October 2, 2007 - 10:35am
NYT/Lahey no-knead sourdough question
When you make this, how much starter do you use, at what hydration? How vigorous is your starter? The first time I tried this, I used way too much starter, I think 80 grams. In the morning my dough had obviously risen and tanked. Last night I used 6 grams of 60% hydration starter. AFter 13 hours it had done very little. Since I don't want to go another day without bread, I just added a bunch more starter and will watch it like a hawk. At 180 grams I probably used too much!
This is such a simple to make bread with instant yeast. I want to find that same ease with wild yeast.
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Good morning KipperCat, here I am with dough scraps on my fingers from the white thyme olive bread I am making. Not good for the keyboard? I looked back at my notes on the NKB and find 1/4c starter or 1/4tspn instant yeast. Now of course I can't remember how much 1/4c weighs but I doubt there is as much risk of faulty measuring with starter as there is with flour. Hope this helps, back to the dough, A.
Thanks Annie - we do tend to abuse our keyboards, don't we! If I remember right, you're feeding 1/4 cup starter with 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup flour. Is that right? I think that's at least twice as much water as I'm using.
How's your olive bread coming?
Hi KipperCat, I think I was using 1/4c of flour and water to starter when I was trying to get SourdoLady's starter up and running. I also think I am losing my marbles because yesterday I used 1/4 cup of starter and a cup of water and flour - and it didn't go well. I needed some starter for the olive bread so I took what I needed and then added 1/2 a cup of flour and water to 1/4 cup of starter. I'm hoping it will recover from my abuse. I went back and looked at Bill Wraith's posting on maintaining a starter which is when I noticed I had overloaded with flour. Ho hum. The olive bread is sitting on top of my propane fired heating stove with just the pilot light on ( and a folded towel underneath the baking sheet.) The dough is light and full of bubbles after 3 lots of 10 second kneadings and 2 stretch and folds. It has cornmeal top and bottom and this time I used the picholine olives Dan Lepard calls for. I have high hopes! A.
The bread was good, with a great crumb. Too bad I burned the heck out of it! I inserted the probe thermometer, set the desired temp, then forgot to turn it on! :~/ It also had a stronger sourdough flavor than I usually like. That sourdough flavor was great for lunch today with landjaeger sausage and a good cheddar cheese.
I've decided that I won't try a sourdough no-knead again until I have more experience with sourdough.
I've converted my starter to a firm one, and find it easier to maintian - it stands up to more neglect before getting beery.
I use 260 g of barm which I make at 100% hydration. Works well for me.
Thanks suave. Do you let the dough rest on the counter for 18 hours? That seems like a long time for that much starter - but I'm mostly evaluating on the basis of recipes and formulas I've read - my sourdough experience is limited.
Oh, of course, I forgot to mention - once it rises completely, (this takes 8-9 hours) I retard it in fridge for another 8-9 hours. Then I let it warm up for 1 h on the bench and proceed with shaping. Second rise is also shorter than for the yeasted variety - 90 minutes.
Oh, that makes more sense!
KipperCat,
OK, you got me curious. I'm going to try making one according to the recipe I found via Google. I assume this is the one you mean, but if not, let me know.
I am doing it as follows. It may or may not work, as I just mixed it.
I mixed the flour and salt together and stirred that up to get the salt well distributed in the flour, and I mixed the starter and water together and whisked it to completely dissolve the starter in the water and also created some foam from the whisking. I then mixed all the ingredients together in a bowl and used a small plastic dough scraper and rotated the bowl, working the the water and flour together with the scraper. I continued working around the bowl, for a minute or so, until it formed a shaggy mass. I could have just let it go at that, I'm sure. However, for the fun of it, I dropped the mass on the counter and with wet hands, I did a "french fold" routine on it for a few seconds and did a video. I don't count this as kneading, since it takes only a few seconds, makes no mess (if done with water), and requires minimal physical effort. However, you could probably just not do this step, too.
My plan is to follow the recipe. I don't know how it will do with only a final fold or two and then shape it and final proof - just like that, but I'll let you know.
I don't have much doubt about 15g of my starter at 90% hydration or 12g at 60% hydration in this recipe resulting in about 10 hours of bulk ferment and 2 hours or a little more of final proof at 75F. However, your results will be different, since every starter is different.
At 70F, the timing would be quite a bit different. Then, I would have to bulk ferment for about 14 hours and proof for about 3 hours. At 65F, mix to bake would be around 25 hours.
To get a handle on your starter's rise times, you could do the following, and let me know what happens. Take 10g of your firm starter, add 50g of water and 50g of flour and mix until a reasonably smooth paste. Place it in a container that makes it easy to measure volumes. Watch it rise, and mark how long it takes to rise by double. Roughly, it should take 5-6 hours at 75F, if it's similar to my starter. Also, measure the temperature of the paste a few times as it is rising and mark down the temperatures. That should help to figure out what amount of starter should work for a 12 hour mix-to-bake, or other timing you would like to implement, for your starter. It's more difficult to figure out the situation if there is refrigeration, but you should be able to do that too.
I wonder if suave is using cooler temperatures. I agree that it seems like a large inoculation (about 30% fermented flour if the total flour is about 450g) for an 8 hour rise, unless the temperature is cooler. If I used 260g of levain in this recipe with a total flour weight of 450g, then at 70F, which is cooler than my kitchen right now, I would only ferment it for 7 hours to more than double the volume, then proof for 90 minutes. Or, more likely, my process would be to ferment for about 5.5 hours and proof for about 3 hours, but basically, the mix to bake for me with that inoculation at 70F would be about 8.5 hours, and much shorter at 75F.
So, I'll let you know how it goes.
Bill
Thanks Bill, I'll look forward to hearing about it. I see that you are using twice the amount of starter I had in my second batch. This might account for why I had definite activity, but not nearly enough.
Thinking about the original yeasted recipe, it more than doubled in the initial fermentation. The indicator was the presence of bubbles on the surface. I've been using slightly different weights than yours. Here's the yeasted version I've been using.
430 gr flour
8 gr salt (sometimes 7)
1 gr instant yeast
345 gr water
This works out to an 80% hydration as opposed to the 77% you used.
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My starter was still active when I removed from the fridge, with a temp in the low 50's. I think it had been in there for 2 days. So now I have two starters on the counter - my normal feed to keep it at 60% hydration and the test. The simple foolproof yeasted NK bread will go in the oven in about an hour.
Hi KipperCat,
Yes, I did drop the hydration a little. I just know from experience that 80% with my Wheat Montana AP (the bread flour I'm using) would be fairly wet, and I was worried that with the sourdough acids eating away at the dough for a long rise, it might make sense to back off a little on the hydration. It's still a very soft shaggy dough after mixing, as you can see from the video. I'll post some pictures later on that show it more clearly. Anyway, I was just thinking it might want to be a little lower hydration in the sourdough version. The 9 grams in 460g of total flour is close to the traditional 2%, as you can see. There again, just trying to avoid getting the loaf too soft. I want to just form a boule on some parchment paper and drop the loaf into the preheated 7 quart dutch oven, as I've read other's do here on TFL. Is this what you do? Or, are you proofing on a towel and dumping it in seam up, as specified. I just don't picture myself able to do that without getting dough everywhere but in the dutch oven itself.
My starter was fairly ripe. I have been feeding recently 5g:22g:27g at room temp every 12 hours with KA AP flour. I used the starter after 11 hours on the counter. Normally, in that state, it ought to double in about 5 hours at 75F after the feeding.
Bill
I just watched your video. I'm sure it gives the bread more structure, but the recipe (at least with commercial yeast) does work with just the one fold late in the process. In the future, I may well add that initial working with the dough, then let the bread work while I sleep. Today's shaping was easy with just the one late fold, but that isn't always the case.
Right, I don't think it would matter too much whether you do that one little bit of gluten development at the beginning, since the main gluten development will happen over time and with the final folding and shaping. However, when presented with a nice soft dough made of white flour, I pretty much can't resist doing something with it. So, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and also make a video of that technique, which I've been wanting to do.
I do use lower temperatures. I typically start at midnight, and the ambient temperature in my kitchen probably goes to 65 during the night. Also I use more flour than you think - 580 g total, and lower hydration - 67-69% range depending on the amount of ww I put in. All together it probably accounts for slower fermentation.
Suave,
Thanks for the explanation. I see how the lower temperature, slightly bigger loaf, little bit drier, and refrigeration would all lengthen out the timing so that 260g of starter would make sense. If you don't mind saying, how much WW do you use, and also do you ever use rye when you do this style of bread?
Thanks, Bill
Right now I use 100 g of WW in the final dough, the other 350 g being KAF. I am slowly working my way up with WW, 25 g at a time, but right now I'm interested in playing with hydration. Eventually I'm interested in taking WW all the way to 50%.
Rye. That's a biggie. The whole point of my experimentation and moving from classic Lahey recipe to sourdough is to make a decent rye bread. So far I haven't been particularly successful. Some breads turned out passable, but none were really good, and I know what really good rye bread tastes like, and the process was a lot more convoluted. My notes say that the last time I tried it in March, so I guess it's time to try it again. My starter is 1/3 rye though, so there's 43 g of rye flour in any SD bread I make.
Hi KipperCat,
I found out I have to run one of my kids to a soccer practice this evening right when I should've been shaping, so a few hours ago, I place the dough near my espresso machine, where it is more like 78-79F for a few hours. That little extra bit of warmth caused it to double an hour earlier. So, it looked about doubled - maybe a little more than doubled - at around 7PM, 9 hours after mixing the dough (instead of the planned 10 hours), and I went ahead and shaped it. I did a video of the shaping exercise. The dough seemed quite wet. I'm not used to shaping it when it has been allowed to sit for so long without any folding to develop it. So, I was a little tentative with it, as you'll see in the video. I folded it once, then turned it over and tried to make it round. I found I was sticking to it a little, and it still seemed loose. So, I turned it over and gathered the sides into the middle upside down, as I've done with very wet doughs in the "pagnotta" recipe I've blogged. I've also used this method for wetter whole wheat rounds. Then, I just placed it on parchment paper dusted with a little bread flour and semolina to rise. I put the whole thing in a Ziploc "Big Bag" to retain moisture, since it is not otherwise covered. I hope this will work. My plan is to bake it after proofing for about 2 hours at 75F. It's still pretty warm here in NJ. We've had mostly summer conditions all the way into October.
Bill
OK, I've slashed and baked. I basically don't usually do well with slashing, especially with wetter dough. So, it's a typical disaster for me. However, I did manage to drop the loaf into the dutch oven without burning myself, looking at the bright side. The rise seemed a little anemic, so I don't know if things went well or not. However, I stuck more or less with my timing and put the dough in the oven at 9:15PM, after about a 2 hours 15 minute proof.
Here's a video of slashing and dropping it in the dutch oven. The bread is beginning to smell very good about now. I hope it's not burning.
(edit), well actually, it was beginning to burn after only 10 more minutes, so this was basically done in about 35 minutes - 25 minutes covered and 10 minutes uncovered. Maybe I shouldn't have removed it entirely from the pot, which I did after 25 minutes.
Bill
Bill, for some reason I'm not allowed to see your video. Rats. I notice you say you used parchment paper - when I do it I line my banneton with the parchment then carefully lower the dough and parchment into the dutch oven. That way I don't have to drop it from height and risk deflating which is what I did the first time. Hope the bread wasn't burning! By the way, I don't want to hear about your warm weather - we seem to have gone from anemic summer straight to winter. Brrrrrrrrrr, A.
AnnieT,
I can't see the video yet, either. Sometimes they take a while to process it and make it available on Google video. However, if everything is more or less as normal, it should begin to work sometime soon. Sorry, I was hoping it would show up more quickly.
Meanwhile, it's pretty funny, because it was starting to get a little burnt while I was doing the last post. The ears on my slashes were a little thin, and I took the bread out of the dutch oven, which maybe exposed it and put it in danger of burning. I did it in my kitchen oven, rather in the outdoor brick oven I've been mostly using lately. I may be losing my touch, what little I had, with the kitchen oven.
It certainly smells good. It must have had some oven spring too, since I have some ears on the slashes, but who knows what the crumb will be like. It feels heavy for such a small loaf. I'm afraid to look inside and discover a more brickish texture, but I must let it cool more before I check.
Bill
KipperCat,
I may have buried this with too much other stuff in that previous post. This will help a lot to narrow down the right amount of starter at a given temperature for your particular starter. It should be done with starter that is well fed and revived fully. You can guess that using starter that's a couple of days old from the fridge will add an hour or two to your rise times, but it should still work just fine.
To get a handle on your starter's rise times, you could do the following, and let me know what happens. Take 10g of your firm starter, add 50g of water and 50g of flour and mix until a reasonably smooth paste. Place it in a container that makes it easy to measure volumes. Watch it rise, and mark how long it takes to rise by double. Roughly, it should take 5-6 hours at 75F, if it's similar to my starter. Also, measure the temperature of the paste a few times as it is rising and mark down the temperatures. That should help to figure out what amount of starter should work for a 12 hour mix-to-bake, or other timing you would like to implement, for your starter. It's more difficult to figure out the situation if there is refrigeration, but you should be able to do that too.
Also, do you have a particular schedule you want to follow for the various periods where attention has to be given to the dough? The amount of starter can be adjusted, or you can use refrigeration, like suave, to make the process fit your schedule and your starter's characteristics. It should be possible to make the process fit your schedule in such a way that this is just about as easy as the instant yeast recipe.
Bill
Bill, the video is up and running now. I have never had dough that I could slash using this method and I don't bother to try. It breaks where it wants to and looks quite rustic that way. Do you think the extra handling might have made it heavy? I'll be interested to hear what you think about the crumb. If you feel like trying it again I would recommend the version with steelcut oats. Darn, now I want to make it again! A.
Annie,
Well, I haven't looked inside, but I doubt it's incredibly light, but we will see. I guess there is some interpretation in the instructions, in that it says to fold it over itself once or twice. I did a somewhat typical folding process, although maybe I shouldn't have stretched it as I did. Also, it's unclear what gently and quickly shape dough into a ball means. Since I haven't been much of a follower of this recipe, I haven't seen any videos of it being done, so maybe I'm not on the right wavelength for what is meant by "gentle" and "quickly". Also, it was a little less tolerant of any handling than I'm used to at the shaping stage, which I guess is the nature of letting it just do its thing for so long without any folding along the way. I noticed that when I flipped it over, I dropped it just a little bit harder than I wanted to, and it deflated some at that point.
Still, the resulting loaf isn't looking all that bad and smells very good. I'll have pictures at some point soon.
Bill
KipperCat,
I think this worked. I took some photos along the way. I see potential improvement from gentler handling may be possible, as suggested by AnnieT. It sounds like you and AnnieT will know from experience how to handle the proofing, slashing, and baking. I was playing by ear on this part, since I haven't done this recipe before. It seems very similar to what I've mentioned in a recipe in my blog that is called "pagnotta". Anyway, my results weren't bad, and some gentler handling of the dough, more like a ciabatta, and maybe protecting it better during the bake would improve it. I shouldn't have taken it out of the dutch oven, in retrospect. Also, I believe it would've been a little better had I just left it with the lid on for longer, as specified in the original recipe. On the first try, I didn't want to take the lid off and discover a piece of charcoal, so I leaned toward less time in the dutch oven. However, I now see that the dutch oven may have moderated the browning and allowed a longer bake, which probably would have resulted in a thicker crust and slightly drier crumb.
The bread tastes very good, has a good texture, and is not at all heavy, after all. However, it could benefit from a longer bake, but would need to be tented, done at a lower temperature, or maybe protected by the dutch oven for longer, if that works.
Bill
dear bwraith, i found a link to get to your reipce but it doesn't work. i'd be really happy if you could show me the way to your no knead sourdough bread recipe. thanks alot, sanni
Sanni,
I have a blog entry on it. The link seemed to work for me, so I'm not sure what is the problem. Try to navigate to my blog as follows: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/blog/bwraith. Then, scroll down through the entries.
Here is the direct link again, just in case it helps. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4420/nyt-no-knead-sourdough-conversion
Bill
dear bwraith, thank you so much for your help!! but i'm facing on more problem: i don't own a dutch oven, do you think this loaf would work freestanding or should i use a baking pan or maybe pot (only have stainless steel) covered with aluminum foil?
thanks again, sanni
ps: enjoyed your blog a lot, thanks!
Sanni,
The dutch oven creates the steamy conditions good for the crust. So, any method that creates the steamy environment for the loaf in the oven while it bakes will be true to the intentions of the recipe.
You could certainly bake the loaf free-standing. In that case, you may have some issues with the loaf spreading out and becoming a little flat in the oven if the dough is still wet and the gluten not developed enough. However, you could probably adjust the water down just a tiny amount - maybe 1 or 2% less - if you find it is too wet and slack at bake time. If you do it free-standing, maybe you can create steam in the more typical home-baking way by pouring some water into a heavy pan on a rack above or below the bread. The pan you will pour the water in should be very heavy, like a cast iron skillet, so it will retain a lot of heat that can generate steam for a while after the water is poured on it. If you have two baking stones, you can place the pan for the water on one stone and the bread on the other.
A few ways are discussed in the blog entry comments of placing a pot, stainless steel bowl, or even a large pyrex bowl upside down over the loaf. If you have a pot that is oven-safe and lies flat when upside down, then it might work very well to turn it upside down over the bread in the oven for the first 10-20 minutes or so. Then lift it off and let it bake and dry out after that.
Good luck doing the recipe. I hope it works for you. I'm very happy to know you like my blog.
Bill
Bill, looks pretty darned good to me - pretty crust and great crumb. I wonder why you thought it was going to be heavy? Eric Rusch at Breadtopia has a good video, or rather more than one, you might want to check out, but I don't think you need to change much. Eric does show the quick shaping and placing in the banneton. I found that mine burned in the cast iron dutch oven - annoying as I bought it especially for the NKB - and my ss one works better for some reason. I love your pictures and hope one day to figure out how to post some. A.
Annie,
The bread just felt heavy and a little small to me, but when I cut into it, the crumb was not heavy at all. It has the somewhat springy, spongey texture I usually notice with these somewhat higher hydration breads. I also think it was slightly underbaked, and it has some extra water in it that makes it feel heavy. It will be wonderful as toast, as I've found these underbaked higher hydration breads freeze and toast or reheat better than a drier more fully baked one does.
Anyway, it certainly came out fine. I suspect it would be difficult to make it much lighter in a sourdough version without some additional folding about 1-3 hours before shaping time. I also wonder if it might do better with slightly less hydration. I suspect the sourdough version should use less water to get about the same result as the yeast version. I do think agree lighter handling would have helped, and a slightly longer bake might have improved it, too.
Bill
I found this thread this morning. I had just finished a stretch and fold of a NYT no-knead that I put together last night. This time I used about half KA all purpose and half KA white wheat (4 cups total). Then I threw in everything I felt like at the time...1/4 cup UNrefreshed starter, 1/4 tsp. inst. yeast, 1 TBLs. sugar, 1 TBLs. salt, 2 TBLs. olive oil. Mixed it all well, let it sit overnight. This morning (9hrs. later) I did one stretch and fold, let sit about 15 min., shaped and let it rise in a parchment lined basket. After a little more than an hour I picked up the parchment and dough and put it into the heated (450º) long stoneware baker. I baked it at 450º about 28 min. and uncovered for another 12 or so min. The temperature got to 200º and I took it out. I think I should have gone to 210º or so.
Still it's very tasty, rose very well and is a third gone already. I laughed when I brought up the photos because I didn't see Joey the Cat put his face in the picture. These photos also show what a bad bread knife can do to a nice loaf of bread.
I still say the NYT no-knead is the easiest and makes some very good bread.
NYT no-knead photosweavershouse
KipperCat,
I did a blog entry to summarize the recipe I followed, including some the photos, videos, recipe, and some notes about how it went. I also included some estimates of rise times at different temperatures that I expect would work for my starter. Good luck with this, if you decide to give it another try.
Bill
Bill,
Thanks for all you've done with this. I'll definitely be trying it again. I'll time my starter and review your notes beforehand, and with luck will have results I'm happy with. I've been a bit under the weather the past few days, or would have responded sooner. Right now I just used a lot of accumulated healthy starter for some waffle batter. I'll see how it is in the morning.
I've always assumed that I would need the same quantity of starter for whole wheat flour as for white flour. With commercially yeasted breads I've varied other things when changing to WW, but not the amount of yeast. Is that true also for wild yeast starter?
KipperCat,
No need to thank me at all. I really enjoyed trying that NYT No-Knead Sourdough version. Your question got me going. I've read about using a dutch oven or pyrex dish and always was intrigued by the technique, yet never have gotten around to it until now. I learned a few things, as always, from trying something new and getting out of whatever rut I'm in at the moment.
I'm not sure I understand your question about yeast. To me, the amount of yeast you use in a recipe is very flexible for both commercial and sourdough. Usually, it seems to me a recipe will come out much the same, regardless of whether you use more yeast and shorter rise times (possibly adjusting temperatures) or less yeast and longer rise times (possibly adjusting temperatures). The flavors and textures will vary somewhat for all kinds of reasons, but a surprisingly wide range of yeast amounts can work in a recipe as long as you know how to compensate with time and temperature to end up with about the same amount of ripeness and enough gas to raise the loaf in the end.
I have found that my sourdough starter seems to ferment 10-20% faster in whole grain flours than in white flour, but other than that, I wouldn't think of changing the amount of yeast much for WW as opposed to white flour.
Bill
Hi all,
I'm just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on my little dilemma.
It's 8:00pm here and going on for 20hrs since I mixed my batch of 100% sourdough NKB. I was googling 'can't-fail' bread recipes and found a method called "1-2-3". [It's actually a '1-1-2-3' recipe, but you can take the point...]
It's Jim Lahey's NKB with no added yeast: 1cup water, 2 teasp salt, 3 cups flour. The extra '1' is one cup of batter-consistency starter. I scaled about 50-50 strong flour and AP flour, leaving 50g 'shy' to top up with fine rye flour. (That was my only variation from the original formula.) I had to add several extra drizzles of water, as recommended, just to hydrate the flour [...probably needed anyway, because of the nearly 2oz of rye?]
After 8 hours, the dough was moving upwards in its bowl, but I knew it would be fine on the counter until I returned from work. It's now doubled and looking oven-ready (just like all the vids I've seen!) but I don't know whether to fold it, or just 'dump' it gently into the pre-heated dutch oven. I've read in several places that all-sourdough breads don't recover well from over-handling and are not reliable for a second rise--I don't want a 'potential' pain de campagne to become a focaccia.
From all that I read above, it looks as if my starter quantity is a bit high, but it also seems to confirm that 'over-handling' is the biggest 'danger' with all-wild- yeast breads. (I admit that I was tempted to add a mere 'pinch' of instant yeast, but I resisted the temptation...) I think I'll have to try without the fold because of all the warnings following the original recipe...I will report if it's successful!
Nevertheless, your thoughts would be much appreciated. Is the fold really necessary after such a long fermentation?
Best,
copyu
folding would have been done sooner. Fold and then let rise.
So now you're left with gently placing into the dutch oven. Might help to roll it onto parchment paper and then lower into the hot pot. Slash if not too soft. Good luck and steady nerves!
Mini
Hullo again, Mini,
Many thanks, as always. [We must be 'in the zone' (...the same time-zone, anyway! Japan, Korea, China, Oz? I'm near Tokyo, myself...)]
My 'loaf' is cooling at the moment. It rose a tiny bit in the oven, but it's not what I was hoping for. Still, I know it's going to taste great, as they always do.
I've made several very successful half-and-half (sourdough/instant yeast) NKBs in the past few months (one of which, back in March, my French house-guests declared 'superb') but I haven't had much baking success lately. This was my first try at 100% wild-yeast NKB.
I'd say you're spot-on, Mini. From looking at the result, it MUST be folded, once at least, before baking. My work schedule didn't allow it to be done at the proper time(s). It looked too 'unripe' to do it before work. Perhaps I should repeat the experiment when I have a day off, or work late shifts. One more failure means one more thing learned, I suppose...
Thank you, Mini,
copyu