nzsourdoughmans first sourdoughs
Ok
About time I started a blog... I struggle a bit with spelling. I blame it on the autistic/ dyslexia; most say I’m just lazy.
I'm so passionate about making bread at the moment... I started with dean Brettschneider book global baker. Have mastered ciabatta, baguettes, fennel dinner rolls, and puff pastry. I'll post picks. But its now time for sourdough.
I started two sourdough starters. One 100% stone rye organic, other 100% whole-wheat stone organic. I used this website and sourdough ladies bog. I was feeding it 1/4c flour 1/4cwater 1/4c starter for 11days every 24 hrs.
Day 6:
After 10days I really wanted to bake with it and it was bubbling after each 24hrs of feeding. So I upped my feed to 100g starter 100g water 100g flour for a bake on day 13 morning. From reading what I have this means im now on a 100% hydration (1:1:1). It is much firmer using these measures and my starter was more than doubling after each feed. On the morning of day 13 it had doubled and was starting to drop.
I measured off the amount for my bake of each loaf, from the starteeer... the leftovers I measured off 100g of each starter fed on a 1:1:1 ratio and put back on bench to keep starter going. And i though out the extra.
I had no idea what recipes to use, they all call for an overnight stand. But I was hoping to have bread for that night so I used yoke mardewis recipe in "the wild sourdough".
I used here light rye sourdough recipe:
150g – 6.5oz rye starter made with 1:5 flour/water (I just used mine)
250g – 9 oz organic white spelt flour (I used ap flour)
125g – 4.25 water
1.5t – salt
Mixed… rested 15min…kneaded 5min…rest 5min…dough nice and soft and quite wet… passes windowpane…first rise in warm spot 5hrs 3/4 increase in size, maybe metal bowl was a bad idea?… try to shape but way too wet, same consistency of ciabatta, so I stretch and fold it a few times then shape to a boule, back into bowl for final rise… 5hrs still not rising much so turn out and bake…
A baby brick!
Her second whole meal sourdough sandwich bread:
6 oz whole-wheat starterPreview | The Fresh Loaf
4 oz water
8 oz flour
1t salt
I did exactly the same as the first loaf…accept gave this one a longer final rise after shaping into a batard…It went flat…
Both taste real sour! Real nice taste, just no rise
Comments
G'day, I see you are in Christchurch (I'm on Waiheke), good to hear you are enjoying baking and trust that your life isn't too disrupted by the conditions in Christchurch at present. Felt quite tearful last night as I watched news of the proposed CBD renewal, sounds like very good ideas are being developed, but reconfirms what has been lost too.
It'll likely take your starter a bit longer to be at its full strength, but I can't help but wonder if you didn't overproof your loaves. The proportion of starter in the formulae you used were quite large and with rather long proofing times, there's a good chance that your bugs ran out of food, and gas production ceased. Of course it depends on how warm a spot you are using for proofing, how long it will be before your dough is ready. It's clear you like a tangy flavour, so you are probably going to find that getting prepared the night before/or using a retardation step in the fridge overnight is going to work to your advantage. Patience is a really important ingredient when it comes to sourdough!
How are you juding when your dough is ready to go in the oven? Do you use the 'poke' test? I've had the Global Baker out of the library but can't remember if Dean includes it, he certainly does in the 'nz baker' which I have on my bookshelf, he refers to it as the 'indentation' test.
Can I suggest you take a look at Wild Yeast Susan's Norwich Sourdough (her adaptation of Jeffrey Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough to use a 100% hydration sourdough). She provides very useful technical information in her post, which I think will help you take the next step on your journey. I hope you will try making a loaf following her guidance exactly. You are probably better to use Hi-grade flour rather than standard/plain flour, for the all-purpose she lists. After that you can adapt the formula to develop a Christchuch Sourdough that you like! The photos of your starters look very good (you are smart to be working with weight, rather than volume) and I am sure it won't be long until you are producing well risen loaves.
http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2007/07/08/my-new-favorite-sourdough/
Susan uses a mixer, but working by hand you will get similar results, so don't be put off by this. It generally takes about the same amount of time working by hand.
Let us know how you get on.
Cheers, Robyn
Hey Robyn!
Wow waiheke… isn’t there a well known coffee roaster there? I know my coffee!
I was about to start work at a café in Christchurch when the earthquake struck, building was red stickered. They moved but January also has put a red sticker on there new building… lets hope there back up soon.
I don’t think that I am over proofing… I’m using a warm hot cuboard to proof. I would love to use a overnight fridge retard.
Could you make in morning and have enough time to retard a dough during the day to bake at night?
Could you also retard on the first rise? So prepare the dough mix and retard, then next morning let it wake then shape, final rise, bake?
I haven’t been judging time to bake with poke tests… I’ve been using double in size method. Prob not the best, but have changed with recent loaf.
I just ordered some tiles for my oven, and a 750g round bannatone arrived last night. So I followed the following recipe, which the man that sent the bannatone suggested… It went well.
I kneaded it, and it formed a windowplane test very nicely… but at my shaping after first prove (it took me 5hrs to reach double size) It was very wet still. So I couldn’t shape it. I threw lots of flour at it, did a few stretch and folds and then shaped it to a boule. Placed it upside down in my new bannetone and let it final prove for 3 until it passed poke test… maybe i should have wet my hands, shaped it as a wet dough and put in the bannetone?
I just took it out of the oven... it had a ok spring, not much. It was a dense crumb, and maybe could have done with a better rise? denser/ solid nearer the base. But still nice and sour!
Can i see some picks of bread your making robyn?
Cheers of your help
Active sourdough starter 80g
White flour 160g
Water 140g
Stir sourdough into water then add flour and stir to form a thick smooth batter
Cover and leave overnight to ferment at room temperature
DAY 2 – Make main dough
White flour195g
Rye flour 20g
Diastatic Malt 2g
Water 100g
Salt 6g
All sourdough preferment made on Day 1 (should be bubbly and aprox doubled in bulk)
Add water to preferment, stir to loosen
Add flour and stir until shaggy
Let rest 10 minutes (autolyse)
Add salt and knead (good luck)
Place into large bowl, cover and let bulk prove until doubled in size (apox 2-3 hours)
When bulk proved tip out onto bench
Reframe from flattening the dough. Handle gently to preserve its light airy texture
Let rest for 10 minutes (allows dough to relax and make shaping easier)
Shape loaf as required –
Shaping is a skill in itself – check out this excellent link for shaping ….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgqPli_sLLM
Place in lightly floured banneton, cover and let final prove (aprox 1.5 to 2 hours)
Preheat oven to 230C for at least 30 mins before baking
Knock loaf out of Banneton on to wooden peel, slash top surface and Insert loaves into oven and bake for aprox 20-30 minutes until crust colour desired
Take out and place loaves on cooling rack.
Goodmorning
Well you'll have been pleased with the lift you got in this bread. The banneton has made for a very pretty looking loaf too (did it come from the Hutt? I've purchased yuzu trees from Neville and was impressed/jealous! of his set up for breadmaking).
http://www.northwestsourdough.com/discover/?p=330
I can see you couldn't resist cutting into it before it had cooled....you are not alone in this of course. Some further setting takes place as the bread cools and the general recommendation is to wait at least an hour (if not til the next day!) before slicing - you will see a major difference. You'll also find that the flavour profile develops over a few days, if you can manage to keep some long enough.
I am wondering how you judged doubling during the bulk fermentation phase. No problem using a metal bowl, does yours have volume measurements on it to help you judge doubling? It's hard to work out the double of a 3D object just by eyeballing it. In the early days, when I was still using 'doubling' as a reference, I filled a glass bowl with cups of water marking each addition on the outside with a permanent marker, that way I could tell how much expansion I was getting. These days I use a metal bowl and don't pay much heed to volume, but more to how the dough looks and feels. Your hands too will gradually learn to work with your eyes.
Can I suggest next time that during bulk fermentation you do some stretch and folds. This helps in a number of ways, by moving the dough you redistribute 'temperature' and 'food' which provides better access to both for your busy bugs, and you also assist in the development of gluten. Magically by doing some simple stretch and folds at regular intervals during bulk fermentation the dough alters from a flowing mass to gradually taking some form. By leaving the stretch and folds of the dough until the end of bulk fermentation you have overworked the dough a bit and this has contributed to the density you see in your loaf. Also it doesn't help to be adding any more flour at this stage. I assume you checked out the Ciril Hitz link and did a preshape, with a rest of 20 minutes of or so before final shaping....... It's worth looking at other Ciril Hitz videos on YouTube. Again I strongly recommend you read through Wild Yeast Susan's techniques so well presented in her Norwich Sourdough post.
Sorry I don't have any bread porn to share from here. How about some more video links instead:
Max Poilane's bakery in Lyon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4RiJs1a92U
Jefferey Hamelman teaches:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/videos.html
In French, but well worth sticking with it as they discuss grain, so that you can watch the breadmaking:
http://www.addocs.fr/films.php?film=Les+blés+d%27or
and yes, coffee is roasted to prefection down the end of the road I live on - you are well informed. I started sourdough baking after my mother died, sustaining in more ways than just nutrition! Very sorry to hear about the troubles for your planned place of employment, do hope that you are able to find something suitable soon, meantime bread making is a very worthwhile, interesting, challenging and fun. Many wonderful formula on TFL so lots and lots for you to try.
Keep warm this weekend!
Robyn
PS Just realised I forgot to respond to your dough retard questions - indeed you can leave it for 8 or more hours in the fridge during bulk fermentation, and then shape and proof (the gluten will develop during this longer period of rest, so you won't need to be concered about S & F). If you get your timing right, retardation during the day is possible too, just depends on what hours you keep! By experimenting with these different techniques you will gradually develop bread that best suits your palate and which fits best with your lifestyle. Make good use of the search box, heaps of information in the TFL archives. Look forward to hearing how things are going. Don't hesitate to ask more questions. R
Thanks for your reply!
Yes I did purchase from Neville… what kind of baskets do you think he used to make those shapes in the first pic in your link? I got a 750g boule shape bannetone from him, but wish I got a oval or rectangle now
Bugger about the cutting… but I couldn’t wait. Its all gone now as well. Maybe I will get some nice sour burps?
I will use your advice for doubling next batch! At the moment I’m just eyeballing.
I put on another this morn… I mixed it at 8am it is 11 now and I have done one s and fold at 10:30 after reading your post. Its got a lot less hydration this time and is holding its shape nicely! Looking forward to shaping in an hr or so.
I also used my wholegrain starter, but used all wholegrain flour to recipe. I gave it a knead/ let rest for 10min then shaped and put in a bannetone. I have read that they don’t take two rises… so am letting it double before baking.
Thanks for the link to shaping, I did find Susan’s link and will be way more successful this time round! Am about to use fed sourdough to follow the recipe that you posted last link. Will try retarding it overnight though with this batch.
I have a question about my starter. Do I have to feed/double it every time that I bake? Some people say feed it every 12hrs/ some 24hrs some say keep in fridge. Damit its confusing. At the moment I’m feeding it 100g on a 1:1:1 every night. But I’m getting a lot of leftover starter. They are both now 2weeks old.
Job front is great… baking is so much better. I have great plans of a wood fired oven with all these spare bricks in Christchurch.
Thanks for your help, sorry to hear about your mum
Mark
Hi Mark
You're certainly making good strides. Your friends and family will appreciate the spoils of your labour!
Neville's batard with pointy ends? That's the shape Ciril Hitz makes second on the video which was linked in your post above. He places it on a couche to proof. You could use a linen teatowel (can often find 100% Irish Linen teatowels with ugly pictures on them at op shops) or a piece of canvas as a couche as they tend to stick less than other fabrics, just make sure to rub a blend of flour/rice flour into the couche material to ensure your loaf releases from it easily.
By coincidence Susan posted a video on her Wild Yeast blog illustrating how to shape a pointy batard earlier in the week:
http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2011/08/02/video-shaping-a-pointy-batard/
If you put a batard into an oval basket you'll end out with blunt ends, the same shape as the basket.
I'm a bit puzzled by your comment about whole grain not taking two rises ...... basically the rising process is a continuum. During bulk fermentation, the bugs multiply and the gluten forms, then with enough gluten present, we degas and form a loaf with a nice gluten sheath on the outside, then we leave the shaped loaf alone to allow all the bugs that have now multiplied in the dough to go to work, producing fresh gas to create an aerated dough inside that sheath (ie final proof), we then set the aerated dough in the oven, by baking it. In very general terms the bulk fermentation takes about twice as long as the final proof.
To understand that gluten sheath check out David's shaping tutorial:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19346/shaping-boule-tutorial-pictures
When it comes to your starter, you really have to figure out what will work for you. At present you should keep feeding it on a daily basis. Once it's about a month old, the bug colonies should have established themselves well enough to allow you to use the fridge if you wish to. If you do decide to refrigerate it, you will need to take it out and go through a couple of feeding cycles before going on to producing the levain for use in a dough. If I am away from home I do put my starter in the fridge, otherwise I like to have it ready for when I want to use it, so I keep it on my kitchen bench near my fridge for the warmth from the fridge's motor. At this time of year I find that I can feed it once a day, but in summer it needs two feeds. I feed it after it has peaked, so I've worked out how much I need to feed it to last 24 hours at this time of year. Sometimes I will use the discard in pancakes or english muffins etc and sometimes I add it to my compost bin (haven't tried it in the worm farm, they don't like acidic citrus skins so I figure I won't bother finding out what they think of acidic starter). If you need ways to use the discard, once again the archives here will come to your rescue. After a while you could probably choose to maintain just one of the starters, you'll find you prefer one I'd think. When I started out it was springtime and I had a 100% one at 1:1:1 too. Over the summer I found it was peaking too quickly and so I tried a 60% one as well and found it easier to manage. I also experimented with feeding ratios. I only keep a tiny amount, at present I am feeding 10g starter:30g water:50g flour once a day, in the evening, so that it is peaking at the time I like to make levain from it. In summer I will feed it this way twice and in the between seasons I'll make adjustments as I go from daily to twice daily feeding or back. You will need to work out what suits your starter in the conditions you have in Christchurch. I have also dried some starter as a backup in case I have a mishap and I usually have some in the fridge too. When I bake I usually make a couple of 750 gram loaves and find that using around 20 gram of seed starter in preparing my levain the night before works for me. Some bakers suggest keeping some of the levain as starter, but that worries me and I always keep levain and storage starter separate, feeding the storage starter at the same time as I make the levain.
Enjoy experimenting!
Night, Robyn
Thanks Robyn!
I like that you recon I’m making good strides… I don’t feel I’m learning much new!
I have ciril hitz’s book so am going to try to proof one of the batards tomorrow. Something to keep me warm with all the snow that’s coming.
Is rice flour better than normal? I read somewhere that it gives the crust a extra crunch or artistic color, I think ciril hitz said that.
I love the bannetone, would love to get another. But there expensive and there no oblong/rectangular styles with the round rings. But nevil has informed me there working on this J
It was in yoke mardewis book “wild sourdough” that I read about a poor second rise from 100% wholegrain sourdough.
Wheatgrain sourdough breads
Here are some general tips and tricks for making 100% wholegrain sourdough bread
*To create lightness:
*use more starter – about 50% of the total flour weight – to increase wild yeast and fermentation
use a high glutted wheat starter instead of a rye
*A wetter than normal dough results in better texture
*Do one rise only-because most whole meal dough, especially those with a substantial amount of low glutted 9rye, barley , oat) or glutted-free flour (corn/polenta,rice,millet) will not rise a second time
*A hotter oven creates oven spring
*A hot water bath creates a steamy environment in the oven
With all her other breads she does 2 rises. But whole meal is just a 30min rest after kneading to let gluten rest/ then shape and rise. But today I’m trying 2 stages/ letting it double first.
I’m a bit puzzled about timing of baking from my starter. At the moment what I want is a starter that I can feed in morning(my understanding you HAVE to feed it when you take some away from starter?) while taking enough for my dough starter. Then make dough in mid afternoon. From that starter/ make dough and retard in fridge for morning bake. Then morning bake. Same morning starting same process.
At the moment I’m feeding 100g on a 1:1:1 which means I have 300g each day. But my recipe only uses 80g. So can I knock down my starter to a 60g 1;1:1 giving me 180g each day. Then using 80g gives me 100g leftover and only 40g waste/ not 220g?
It should work the same? Just on a smaller scale
Slowly getting it… thanks for the links on the videos.
Loving it
My loaves came out ok… The 100% whole meal was extremely dense, but got a good oven spring by using two metal trays. One on top shelf of oven the other dusted heavily with course polenta… then out turned loaves scored and pushed into hot tray whilst throwing in ice cubes.
But the second loaf using rye stuck and wouldn’t take a shove to go on tray/ made it lopsided. So I panicked and threw in whole tray J. The final loaf has blown at the bottom. I’m resting this loaf until cutting. Its had overnight so far.
Today I put on another 2 loaves this time I used whole-wheat for the starter overnight… carried on the same recipe using 190g white and 20g rye… Its going through first rise now with the rye starter sourdough. I emailed nevil and he was real helpful, he said that i need to give it a bit more in the final proof... maybe another hour to 90min. What do you recon, would this give me a larger rise?
How bigger rise can you get from a 750g loaf? I’m thinking that I could have got a 1kg instead L
Cheers, hope your enjoying all that sun up north
Mark
Hi there
I think you are making good strides because you are actively putting into practise all the new techniques you are learning. With so many teachers you're probably getting a bit overwhelmed. So many ways to skin that cat. If for a while you can stick to one formula you like and work on technique, you'll probably make even more progress. As you learn more you'll realize just how each step along the way contributes to the quality of the final loaf. All the challenges are what keeps TFLers engaged, and of course the delicious results of all the experiments - even less than perfect loaves taste pretty good!
I realise you like wholegrain, if you have done any exploring in the TFL archives you'll have learnt that using 100% wholegrain really challenges the bakers skills to develop good flavour and to create beautiful well developed bread. Take a look through, for example, Andy's blog (ananda) TxFarmer's blog, Khalid's (mebake) blog, they all make wonderful wholegrain breads. I'm not a fan of 100% wholemeal, (I really like mixed grain breads, but include some white flour) so I'm not the right one to help you bring the best out in a 100% wholegrain loaf. I do love rye bread but that is a whole other ball park.
I don't know Yoke Mardewis' book (the book review on TFL isn't great). Certainly if you are working with low/no gluten flours they are fragile, but wheat flour, even wholemeal will develop plenty of gluten and will handle degasing. It is kind of counterintuitive to get rid of the most of the gas when shaping, but if you think about it, from the bugs point of view that is their excreta, so in a way degasing is like cleaning out the pen, giving them a clean start and bringing fresh food to them to let them multiply further and make heaps of gas to inflate your dough. The way you handle the dough when shaping (they say on TFL "iron hand velvet glove") is important for keeping the gluten strands ready to expand with the aircells that form. Watch heaps of YouTube to see how the masters do it - deliberate but not excessive handling.
You have a beautiful bread board. Have you tried using it when you are shaping your loaves? I use mine, the grain of wood provides a bit of grip/resistance, which facilitates shaping, making it possibe to use the bare minimum of flour, if any at all. I think if you look carefully at the various master bakers on YouTube, that many of them are working on wooden benches. This helps in not overworking the dough during shaping. Don't neglect the pre-shape stage either. The relaxed dough after a rest is much easier to work with.
Rice flour has a 'teflon' quality about it, it has different water absorption properties than wheat flour, that is why mixed with wheat flour it is good to rub it into your banneton or couche to prevent sticking. Not sure about its contribution to crust &/or colour.
Your joke about making a 1kg loaf out of 750gram of wet dough is amusing, I do get what you mean, you want it all pumped up with air, right? Actually in general the loaf will be around 20% lighter when it comes out of the oven. But as far as how much time you need or what level of rise you can anticipate, will depend on your conditions, formula, technique etc. Rather than the clock you need to watch the dough and work with the poke test, you'll gradually understand how well developed your loaves are. If anything under-proofing is preferable to over-proofing, as ovenspring will come to the rescue.
Don't expect too much of your new starter, it'll continue to gain strength for awhile, meantime your dough handling will improve too and you'll steadily see improvement. Cutting back a bit on how much starter you feed will help with the discards. For now even when you don't plan to bake, keep at the same level, you want to give it the best chance of coming into its own for the next few weeks. Sounds like you have worked out a system that's going to suit you in terms of feeding and preparing levain. The idea for the timing for feeding the storage starter and for making the levain is when the storage starter is at its peak, maximum bugs present that haven't got hungry/died from lack of food, so you have got that right.
Cheers Robyn
Thanks Robyn
Your help has been amazing! Makes so much more sense having someone to explain things that aren’t quite clicking.
I think that I will stick to neviles recipe for now and perfect the technique that I am getting good at. Even though his recipe has a extremely high hydration compared to other sourdoughs.
I don’t love wholegrain, but do like it… that loaf was just a play at trying 100%… was pretty dense. I think that loafs still passing though J
I think that your right with yokes book, even though the pictures are nice and recipes sound good. I might perfect my own style, then try some of her combinations instead.
I hope that my loaves can get more oven spring! They seam to not keep there loft when transferred / turned from the bannetone.
I post some picks of the crumb of the rye loaf I posted yesterday. It rose well near the top with some nice bubbles. But was dense where the loaf toar and blew at the bottom.
The two loaves I made yesterday worked well. I used 160g of whole meal flour in the whole meal starter preferment instead of white. Then used plain white for main recipe.The other two pics are of this crumb.
The rye worked well but had trouble when baking, it seams to always collapse on me when I slide it onto tray in oven, I use a jerking motion. No pics of this bread... its like the first one again! Bugger
Is this dough too wet? I mean its so wet its hard to get surface tension on the shaping. It even sticks to your hands/bench when trying to make a boule, and wont keep its shape. Maybe I need to do more s&f… or maybe this is just meant to be ciabatta dough. Apparently using the hydration calculator my hydration is 68%.
Do you think just one shaping is sufficient? Since a bench rest is goes splat and sticks?
This time i will try Davids shaping technique. Maybe i need to dust my hands more.
One more question… I’m out of malt powder, but have been to buy some organic malt powder syrup. Is this ok to substitute? If so do you know if you have to use less than the called 2g?
Thanks for your help Robyn… I have been looking for answers to my questions before asking you. But the hard ones I’ve had to splutter out
Cheers
Mark
Hi Mark
How's the white stuff down your way? We even got a flurry of snowflakes on Waiheke yesterday - lasted all of 10 minutes, but it was bona fide snow, unlike the hail seen in some parts of Auckland. The other week in response to a shoutout on NatRad from a St Vincent de Paul person, I knitted some merino wool singlets for little babies, thought when I sent them the worst of the winter was probably over, pleased now they'll be keeping some wee ones in quake damaged houses warm.
The crumb in your last photo looks very good. As Shiao-Ping of Brisbane, who doesn't post so often these days, would say 'look at what's between the holes'. What do you think worked well on this one? Are you keeping a journal? It really helps to keep a note of what you've been doing, so you can refer back later. So many variables. Remember how that dough felt as you worked with it and that will guide you.
I know you feel a bit pleased to have seen the large holes in the top photo, but I'm sorry to say I think they are more a result of the difficulty you had handling that dough. I agree with you, you may have needed to do some more stretch and fold during bulk fermentation to help develop the gluten, it probably wasn't quite ready to move on to shaping. With the cold weather you are having even the hot water cupboard will be colder and so the dough development probably needed more time, that's why we say don't watch the clock, watch the dough. As you didn't get a good gluten sheath formed this contributed to the further problems you had with this loaf. Overproofing will also lead to loaves collapsing/having little oven spring, but in this case I think the bulk fermentation is more likely the source. So in answer to your question, I do encourage you to preshape, but only once the dough is ready.
How did you get on following David's shaping tutorial?
Regarding diastatic malt. When I read on TFL that the flours used in the USA contained it, I bought some with the hope that it would help my neewbie loaves. But gradually I neglected adding it - the formulae I was using didn't include it in their ingredient lists and I'd forget to use it. I think that as my starter got stronger and my handling skills improved, it wasn't necessary and so I don't use it. I purchased mine in Auckland, the company has an online shop you might like to checkout. Whether the product you purchased contains the active enzymes found in diastatic malt I'm sorry I wouldn't know. These enzymes help convert starch to sugar and so give the starter bugs a head start. Only a small amount is needed, you'll have to test it I guess.
http://www.mybreadmix.co.nz/index.php
When you mix your bread, do you keep an eye on temperatures? I adjust the water temperature so that I achieve a dough temp around 25°C, which seems to keep my starter bugs happy and working well. I too use the hot water cupboard at this time of year, I use my thermometer to decide just where I'll put the dough, different spots in there are at different temps. While I'm willing to be patient and work with the dough, knowing about how long it'll take means I can get on with other things too, so monitoring temperatures is useful for me. Once more a link to Susan's Wild Yeast blog, as usual her explanation is easy to follow. I have downloaded her calculator which you will find right at the bottom of the post; I use the spreadsheet every time I bake.
http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2007/07/05/water/
Cheers, Robyn
Thanks Robyn
Well I woke at 4.30 this morning. we had another 20cm of snow on our house... 3 weeks ago I took my skis and went ski touring onto the porthills. But this week there was bread to make!
I see that you knit merino. I suppose you are another nz made supporter!
This time I used our oven as the proofer, It has made a huge difference! I mixed up my dough yesterday morning about 9 - starter had overnight in hot water cupboard and was more bubbly this time! I gave it a mix, added some malt syrup this time instead of powder. Let the dough autolysis for 25mins, then kneaded it for 3mins/ bench rested for 1min. repeated 3 times(deans technique from global baker) and had good/ average gluten development. I viewed the king rather website you sent me, they recommend not over kneading since you get some extra gluten development just through the stretch and folds. I then let proof in a warm oven for 2hours with s&f at 50min and 100min (Susan’s sourdough recommends these times in the link you posted). The loaves were doubled at least when I came to shaping.
How do you tell that it has had sufficent prooving and enough stretch and folds? Surly times must vary, do you have any pics of what a develped/undeveloped dough after proofing looks like?
I had trouble shaping again this time. I can see looking at a video of me shaping, that the dough is gripping and dam I’m handling it too much!! Just leave it alone!
I gave it a bench rest of 20min and final rise of 2hrs - which could have been too much? I got preoccupied with the snow, I forgot about the bread.
I really need to invest in a thermometer, so I can test all these temperatures. Got one today :) used it with your post on water temp. Dough temp was constant and i got good/fast proves!
I am getting a better feel for the dough now... I’m still a little unsure of how much surface tension you need on a batard for it to keep its shape. At the moment I’m having trouble sealing those bottoms without it sticking to the bench! I made a bit of dough from just flour and water and played with shaping, got my surface tension working now.
Today i did two norwich sourdoughs from susans wild yeast website. There smaller loaves, 400g. The other two are the same 700g recipe that i started with, although i made these with 10% less water. They all look good and got good ovenspring with my new baking stone!
Do you think that i can get away with storing my starter in the fridge now? I think its going pretty strong now, but am a little unsure of how to do this and weather i could continue to bake each day from it.
Hope the snow found you up north again... exciting stuff.
Mark
Yesterdays loafs and crumbs
Todays loafs
Sorry robyn but i have a couple more questions :)
Your help has been awesome, thanks soo much! I owe you a bottle or two
So i currently have two starters, ones a whole meal and ones a rye. I have had them going for 3 weeks now and have been feeding them each night 100g of flour, there looking really strong now. I am really keen to keep on baking, but am looking for ways to have a bit less wastage. Ideally i am trying to find a way to have them stored idle until i need to bake with them. Then take a little out without having to feed and build it up to bake with.
*is it possible to drop the feeding down to 40g. Then in the morning I use 80g leaving me with 40g to feed again. This way I have no waist.
*I have also run out of my organic rye flour that I have been feeding my starter on, I can only find the healtheries brand stone-ground rye. I cant get anymore organic milled rye until next week. Is it ok to sub change this flour in the feedings and recipes?
*I have heard you can store the starters in the fridge? My understanding is that i can feed my starter then put it in the fridge for up to a week. Is it possible keeping a large amount of starter in the fridge, taking out a set amount of starter for each bake without having to revive the whole starter? Would this affect the quality of bread compaired to a constant feed each day? Some websites tell me fridges kill the activity of starters, some say use them.
*Say i want to bake once a week on saterday, for this bake of two loaves i need 160g of active starter. So i keep the starter "A" in the fridge that has 300g of starter in it. I take x amount out to create a starter "B". Should i now build up starter b with say a couple of feedings over 2-3 days? Meaning take out 10g of starter on wensday... build to 30 on thurs... 90 friday .... ready for bake saterday. But then that means having 300g of starter in fridge is too much if i only have to feed starter "A" once a week. I'm confusing! Please let me know what would be a good routine for my schedule?
*I also read that you should feed your starter twice a day... well at the moment i feed my starter only once. Is this ok?
Thanks again, i'm loving baking this bread. But am scared i'm going to kill my starter if i stop baking/ feeding it each day!
I'm hooked, haha, only other bread bakers would understand
Mark
Hi Mark
It's hard to believe that it is only one week since you posted those first photos, of doorstops, at the top of this thread! Your hard work and willingness to pay attention to detail is really paying off. I hope you are feeling proud of yourself. And yes, it is kind of addictive. Glad you got to go play in the snow though - your dough was clearly forgiving.
You ask how to tell when the dough is ready to move onto shaping. Until you get used to the feel of the dough and its behaviour you are probably going to have to rely on checking the change in volume. Did you mark a container, so that you can check the expansion? You'll see in the photos on TFL that in the USA they sell clear straight sided proofing containers with volumes marked, easy to tell at a glance what's going on. If you haven't done so, I'm sure you can create something suitable to use. I suggested that you try Susan's Norwich Sourdough, because she includes clear temperature and time guidelines, even if the ingredients are a bit different, her method is pretty easy to follow and allows the opportunity to see what the dough feels like & behaves like when following her instructions. Sounds like it went pretty well for you when you followed her instructions. If you look again at the master bakers videos, Jeffrey Hamelman at KAF, Ciril Hitz or the many videos that Mark Sinclair of Back Home Bakery has kindly posted on TFL and observe what their dough looks like when it is ready to be pre-shaped, you'll get a better idea. You'll note the dough is less flowing and starting to stay formed. I'm sorry I don't have any photos, I have no camera.
For the batard shaping go back and watch the Ciril Hitz breadshaping video again, now that your hands are starting to get the idea, you'll get more out of watching that video. You can have a bit of flour on the bench under the outer sheath you have created by folding as you shape, because that outer sheath part will become crust. Just try and keep excess flour away from the area you are trying to seal. You're working with the dough so try to use movement into the dough rather than forcing down on the bench.
Regarding your starters. The more you work with them, the better you will understand them. Now that they are established it will be pretty hard to kill them, assuming you feed them according to the conditions in which you store them. So yes, at present while the conditions in Christchurch are pretty cold, a daily feeding is just fine. However once it gets hotter, they will work faster and exhaust what you have fed them before 24 hours is up. In my comment titled Cold Down there? back up this thread I did write about how I work with my starter, perhaps you could go back and read that again. That's just what I do and I can assure you that there are numerous methods used, none of them wrong. You really need to work out a system that is going to suit your lifestyle, the type of bread you bake, the frequency of baking and amount of bread you bake. And of course these parameters will change from time to time and you will learn to change how you look after your starter in accordance with these changes! I know it is pretty overwhelming and confusing at present, but it will get easier as you become more familiar with your starters. There are no 'shoulds' in starter maintenance other than learning what works for you and your starter! The prove is in the bread.
How about this week you keep feeding your starters daily at the lower 40g level, but you also put one set away in the fridge until the end of the week, and do a side by side next weekend to reassure yourself that even if it is stored in the fridge you can restore its vitality by feeding it up a couple of times before making bread. Your idea of doing a gradual increase of the volume over a couple of days is something that many TFLers do. If you know about how much bread you are likely to bake you should be able to figure out about how much to keep in the fridge. Actually you'll find that it will store pretty well in the fridge for periods much longer than a week, so don't be getting anxious. When I remove starter from the fridge after being away from home, I just feed it normally for a couple of days and use a small amount in preparing an overnight levain, the night before I plan on making bread. You'll figure out what feels best for you I'm sure. And you can adjust what you do, to get a system that really works for you and your starters. Don't worry you won't kill your starter. Might be an idea to dry some as a back up though. Just smear some thinly on to some baking paper and pop it in the hot water cupboard. Once it has dried properly, seal it in a container. You could use a little bit to test that it will indeed come back to life when you feed it.
Regarding discards. Leftover starter can be used to make all manner of things such as pancakes, english muffins, brownies etc etc. The search box (and Susan Wildyeast site) will bring up many ideas. I also like to add it to my compost bin too and never feel I am wasting it, I am sure my compost bin works better now that I'm adding discards. In terms of the cost, flour is not expensive and even if you add the cost of the flour discarded to the cost of making your bread, you will still be much ahead of the price you need to pay to buy bread. So I don't get anxious about having leftover starter. And as you will have read in that earlier post I am confident enough now to only keep back 10g to feed each day, although I do feed it 50g of flour, so I keep my discard level down.
I'm sure your starter will do just fine on the Healtheries stone ground rye. When you use it in a recipe just note the difference. You might even prefer it! In some of my breads I use all kinds of flours and flakes and rolled grains, amaranth, quinoa, cornmeal, kibbled grains etc etc and have fun experimenting with combinations. Some I won't repeat but mostly I'm pretty happy. I only keep a white flour 60% hydration starter. Occassionally I will feed some with rye for a few days and then make rye bread, but I don't keep a rye fed starter.
I was very anxious about starter maintenance when I was first making sourdough and couldn't understand why there were no firm guidelines, hard and fast rules, no two people seemed to do the same thing, but the more bread I made I gradually realised that each of us have our own circumstances and that is what determines the best method of starter maintenance. Hang in there!
Night, Robyn
Thanks Robyn
I have gone and purchased some new containers with volumes, I’ll give this a shot! But Susan has been great and following here instructions I have a pretty good feel on what the dough should feel like!
I have also got my batard shaping down to a t now! Its good fun. I just made a little dough, let it ferment then played with it until I was conferrable with a smaller scale.
My starter was peaking to quickly. Its about 4cm high in its jar and rises up to at least double, but at the moment when I go to use it its receded a little (1cm ish). Is this ok to use now or is it classified as (over-ripe). When is a starter overripe compared to ripe? I cant find any pictures on the internet of a firm 1:1:1 starter that’s ripe compared to over.
Well I have moved onto baking two rosemary and garlic loaves from Susan’s website... they were real good!
Susan’s more Norwich sourdough
Susan's standard Norwich and my standard sourdough boules
Hi Mark
Looks like it's time you started a new thread! Your breads look great.
Your 100% starter at 1:1:1 by weight is known as a liquid starter, the 60% type I keep is called a firm starter.
Take a look at this photo of ripe starters
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14913/very-liquid-sourdough#comment-95326
In general terms if a starter is overripe it'll collapse.
With your 100% hydration starter, if you are catching it after it has collapsed a bit that should be fine, but if it sinks right back down, then you are probably better to feed it again before using it in bread. You want the maximum number of bugs in good 'health' to contribute to successful bread. If you are finding that it is no longer lasting for 24 hours before you need to feed it, consider finding a cooler spot to keep it, or now that it's about a month old, the bugs should have got their peaking order sorted out, so you could think about upping the feed, to say 1:2:2. That will still be 100% hydration. (You could try 20g starter and the same 40g flour 40g water you have been using)
You might like to go back and check out the blogs from the beginning of some of the TFL bakers whose breads appeals to you. It's quite interesting reading right through a blog series, learning what they have learned along the way. You'll find lots of good breads to try too. Although she isn't posting much these days, Shiao-Ping to whom I have referred previously, has left a wonderful resource on TFL.
6 months on from the big February quake today, hope that you, your friends and family are ok, considering the circumstances.
Night, Robyn