was extremely dense. There were little to no air pockets inside. I mean this thing didn't really expand much at all. We are following recipes out of the bread baker's apprentice. We take into consideration that we are new at this and not all our bread will be awesome, but is there anything that would cause this super dense bread? Perhaps our yeast is bad, or we have bad flour. I don't know. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Share
Welcome to TFL. I don't think the problem is with your yeast or flour. Am going to guess that the above issues are related to the sourdough starter and that it's either immature or not being used at its peak.
My second guess is that you are using the volume measurements in the BBA rather than scaling your ingredients. If you're scooping, you could be getting a lot more flour than the recipe calls for and that results in lower hydration and a denser bread. Are you mixing by hand or using a stand mixer?
Time and temperature play a big part in the fermentation process, both bulk and final. You can't go by what the book says in terms of time. You have to watch the dough, not the clock. If Mr. Reinhart says to ferment for two hours, depending on the temperature of your dough after mixing and your room, it could take three hours or more for the dough to double. Also, a sourdough starter is not going to raise bread as fast as commercial yeast will (but it sure will taste better!).
If you aren't scaling your ingredients, do consider buying a digital scale ($25 for an Escali) and use it. If you are scaling your ingredients, then let us know which recipes you've tried that have failed.
It will all come together and you'll be very happy when it does.
So you've learned to make bricks. Do you now have lots of doorstops (or building materials), or are they borderline edible anyway? A good sense of humor is very helpful here; you're by no means the first to make bricks.
As there are a gazillion different things that can go subtly wrong and result in making a brick, I fear that looking for "the one right answer" isn't going to work very well for you.
For starting out making breads, you want to right away get something that tastes really good, but you're not yet super-familiar with your oven, the flour, baking methodologies, and so forth. So for your initial forays I suggest you stick to yeasted breads, and leave all the recipes that call for some sort of starter aside for now.
Sticking to yeasted breads cuts the variables (i.e. all the things that could go wrong:-) roughly in half. It also makes it a whole lot more likely you can post a picture and get useful help.
If you really want that sourdough flavor anyway, consider for now "cheating" by using something like the "Instant Sourdough Flavor" that King Arthur Flour sells.
(The above treads on "heretic" ground a couple of times. Take it with a large grain of salt ...but do consider it anyway.)
...at our house they're called boat anchors! Welcome to TFL! This is a great place to learn what you need to make bread you'll enjoy eating.
Toni
Use less flour. New bread bakers seem to be scared silly of wet, sticky doughs and use way too much flour. To work with wetter doughs, use a light touch and or wet fingers.
Careful of your water/milk temp. I've killed a bunch of yeast by using water that is too hot. Cool water never hurt a thing. As already suggested, stick to yeast before tackling sourdough.
It's amazing at how little the bread dough actually needs (kneads) to be worked. The Stretch and Fold technique (and others) is a valuable tool. Chek it out here,
http://www.sourdoughhome.com/stretchandfold.html
As also stated elsewhere, we've all made bricks. Some of them are actually edible. Have fun
Larry
My first breads with my own sourdough starter all turned into bricks! It took a while for the sourdough to mature and many trials and errors to get enough experience in how an optimal risen dough should really look and feel like, and what baking times and temperatures were right.
Just keep trying, don't give up, take note of your errors, and eventually you will have enough experience to create a really good bread instead of a weapon to crack down on burglars!
Happy baking,
Karin
Haha thanks
Hey thanks for all the responses. I'm back with a little more info on what we use and what recipes. We currently are using a generic, all purpose, bleached, enriched flour. Nothing special. Just Albertson's brand. As for the yeast we have two in our freezer. A jar or Red Star active dry yeast and Fleishmann's Rapidrise highly active yeast. I'm not sure why my roommate has two, or why he keeps them in the freezer. I just assume that's what you have to do haha. He's the one who got us started in the whole bread baking thing.
As for the recipes we use, we get them all out of the Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. We have tried a few breads now that I think about it. The first one he made was a Stollen. It was decent. I remember helping him with the second one (ants got to his first one). I remember the directions for the folding process being a little hard to follow but we got through it. It also was a little tough, but maybe that's how it was supposed to be? Then he baked two Portuguese Sweet Bread loaves. Now those were tough! I'm not talking about the recipe, but the bread itself. I think he ate those simply because he felt he had to. I tossed one around and since it sort of resembled a rock I didn't try it.
My first one was a Ciabatta. If you're familiar with the BBA I made the Poolish from page 106. (2 1/2 cups unbleached flour, 1 1/2 cups room temp water, 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast) I think I already see some problems. We only have bleached flour and I don't know if the yeast we have counts as instant.
I followed the formula on page 136 for the Ciabatta, Poolish version. We use a machine to mix our stuff by the way, and we don't have a digital scale yet :( That bread turned out to be a lot like a pizza dough (which we can actually make well!) I ate that mostly because I had two loaves and I couldn't just waste them. At the same time he had the sourdough starter going and was making the Basic Sourdough Bread from page 233. The starter seemed like it was going well. It smelled really good and it took a few days to make. He made the culture and the barm and all that. I'm not too familiar with the sourdough stuff, obviously. I still think one of those bricks are on the counter. He just can't muster up the courage to eat that one and I know I'm not touching the thing!
I will take everything you all said into consideration and try again, but before I do I'll wait to get some responses on the type of yeast and flour I'm using. Thanks again!
Flour: Although something unbleached, unbromated (and probably unenriched) is preferred, the stuff you've got should work okay for now. (Next time you buy a sack of flour though avoid that bleached crud though:-)
Yeast: I think your Red Star is what TFL generically calls "Active Dry Yeast" and your RapidRise highly active yeast is what TFL generically calls "Instant Yeast". Either should work okay ...provided they aren't already dead. Have they been in your freezer longer than a couple years?
Usually the freezer is for really-long-term storage of yeasts and some flours, and refrigeration is perfectly adequate and more convenient for yeasts that will be used within a few months. But keeping them in the freezer shouldn't really hurt ...provided you have some way of gently warming them up without killing them. You may need to measure out the yeast from the stocks in your freezer a half hour before mixing up the rest of your bread.
Yeasted (I don't know about sourdough) bricks almost always mean that somehow the yeast got killed somewhere along the way. One easy way to kill the yeast is with the wrong temperature, either too low or too high. At refrigerator temperature it will go into hibernation and effectively seem dead. Hotter than the hottest water out of your tap will kill it. Want to kill it for sure? put it in the microwave! Try for a final dough temperature of around 80F. Another easy way to kill the yeast is with all the chemicals in very strongly chlorinated tap water. Use filtered or distilled or pure spring water.
You two are tackling some difficult doughs for anyone, let alone beginners. Start with some basic french bread doughs - water, salt, yeast, flour and get some experience. Seriously, you'll be amazed at how good it can be when you make it yourself. I weigh my ingredients but something along the lines of 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of water, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp yeast (any kind) should work. Mix it togher and do three stretch and folds every 20 minutes for an hour. Shape it into the best batard you can manage and let it rise for about an hour. Slash it and bake it in a 450 degree oven for about 25 minutes.
Once you get that down, then you can play with preferments and retarding and all the other magical things in the wordl of bread baking.
Bye the way - making ciabatta is a lot of fun and taste sooo good!
Larry
...wait about 30 minutes before cutting the loaf...then break out the real butter! (no fake stuff allowed) :-)
Toni