Cannot perfect the crumb... please critique my bread making process.
Hello all,
This is the bread I've been working on for 6 months. I've made it probably about 70-80 times, it tastes amazing, the crust is perfect, and it has a ton of oven spring. However I just can't get that nice open crumb I am searching for. So after many futile attempts I thought someone here might be kind enough to evaluate my technique and recipe and perhaps point me in the right direction.
Ingredients:
400g Bread flour (80%)
100g Rye meal flour: (20%)
360g Water (72%)
1.25 tsp salt
Starter:
1st build (1:4:4): 25g starter + 50g rye flour + 50g water (save all but 40g for next batch)/ 8 hours
2nd build (1:4:4): 40g starter + 80g rye flour + 80g water/8 hours
Starter ends up being 100g rye flour, 100g water
Then, I add the starter to 400g of white bread flour and 260g water. Comes out to 72% hydration.
Then I let rest for 2 minutes, and hand knead for 10 minutes. I let rest for 2 minutes, then knead for another 2 minutes.
One full rise (4 hours), then I stretch and fold, deflating and also redeveloping the gluten, then I put it in the fridge for 16 hours. The following afternoon, I take it out of the fridge, stretch and fold, then let it rise again (4 hours).
Finally, I do another stretch and fold, and then make a sort of package like shape with the dough and do the boule forming trick where you pull it towards yourself and keep repeating while rotating the dough. It gives it good surface tension.
Then I prepare my colander with a couche (heavily floured and oiled cut up cotton shirt) and let it proof for about 2 hours. I've found its better to slightly underproof this bread.
I bake it on a quarry tile at about 500f for about 22 minutes, rotating the boule at 10 minutes into the bake. I give it a good amount of steam for the first 3-4 minutes.
Ideas? Constructive criticism?
1. Rye doesn't support bubbles very well because it does not create gluten but rather pentosans. Also pentosans can break down after too much manipulation so even their contribution to structure can go with so many stretch&folds.
2. The hydration of your dough needs to be higher. 360/(500+100) is 60% not 72%. Rye is thirstier than white flour.
Look at the recipe for Jason's ciabatta which some might say is the ultimate in open crumb. Its hydration is 95% (475/500) and it is handled very gently after the initial beating.
As a former, well experienced baker of bricks and doorstops, I am just learning the science of making more open crumb. My most recent "aha!" is that it is important to be gentle at the final shaping so I don't push too much air out and wreck the openness.
Higher hydration is needed - 75% min with that much rye. You might want to cut the rye down to 10% too.
You also might try a different development technique. Try kneading for about 5 minutes. Then rest 15 min. Then do 6 sets of S&Fs 15 minutes apart placing it a plastic covered bowl between each one. Start with about 16 - 1/4 turns on the first one going down 2 each time. The dough will tell you when it has had enough each time as it tightens up. Then let it rest for about an hour or 1 1/2 hours on the bench covered. Then refrigerate overnight. Let it come to room temp the next morning, 1 hour or so. Then pre-shape. let rest for 10 minutes and then shape for proofing in your cloth and flour lined collander. Place it seam side up. It will probably be ready to bake in a couple of hours but the poke test will tell when.
Steam is also important. I use Sylvia's rolled up kitchen towel in a loaf pan filled 2/3rds full of water and use 2 of them. placed into the oven at the beginning of a 45 min preheat. Then a throw a 1.2 cut pr water into the bottom of right after the bread goes in. Remove the steam at the 12-15 min mark.
This should give you some nice open crumb without sacrificing the taste you are looking to get as well.
Hope this helps ,
I'd echo Heidi's comments about hydration and dabrownman's about a different development regime. The rye content, at less than 20%, isn't enough to stifle your dream of an open crumb. It isn't helping, certainly, but it won't shut you down.
If anything, I'd go a step further than dabrownman's recommendation and suggest that you don't knead the bread at all. Rather, give it a rough mix to combine all ingredients but the salt and allow it to autolyse for 30-60 minutes. Then mix in the salt. Then do stretch and folds a few times over the next couple of hours. When you feel the dough has firmed up, you can either finish the bulk fermentation at room temperature or put the whole thing in the refrigerator, which will just about shut down the wild yeasts.
As you handle the dough during the stretch and folds, and then later during the shaping, you want to be careful not to expel gas from the dough. Some loss is unavoidable but you should try to handle the dough as gently as is practical to preserve those bubbles that you want to see in the finished bread.
Your present approach has a couple of consequences. First, the extended kneading produces a fine-celled dough, just opposite of what you want. Second, the stretch and folds that come after bulk fermentation serve more to knock the gas out of the dough than anything else; the gluten has received more than enough development during the kneading stage. Bye-bye, bubbles!
Using an autolyse period allows the gluten to form without mechanical intervention. The stretch and folds that occur early in the bulk fermentation help to organize the gluten into a structure that will trap bubbles effectively without much degassing penalty. Nor will they create a fine-textured, smooth crumb.
One last observation: your feeding regime is actually 1:2:2, not 1:4:4, at least for the quantities you mention.
Paul
with no salt autolyse instead, is way better for open crumb than any kneading I recommended. Go with Pauls advice and the open crumb you seek will be yours!!
The process description is different from the ingredients as listed.
I suspect you meant:
400g Bread flour (80%)
100g Rye meal flour: (20%)
360g Water (72%)
1.25 tsp salt
At 72% hydration and 20% rye the dough will be sticky and may need more mixing up front. I would be inclined to do a few S&F at 45 min intervals during the bulk fermentation but only enough to assure adequate gluten development.
Then form into loaves and retard for your 16 hrs followed by baking directly from the refrigerator unless it needs a little more proofing (this will depend STRONGLY on your refrigerator temperature).
Hi all, great posts here, and I'm getting some ideas already. However, I forgot to leave out a huge detail about my process. It has to minimize actual time spent on it. This is an 'every day' kind of bread, I don't have the time to hover over it for hours, so stretch and folds every 15 minutes for three hours and the like are out.
S&F's every 10 -15 minutes. I do it all the time. Do as many as you have time for. With a 10 minute initial rest you can ge t 5 of them done in an hour. You might want to get the hydration down to 72% or do the s&f's on a lightly floured work surface if you keep it a 75% and only do (4 ) S& F's.
o can also autolyse the flours with the wet ahead of time too. I have done 24 hours in the fridge, you can do as much as you want and then let it warm up on the counter.
The options for method are pretty endless but I'm sure you will find a method that suits your schedule and you will get the bread you are looking for.
That being said, I think I will try PMcCool's idea of the no-salt autolyze on a weekend night and see what happens. As far as tweaking the existing process, I plan on upping the hydration to 75% and lowering the rye content to maybe 12-15% and being gentler n the dough during the shaping stage.
Another small edit - (1:4:4) should be (1:2:2) in both places:
Starter:1st build (1:2:2): 25g starter + 50g rye flour + 50g water (save all but 40g for next batch)/ 8 hours
2nd build (1:2:2): 40g starter + 80g rye flour + 80g water/8 hours
Once you perfect the mixing (kneading) up front, you won't need any further manipulation beyond shaping before refrigeration. Then bake straight from the cooler and you are done. If the crumb is not open enough for you, increase the hydration and mixing/gluten development.
This formulation is not that far off from Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough with Increased Whole Grain (you are using 1/3 more rye and 7% more water and sourdough instead of a yeast-based levain). Hamelman suggests one fold half way through a 2.5 hr bulk fermentation but it only adds character; he then divides and shapes and offers an option to retard at 42°F for 18 hrs.
Feed the rye starter some wheat in the build and regularly if you plan on using a pure rye starter with wheat dough. I would start with adding 20% or switch 20g of the 100g rye for wheat. Toss the 20g rye into the wheat dough. I think you might get more yeast gasses for larger bubbles.
Hello, I was a little confused by what you wrote- do you mean I should add some wheat flour to my rye starter so that the yeast get used to eating wheat before they go into the dough? I know that's not the technical term, but similar tricks are used in brewing when you're trying to get the yeast to eat a different kind of sugar.
Inoculate? I'm not sure either. That's it! "trying to get the yeast to eat a different kind of sugar" or maybe encouraging a bigger variety of yeast in the culture, ones that like wheat sugars. Which one I'm not sure, could be both. I do know yeast tends to digest rye faster and easier than wheat.
Hey! look what i got with upping the hydration to 75%, dropping rye content to 10% and being really gentle with the dough:
Looks good eh? That's the best crumb I've ever produced. Now I just have to try to up the rye content as much as possible, you'll notice the loaf lacks that beautiful caramel color. Thanks a lot to everyone!
Might have to bake it just a tad longer but all the fun is worth it. How high did you want to raise the rye amount?
So what was your method this time? I'm guessing some folks here can help you get back to 20% rye and still get some bigger holes too. Nice bake. Keep improving like that and in a couple of more bakes you will get it as good as this recipe can get. When you up the rye - up the hydration some more. Maybe 78% for 20% Whole rye.
And well you should be. That's a lovely bread and it sounds as though it hit nearly all of your targets. That thin crust is especially lovely. As Mini Oven says, just bake it a while longer to get that deep caramel color you want. You may also wish to let the bread remain in the oven for 5-10 minutes with the door ajar, after having turned off the oven. That would allow the crumb to dry a bit more. If the picture can be trusted, it appears as though this loaf's crumb is verging on underbaked; it appears to be very moist, almost to the point of gumminess. That's also something to watch out for as you increase the rye content--let the bread cool completely, overnight if necessary, to permit the moisture within the loaf to redistribute and to prevent those gummy little bits that cling to the bread knife.
Congratulations on addressing your former woes!
Paul
I would like to get the rye content back up to 20%. I really like the flavor of rye, whether its in my beer or bread. It just adds a special something.
My process was the same as the one up top, but I upped the hydration and used less rye. In addition, I was super careful with the dough, I don't think I ever fully degassed it, just gently folded it a couple of times. I didn't do much stretching at all. Now I realize that if you mix it properly in the beginning, repeated S&Fs are pointless and even bad for the crumb. Dough is an amazing thing, it has a memory, and remembers what you do to it and how you handle it.
PMCool, you have a keen eye and I noticed the gumminess too. Now that I have higher hydration, I guess I need to bake a little longer? I will definitely try the trick with the door ajar for 10 minutes or so. The crumb was borderline under baked.
My next build will use the same process, but with 15% rye. If I don't see the same nice open crumb, I will increase the hydration by 2% or so and try again with 15% rye. I've made this bread 80 times, and I usually only try to change one variable at a time in order to show cause and effect for greater repeatability.
steaming it for 10 minutes. That should help you get max spring spring and eventually the much sought after blistered crust. You are getting there quickly. Nice baking.
Well, I tried upping the rye to 15% and what I got was a wet mess that I could not properly shape into a boule. Frustrating.
I came within an inch of losing it and throwing the dough into trash and ended up totally manhandling the dough and I expect a total failure this time. I think I'll try the original 10% thing again, and see what happens. As my welding instructor once told me, do it perfect three times and then you know you got it. I should have stuck to the 10% formula and tried to repeat it but I went too far too fast.
15% really shouldn't be that sticky. :)
I don't think I would eliminate folding (S & F's) but when the dough is sticky from rye, there are a few ways to get around it. One, change to using damp hands to manipulate the dough instead of flour. Two, involves heating up a portion of the water and stirring in some of the rye flour to scald it. Let it cool down before adding to the active starter or dough so as not to kill any yeasts just some nasty sticky enzyme bonding. I know one step at a time, but it is an interesting and fun direction.
The scalding trick could also be part of the second starter build. Use the 20% rye recipe. About two hours before 2nd feeding, stir up the rye flour with the water plus maybe 150g+ water from the final dough (it should be good and watery) and heat until it just starts to thicken and "bloop." Don't boil it or you risk loosing too much moisture. (you might have to add 20-40g water back into the final dough) Let it cool completely (unless you want to speed up the ferment) and feed this to the starter. The starter will love it and I warn you ahead of time it will make the bread taste a little sweeter in a nice way.
Mini
Hi Mini Oven,
What about the salt? Do you think 1.25 tsp is not enough?
You suggested using wet hands instead of floured hands to shape the dough. When forming boules, I use the technique where you pull the ball towards you on the counter and then rotate and repeat, to build surface tension... I can't remember what this is called but you probably know what I am talking about. Would wet hands work for this technique or could I form the boule in a different way? This evening when I made the boule, my hands kept sticking no matter how much I floured them, and the boule was sticking to the counter. Very frusturating!
Also I will try that pre-cooking trick sometime. Sounds interesting.
Oh and I realized I did do something else different I had the dough do the final rise in a warmer place in the house. Could this have contributed to the rye soup effect?
Thanks again!
There is a risk that with too much water, the whole boule will end up in your lap. You want your hands with just enough moisture to not stick but not to slide too much either. I just let the water trickle quietly in the sink and dip one hand at a time when needed. Other use a shallow bowl with water and dunk just finger tips, you may have to find your own method as to what works for you. I have formica counter tops and a plastic bench scraper. Sometimes I lightly oil the counter top and mist with water before turning out the dough. With really wet rye doughs, I just shape in the air above the dough bowl or counter, alternating hands in water when needed. Saves cleaning the counter. Wear short sleeves. :)
It was Peter Reinhart that first mentioned doing this while I was testing a recipe. It was very awkward at first but soon I was good at it. With ryes, it is easier and cleaner than all the dough stuck around my finger nails and in between my fingers and palms, clean up is faster and less messy. I also use the method to add water to a dry dough leaving my hands dripping wet as I work it in. Should the dough start to separate into globs, I hold back on the water until it is all together in one piece again. You can get some nice tension on the dough too and the higher the ratio of rye the more important it is to not overwork the dough. (I like the 60% to 100% rye range) The dough starts taking on lots of rye characteristics around 40% and upwards.
Are you sure you didn't forget the salt?
now I'm confused, I though it was sticky before you shaped it for the final rise. "Rye soup" (you really have wheat soup) sounds like over-proofed or over-fermented. Gotta watch that second proof so it doesn't go too far, your bread dough is more wheat than rye and wheat is best caught at peak and not beyond. Does that help?
Mini
I think 1.25 tsp is about 6.3 g salt for 500g flour (1 tsp = 5g)
9g would be 1.8% 10g would be 2% or 2 tsp (standard) Up to you.
So what happened to the gooey boule, lump? This sounds like a learning experience. How can we best use it?
@Mini -
I am intrigued by your suggestion to pregelatinize the rye and denature the enzymes that come with it. It certainly sounds like the application of the Tangzhong method for a rather different result. Is this something you came up with, or is there some writing about it in the public sphere?
Doc
scalding wheat one wouldn't go over 10%, better less. With rye? I think it could go higher and yes more than likely speed up the fermenting of the wheat dough in the recipe. I think it comes out to 18% of the total flour if the second build is scalded. But the rye is mainly there for flavour and when I think back on Dan Lepard's Black Pepper Rye, the amounts would be similar (75g scalded rye to 375g wheat flour + 75 g rye using yeast) That is a beautiful dough to play with!
I'm aware that this is a sourdough recipe (a longer ferment) but then again only 20% rye. I don't think gummy crumb will rear it's sticky head after the bread is cooled. I'm hoping that the gelatinized denatured rye will blend in with the wheat matrix and expand more like wheat. Maybe giving larger bubbles like a lower 5% to 10% rye (wheat) bread.
Any thoughts?
@Mini - you get the Gold Star for innovation this week! I love it.
My thoughts: I would probably start with 10% of the total flour in a rye roux and use an all white starter - just to separate the variables. That should provide a fairly soft crumb with good flavor without doing a job on the wheat starch. If that worked OK I would increase the rye in the roux to 15% so that the only variable was the increase in rye content not any change in the form. If that works out OK, then I might go to the desired 20% rye by adding 5% rye to the starter and see if that had any impact on the crumb. If yes, then go back to 10% rye roux and 10% rye starter and watch for changes. Is this a case where you want to fully develop the wheat gluten during the mix and then not do any S&F during fermentation? I feel like I don't want to mess with the dough if there is potentially a lot of enzymes on the loose.
gives to a wheat bread. That is a flavour hard to define. I think that gets lost in a wheat starter with rye in the dough. Although I do like Pierre Nury's recipe that has what ... 5% rye? It is a different kind of taste.
so... gotta keep the rye starter
I will have to come back tomorrow. I was out looking at stone-age monoliths, and 2000 yr old roman roads today and just stoned tired. Can't make too much sense of things right now. I'm off to dream about ancient bread mysteries and giant loaves and sleep like a rock. Thanks for the gold star. :)
Mini
@Mini - what is different between using a rye starter and fermentation of well hydrated rye flour as part of bulk fermentation that incorporates a white starter (except perhaps for time or maybe a higher TTA at the beginning of bulk fermentation)? It seems like the process should not care, but I will think on it some more and wait for your insights.
I tried an experiment last night in which I transferred my white starter directly to 100% rye without a hiccup. I did it at 100% hydration and probably should have done it at 150 or 200%. As a result it is full of open space but not frothy and I can't easily check the pH. However, it was plenty sour when I got up this morning. So there does not seem to be any need to slowly wean the LAB and yeast off of wheat, they just jump on that rye like they belong there. I don't often incorporate rye into the starter, but I am going to try it and see where it leads (usually the rye just goes into the mix as part of the total flour). But I am not going to try to go all the way to 20% in one step.
rye flour, but I have feeding wheat to a rye starter.
I think a rye starter has slightly different mixture of beasties (yeasts & bacteria) that put out slightly different aromas. I have discovered early on that when running out of rye to feed the rye starter, and had to feed it wheat, first the starter balked at the insult and second after it had adapted and was predominantly a wheat starter with returned rise times, it still had the ability to ferment wheat dough with a different flavour, different from wheat starter that never tasted rye. It has also happened to me that when using my pure rye starter for a wheat recipe, the rise times immediately took much much longer. The rye balking at not finding rye food and having to settle for wheat. Scary when that happens the first time. Maybe the rye is converted faster into food than wheat. Wish I knew. But the starter soon adapts, you just have to be patient with it and go thru a few feeds.
Even though it was years ago, I still remember that wheat loaf and wheat sourdough (which was a rye starter fed wheat) That had much stronger hints of rye sour for the amount of rye in it ... which was almost null. It was wonderful until it faded away.
So my point is that a rye starter culture has different developed aromas feeding on wheat than a wheat starter culture feeding on fresh rye flour. I think the variety of beasties are different and therefore produce differences in fermented material.
Retarding at around 42°F for up to 16 hrs (or a combination of higher temperatures for less time) will do a few things for you:
1. it will allow the LAB to produce more acid without letting the yeast eat up all of their ration of the sugar
2. it will allow the dough to absorb a lot of CO2 which will help with oven spring and contribute substantially to blistering of the surface (given sufficient steam at oven entry).
3. it will make the loaves easier to handle when you load them into the oven (aided by some chapati flour/durum atta on the couche)
Thanks for the heads up, but I already do that right now. I put it in the fridge around 8 pm and take it out around noon the next day.
This is what happens when you don't shape your bread properly. I probably could have slashed it a bit deeper too. This is exactly what I expected to see, but hey, it was breakfast and still tasted better than anything I could buy at the grocery store. I figured I'd post the pics and maybe it could help someone diagnose a problem.
The starter for the next try is fermenting now, so I'll do another build tonight. 15% rye again, more salt, and I'm not doing the bulk ferment next to a radiator this time! Yes Mini, it started out roughly the same in feel as the successful 10% rye attempt, but it ended up too soupy at the shaping phase, which means something went wrong inbetween the mixing and shaping and if you say 15% rye isn't that much, I suspect it was the warmer place that did it.
I also notice I'm still getting a bit of the gum problem at the bottom... I even left it in the oven for 10 minutes. Hmm... well, I'll try to fix that one later.
I have to agree with you and it could be a number of things.
The larger bubbles at the top are speaking... they want to be more evenly spread thru the crumb and I think that means that as the dough is fermenting, it needs some kind of reworking of the dough, stretch and fold come immediately to mind.
When the dough is first mixed up it takes a while for the gas to build up but as the dough becomes spongy and not so dense, it's time for the first folding. Depending on how the dough reacts to the folding, 4 folds is usually enough. (First flip the dough upside down) Try to really stretch the dough as far as it will go without tearing, then fold over. With more liguid doughs, more folds are needed to give the dough blob some height. When resistance is felt, flip the dough back over right-side-up and tuck under the corners rounding out the shape. Cover and let the dough relax and rise about 1/4 and give it another set of folds.
I find that when listening to the 25°C dough, the folding starts generally after the frirst 2-3 hours and then an hour after that. Then 45 minutes and depending on the hydration (the dough will get wetter as it ferments) feel of the dough, in another 45 minutes or even 30 minutes. (note the folding gets closer together as the fermenting progresses and the dough rises more between folds) If I feel or see any tearing of the dough while simply folding, stop folding and let the dough rest before shaping. After 10-15 minutes, shape and put upside down to rise in a rounded form lined with flour, floured cloth so that it can be tipped out easily onto parchment paper before loading into the oven. I estimate that the shaped dough is ready for the oven in about 30 minutes (estimate of time between folds) so I make sure that before shaping the dough, if I want a hot oven, turn it on to preheat.
Mini
You have the beginnings of a flying top crust which somebody else can remedy. I have forgotten what causes it. Perhaps over proofing or over development?
It looks like the gummy spot is dead center in the middle of the bottom. Makes me suspect that the stone is not delivering enough heat to the dough (cold stone, thick stone, stone with low Cp, stone with low K, steam generator under stone, ...). It even looks like it might be not as brown in the middle as it is toward the edges indicating that it was cooler there.
Perhaps slip another rack into the oven when it is half done and you don't need the steam any more and get the bread off the stone for the last half of the baking time.
Slashing it deeper would not have done much. If there was any more expansion left it would have made a taller loaf. In fact, from the look of it you probably didn't need to slash it at all.
The flying top thing was caused by improper shaping- I couldn't shape it b/c it was too sticky so I just threw the wad of dough into the couche (it was there or the trash).
The gummy bottom thing is an ongoing problem however. I bake on quarry tiles, and my steam pan is right underneath. So next time I'm using 2 quarry tiles stacked on top of each other, and I'm lining the rack upon which the quarry tiles are placed with aluminum foil. Hopefully two stones will hold more heat, and the foil will prevent steam from touching and cooling the stone.
I think your soggy spot is due to the steam generator cooling the quarry tiles and perhaps flooding the bottom of the loaf with condensate. That will cool the tiles from the top as well and will take a while to boil off since it is covered by the dough.
Try:
1. moving the steam generator to one side and the tiles the other way
2. putting a double layer of foil under the tiles
3. adding a second layer of tiles
He just posted this recipe with 20% rye
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/29023/schwarzwaelder-krustenbrot-black-forest-crusty-bread
proofing seems like a lot to me. My normal routine is to autlyse for an hour, mix in the levin and salt do 4-6 S&F's over then next hour (no kneeding). Let it rest for 1 1/2 hours on the counter, then retard it overnight. Bring it out of the fridge and let it warm up for an hour. Preshape it into boules, let rest 15 minutes and then do final shape and place in baskets for final rise until it passes the poke test - usually about 2 hours.
I think the yeast could be tired at 10 hours of proofing with a long retard in teh fridge too.