June 16, 2015 - 2:55am
What is wrong with my SD?
Today, I had some trouble getting the dough out of my brotform as it was sticking too much. This is actually a Norwich Sourdough recipe but I increased the hydration to say...72 or more? I had been tweaking the hydration for quite a while now without any problem until now...could not shape the dough after the final session of stretch and fold. The bread turned out flat!
Appreciate if someone could tell what went wrong. Perhaps not enough of surface tension or simply too wet?
Thanks and regards,
FrugalBaker
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The less forgiving. 72% hydration is only too high if that's not what you're looking for in a bread.
Depending on what flour used it'd suit either higher or lower hydration but there is a big range.
Without knowing what your process was i'll venture some guesses.
1. Develop the gluten well. Perhaps with this higher hydration dough the technique might differ. Will be more suited to slap and folds or taking hold of one side of the dough, gently pulling up and over pressing down in the middle. Going round the dough till you feel it resisting.
2. Take more time to develop the gluten.
3. Flouring your banneton a bit more or with some other flour. When taking out allow gravity to do the work tapping the bottom to help it along. Don't shake it though. Be patient it'll come out eventually.
4. A free standing high hydration dough will struggle more with height then a lower hydration dough. Using a dutch oven will help.
72% hydration is not too high. Above 70% is getting in the high range but at 72% it might just take a little more practice.
Hope this helps Sandy.
As a Ciabatta it looks perfect!
as I was only thinking of making some ciabatta yesterday. Looked up on some recipes yesterday. Well guess what? I think I won't be finding ciabatta dough hard to handle after all, isn't it? I did a 78 percent once and the end result wasn't bad actually. Am feeling so deflated right now, just like my bread : (
No, it's not, it just looks like a collapsed loaf.
if you could elaborate more so that I know what went wrong....thank you, Suave ;)
Look, here's a loaf I baked last night, it's still a work in progress but it's getting there. The recipe is not dissimilar to Vermont sourdough, actually it's probably closer to Norwich, considering the fact that it uses 100% starter. It started out as 67% hydration dough. In this iteration it's 59%. I also shaved off a significant portion of fermentation time to account for the weather, probably around 30% - I'd need to go take a closer look at my calculations as the original suggested fermentation time was unrealistic.
You do the opposite - you add more water (although that depends on ingredients - I eschew strong flours when I bake SD) and your total fermentation time is whopping 4.5 hours whereas Hamelman asks for 3 and at a lower temperature too (although the robustness of your sourdough comes in play here).
First of all,that's a beautiful loaf you have there,Suave. That's what I am trying to achieve here. The more I think about it, the more likely I think my bake was over fermented....those big bubbles that formed overnight in the fridge was a good giveaway. I should know better. I will have to stick to the recipe for a while and really watch out the temperature from now on as it turned out to be my worst enemy. Hope I will have better luck next time. Thanks so much,Suave!
I've been baking with yeast dough for about 40 years but that doesn't mean much. without going into my technical background, when making French bread for example, you want to use a wet dough. The problem with this is that it makes the dough that much easier to fall. There is at least one site that has rewritten Julia Child's French bread recipe for instant yeast. The site I visited still used old fashioned means of holding the dough erect during growth. Today, you can buy specifically made French bread loaf tins that force the dough to follow the shape of the tin as it grows. Many years ago when our children were young I would bake a couple of loaves of French bread each week on a somewhat regular basis. I also have a baguette tin. These specialty loaf pans make a huge difference. Try them out and see the difference. The most important things in any bread making are time, temperature, weight and PH. My Amish white bread for example looked like the pictures I'd seen on my first loaves. Now, my AWB looks like the cover of a bread magazine. The biggest reason for this is keeping the sugar separated from the yeast until the mix is sufficiently diluted so as not to have the sugar kill the yeast. I have posted the very long and detailed recipe elsewhere but if you follow the preceeding logic you will get results that should surprise you.
you may also want to compare the ambient temperatures when this last batch was made to the the ambient temperatures when you were making previous batches. If the present temperatures are warmer, the dough will ferment faster. If you kept the same timings as in previous bakes, the dough may have been over-fermented and starting to experience some degree of breakdown.
Paul
Paul and I shall take note of that.
light but hard to tell. What do you think about it close up?
The bottom heating element of my oven is not great and am looking into replacing it or investing in a piece of baking stone. Mid-year sale is just around the corner, so am just waiting patiently here :)
all for the comments. As I read along, each of you pointed at something that I had in mind too. At this point, I would think that my dough was over fermented as I live in a very hot and humid place and the weather has been somewhat extreme...it could be bright and sunny in the morning and raining cats and dogs in the evening.
Having said that, I am not putting the blame solely on the weather, am just trying so hard to figure what went wrong. Consistency is what I am trying to achieve nowadays. Let me give you a 'tour' of what I did to this bake so that we all can solve this big mystery :)
Indoor temperature : 28-29 dc, 90 percent humidity
Preferment was given a 1:2:2 feeding (peaked 4 times of its original volume in 5 hours)
Hope I gave enough of info.
Thanks again,
FrugalBaker
It skipped my mind when throwing out ideas that you live in a very hot humid country. And on top of this you've increased the hydration which will make the fermentation process that bit quicker.
How about autolyzing without the slat (of course) and without the starter. Just the flour and water.
Sprinkle the salt over the dough followed by the starter and combine. At this point give it a 10-15min good old fashioned knead. Get that gluten formation off to a great start. Rest for a few minutes then carry on as normal.
Stretch and fold every 30 min 1hr 30min then leave for 1 hour to rest (so you've cut down on 30min here and it's had an hour rest towards the end). Refrigerate for 30min then shape (might help).
Shape and retard after 10min bench time. Perhaps move the dough to the bottom shelf and decrease the temperature slightly.
How does that sound?
I was planning to do that too...back to the basic. Sounds good, will try it out and let you know later.
Thank you so much for your time, Abe.
Too much water for sure. It is also
probablyoverfermented - scratch that - at 3 hours and near 30 °C it's badly overfermented.of that....at least I know where to shoot now. Thank you, Suave
I've borrowed a tip from the Della Fattoria bread cookbook that could help with high hydration dough. They suggest using wheat bran among the flour used to dust bannetons. . I found that if I floured the banneton and then spread bran, I would get an easy release. Try between 25-50% bran or my variation until you reach something that works for you. It shouldn't take long.
for the suggestion and I usually used rice flour, not much of a problem until yesterday only. Will try that next time.
regards,
Frugalbaker