Flat Sourdough?
Hi everone,
I'm a fairly new home- baker and am having trouble with getting my sourdough to rise. This is maybe the fourth bake I've done with the same starter and ingredients, changing up the kneading and fermenting a little each time. Every time though, my bread comes out on the flat side. It's like it has no oven spring. The crust and crumb are good and the taste is phenomenal but shape is poor.
Here's some detail on recipe and process:
1 cup starter
3 cups Unbleached AP flour
1.5-2 cups of water (to get consistency right)
2 tsp salt
Mix starter, flour and water and let rest for 30 mins then mix in salt.
Begin ferment for 3 hours at room temp. Fold dough after first hour then again 30 mins later.
Retard in fridge for about 8 or 9 hours.
Shape dough into loaves and let rise to 1.5-2 times
place in dutch oven and spray loaf with water.
Bake at 450 for 15 mins, release steam, bake at 450 for another 10 mins, turn down to 400 and bake for another 20-25 mins
See post picture (upsidedown for some reason)
Thanks for any and all help!
Rob
7/25 Edit
Hi everyone,
I'm in the middle of making my bread for the day and need some feedback. My dough is currently fermenting and has been for the past 2 hours but I'm seeing no rise. Should I let it keep fermenting or shape now and let it rise in banneton?
Here's the recipe and method:
3/4 cup of starter at 90% hydration
1.25 cups water
2 3/4 cups bread flour
1/3 cup ww flour
1.5 tsp salt
-Mixed starter, flour, water (1.1 cups but turned out to be much too little, probably due to inaccuracies in flour qty. Added another 1/6 cup) and let autolyze for 30 mins.
-Added salt and kneaded bread by hand for 10ish minutes until it was stretchy and smooth.
-Bulk ferment for 1.5 hours so far with a fold at 50 mins. No rise by this point. another fold at 100 mins, no rise by this point either.
Just before autolyze:
after first fold:
After second fold:
7/26 edit
I ended up having to let it bulk ferment for about 6 hours to see any signs of rising. I then shaped and let rise again for another 3 hours before the dough was at a good spot. Still, it looks like much better results this time!
Bottom blew out though:
Crumb:
Thanks for all of your help!
For some reason that always happens with apple.
1 cup sourdough at 100% hydration = 260g (130g flour + 130g water)
375g AP Flour
354g water (ish)
Well first of all this is very high hydration and you won't get the same height as with lower hydration doughs.
Secondly, I don't see much gluten formation in your recipe.
May I suggest a rethink of this recipe? Or basically a whole new recipe?
Try this...
500g strong bread flour
270g warm water
10g salt
150g mature starter @ 100% hydration
1. In a bowl mix the starter into water (wet mixture)
2. In another bowl mix the flour and salt (dry mixture)
3. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and combine
4. Knead for 10-15min
5. Bulk Ferment for 4 hours performing a stretch and fold every half an hour for the first 3 hours and leaving it to rest for the remainder
6. Shape the dough into your banneton or brotform
7. Final proof till ready. Don't wait till doubled. Rather till 85-90% risen. Start watching it at around 1hr 30min but can't give you an exact time.
8. Score and bake as usual.
If you wish to retard the dough overnight then after shaping, leave out for 20 minutes at room temperature then place in the fridge. Bake straight from the fridge the next day.
Hi Abe,
Thanks so much for your quick and comprehensive reply! Let me make a quick correction to my post above.
Upon mixing salt, after the 30 minute rest, I mix in my kitchenaid for close to 10 minutes or until the dough is smoother and as close to silky as possible. I also forgot that with this specific bake I used 3 cups of bread flour. I'm not sure if this would change your direction above.
Thanks!
I've also sent you Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough which I think is very nice. Take a look at your messages. Feel free to ask any questions. It's a great simple recipe.
If you have a kitchenaid then by all means use it. Stretch and folds are usually for high hydration doughs anyway. The above recipe isn't high at all. What I've done is suggest you knead till dough comes together and then throw in stretch and folds to finish off the gluten formation. What you can do instead is form the dough like suggested. You can do the water + starter in the kitchen aid bowl then followed by the flour and salt. Kitchenaid it (a new verb I've invented) till full gluten formation and the dough is nice, smooth and elastic. I imagine this will take about 10minutes ish. Then cover and bulk ferment for 4 hours without the stretch and folds. Then carry on as normal.
Thanks for the tips. I'll give this method a try this weekend and see how it turns out. I've been dying to perfect the structure of the bread because the taste is already there. If you or anyone is interested, I'll follow up with pictures.
Cheers!
Or the Vermont sourdough and take notes plus photos at each stage. Then we can see what's happening. Might go well or might need an alteration here and there.
Talk us through your experience and we'll take it from there.
metallic? Sourdough doesn't like metal. So mix in the kitchenaid bowl then transfer to a plastic bowl for the bulk ferment.
I almost always make my bulk starters in SS bowls. Right now, I have 3Kg of starters maturing in 2 of them... Copper, Tin or Aluminium I might be concerned about due to the elevated acidity, but they would be rare bowl types.
As for the flying saucer bread - I'm sure it tastes fine, but maybe use strong bread flour (or is that what US AP flour is?) and a different shaping technique?
-Gordon
Sourdough a try and document it. And yes, the bowl is metallic as are the bowls I've been using for the bulk ferment. I'll try fermenting and rising in my ceramics.
and that should not affect sourdough. I've been using my KA for the preliminary blending of ingredients and first gluten formation all the time without any problems what so ever. I use the Vermont Sourdough recipe but have adapted it to David Snyder's San Joaquin recipe (which is going on right now as I type). I blend the ingredients in the KA minus the salt and let it autolyse for 30 minutes. Add the salt and mix on speed two for 2 1/2 minutes to get the gluten forming. Then 2 stretch and folds at 30 minute intervals followed by a 1 hour rest then stretch and fold and everything goes into the fridge for 20 hours. Next day, preliminary shaping and rest for the dough followed by final shaping and fermentation and then into the oven. Check out David's recipe on this site.
a cup of flour weighs 125 g depending on how you fill the cup so 3 cups weighs 375 g. a cup of water weighs 238 g so at 1.5 cups of water you have 357 g of water This gives you a hydration of 357.375 = 95% about the sloppiest dough imaginable. Try 255 g of water and 375 g of flour to get you at 68% hydration. Once the starter goes in, (1 cup at 100% hydration) you will be in the 71-71% hydration overall which isn't bad for a white bread flour SD bread,
You are making bread not pancakes and that is why your bread looks like one.
No worries and happy baking ny white bread over 80% hydration is a ciabatta - and you made a pretty fair one!
I'll try a lower hydration this weekend and see if thats the problem. I suspected a lack of oven spring was the problem but it does look like a ciabata now that I think about it.
when the dough is really wet like ciabatta, things move along much faster than at 70% hydration and over proofing happens in less time. So too wet and over proofing might both be at work.
Happy baking - you will sort it out soon enough.
Are what I use for all of my mixing. I'm not sure if my response to Abe was public but I forgot that with the last bake I actually used high gluten bread flower instead of AP flour. Obviously it didn't make a difference but seeing as how my hydration seems to just be way too high I'll give a go at a dryer mix.
One thing that I had mentioned to Abe is that my starter rises easily in 12 hours but my dough never seemed to have risen very well, even after 12 hours (included the time in the fridge). Perhaps having a lower hydration will allow it to rise easier/more efficiently?
To rise dough needs structure. At lower hydration and good gluten formation you'll get this. If your starter can bubble then your dough can rise. At very high hydration there is no structure to trap the bubbles which just escape. Hence, no rising. We will know soon if anything else is the problem but your starter sounds healthy enough.
Enjoy Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough. Let us know how it goes.
I found that when used too much starter I would get loaves that would flatten in the oven, maybe try cutting the amount of starter by 25%.
Gerhard
came to my mind actually. I wondered if having too much starter could have something to do with it. I was thinking that because a good portion of the dough would be from the starter which has essentially "overproofed" that it might lead to less than stellar gluten development. Has this ever been an issue?
I think your 3 hour first rise might be too long... for the amount of starter to flour for summer temperatures. Better to judge the rise at perhaps 1/3 then fold and chill. The dough should just be beginning to puff up.
When after shaping you see your dough running sideways as opposed to up, give it another folding and reshaping brushing off the flour first.
recipe where the 1 is starter weight, 2 is water weight and 3 is flour weight with 2% salt. This will give you a 71.4% hydration for a white bread. Works every time.
Happy baking
that my finished dough seems to take a long time to show any signs of rising, hence the longer rise times. By general consensus it seems that it's probably my hydration that keeps the dough from rising much.
@Mini-Thanks for the input! When I give a lower hydration a go this weekend I'll keep an eye on my times as well and see if I notice different rising behavior. If it starts to rise earlier than I'm used to I'll keep your suggestion in mind.
@dabrownman- Thanks! I have never seen that ratio as a rule of thumb but it seems like an easy one to keep in mind for future experimenting.