Still struggling to get the right results - help please
I've been baking bread for a year or so and have made some progress and had good results. However, I'm still struggling to get to where I want to be and get some consistent results (that the family will eat!)
I'm trying various recipes from various books, mainly the fairly basic ones. I'm using recipes with sourdough starters, those with bakers yeast and those that use both. The last one that I tried was from the Ken Forkish book, Flour, Water, Salt Yeast and was the overnight white bread on page 89.
This and other recipes I have tried have been very tasty and very edible but have had a denser crumb and tougher crust that the family are prepared to accept, particularly for the crumb on day two, day three etc. The density makes cutting it quite tough for some family members.
Another issue has been that the bottom centre of the loaf has often been more dense and appears under-cooked. I've attached a photo of my latest bake. I'm enjoying the enhanced taste of real bread but I'd like to get to a situation where it was our accepted family bread!
Any thoughts or advice would be welcome!
In certain places there are no air pockets at all. Are you sure the yeast is sufficiently distributed and the bulk ferment complete?
Hello Lechem and thanks for your reply.
I hope that I followed the recipe in the book but it looks like things have gone wrong. I did the pincer method of mixing as Ken Forkish describes but it looks like I need to mix in a different way. I often find it difficult to be sure it is mixed properly when putting the salt and yeast onto the surface of the autolysed flour water mix.
As for the bulk ferment then it definitely had fourteen hours. This was done in our living room overnight and the temperature started at 18C and dropped to 18C by the morning. The dough increased in size but to say it was between 2.5 and 3 times its original size is difficult to say. It starts as a boule type shape and flattens out during the night.
And from what you describe it does sound like everything was done just fine. The crumb looks like an issue with a sourdough starter rather then a yeasted bread. Here are some things to try...
1. Test the health of your yeast. In a little warm sugar water dissolve some yeast and give it time to froth. See what happens.
2. How accurately do you weigh the yeast. Is 14 hours recommended and does Forkish describe what you are experiencing? How aerated is the dough come morning? Lot's of airpockets?
3. It looks like the yeast is struggling but you say it rises, peaks and begins to flatten by morning. Could it be too long and the yeast is exhausted? You could try lessening the time to catch the dough before it flattens out too much. A bit contradictory here I know but worth a bit of trial and error.
4. Before being baked is your dough behaving how Forkish describes in his book?
5. For easier distribution is might be worth to hold some water back either to dissolve the yeast into or just to throw over the yeast and salt when added.
It does appear that the bread is under cooked. Are you certain your oven is actually baking at the set temp? Mine was too hot by about 25F until I calibrated it with an accurate digital thermometer. Yours could be off the other way (too cool).
As for whether the yeast was evenly mixed in, maybe. I see what appears to be dry flour coating the voids. Hard to tell for sure, as digital images sometimes see things that our eyes don't. But that's another hint that the dough wasn't mixed sufficiently.
I'm not familiar with this recipe; is it a no-knead bread? I've had my best results with a no-knead baguette recipe that calls for a 12-hour rise after mixing. I cheat and do the original mixing with a KA mixer, but don't mix it long enough to get into the kneading phase. Just long enough to get a good, even mixture.
until you're getting consistent results with it. It's tempting to try different ones asap (I fell prey for a time myself), but unless you're a prodigy, doing so probably slows your learning process by introducing different ingredients, recipes, methods, etc. while you're still trying to become fully familiar with the previous ones.
As for your loaf, as the others have noted, it looks under-proofed, perhaps under-baked, especially the bottom and possibly under-mixed as well.
Re. under-proofed, did the dough look and feel ready to bake? How well can you recognize when a dough is ready, or do you (mainly) go by time? The former is preferable; watching the clock doesn't allow for differences in temperature, humidity, flour, etc.
Thanks for all of the replies so far. They are all interesting so here are some answers to your questions and some more information and comments from me.
Firstly, it would have been helpful for me to give the outline of the recipe so here it is and a few additional notes from me:
I chose to do a 600g mix rather than an 800g as in the Forkish recipe so reduced other quantities by the same amount.
Simplified methodology and some comments:
Some additional information and comments.
Lessons to learn:
I'm going to summarise the comments I've received so far as:
How does this all look? I hope that I've picked up the key points but, as ever, I will never ignore sound advice!
What do you mean by "already got quite wet". How and how wet?
Because unless it got wet by atleast 11% hydration (66g of water) before you added only enough water to make it just 54% hydration then you must have had a very dry dough.
Have we hit the nail on the head where this recipe went wrong? Could explain the difficulty of mixing and dough not behaving as described in the book.
The final dough should be 78% hydration. If for some reason you wish for lower, either for handling reasons or preference, then going as low as 65% would still give you great results without running into any difficulty and you wouldn't find the dough behaving so differently as described in the book.
But from what I understand you might've gone very low hydration indeed. Which is what we're seeing in the photo.
The comments about the loaf looking under-baked, coupled with you saying that your oven can only reach 428F, lead me to believe that temp is one of the causes for your resultant bread. As a beginner, I tried several recipes in my search for the perfect baguette. All stated a temp of at least 450F, a couple at 475F, and the one that I like most at 550F.
Thanks for the reply. Given the limitations on temperature for my domestic oven, will a longer bake compensate for the lack of temperature do you think? It's my only option!
Longer baking would probably compensate for a lower temp, within reason. I'm not experienced enough to know the limits.
I've been working with the Forkish recipes for a while now, and I have found his hydration levels too high for all of the loaves. That said, when you dropped down to 325 g of water that's more like 54% hyrdation, which is quite low. I would try again with more like 420 g of water, 70% and see how you do.
Another thing to consider if you're having trouble with yeast distribution is revisiting the mixing method. In the Tartine book I read they suggest holding back some of the water to add with the yeast and salt after the autolyse, so they dissolve. What I do instead is to pinch and separate the dough into chunks before I sprinkle on the yeast and salt, then fold and repeat the pincering a couple of times. When the hydration is 70% plus this works very well.
Are you using dutch ovens as he suggests? If not I would not expect his temperatures or times to work out the way his recipes can. I tried baking with a cold dutch oven a few times, rather than a hot one as Forkish advocates, and found I got a thicker, tougher crust which I did not like.
So I suggest trying his recipe again, except with 70% hydration, more thorough mixing, and maybe even measure the dough volume,.and see where that gets you. I've been finding his suggested times are way off of what I'm getting with the 100% sourdough loaves, but they have always worked for the yeasted and hybrid recipes.
Thanks for the post starvingviolinist.
I agree baking longer should compensate a bit but you will get a different crust and flavour the further you deviate from the recipes recommended temperature.
How are you determining when the bread is ready to go into the oven? Are you determining it by time or looking at the loaf. You might find in the winter you would have to lengthen the time dramatically over the summer. It takes a lot of practice but eventually you develop an eye and feel for when dough has been properly proofed.
Gerhard
Thanks for the post, Gerhard.
I think that I'm getting better at judging when to start the bake as a few early 'low rise' efforts were failures. I do the poke test and find it helps a lot. I think my issue with fermentation may be at the first fermentation stage as, on this occasion, the dough was a bit cold a lifeless after its overnight (14 hr) proof. I suspect the room was too cold. I've found a source of insulated polystyrene boxes so I might have a go at making a small proofing box to get some control on the process.
I have made that loaf on page 89 and the next on page 93 many times. It has produced excellent loaves each time. I followed the instructions exactly.
If you want to get his results you should follow the instructions verbatim. You mention putting the dough in a tin. The shape of your bread does not look like it was baked in a Dutch Oven as in the recipe. You seem to have made quite a few changes to the process in FWSY. The bread should b baked in a Dutch Oven at 475F/246C for 30 minutes then remove the lid and continue to bake for 20-30 minutes. There is no use of water to create steam in this recipe.
Thanks for your reply HansB,
I understand what you are saying but if I can't adapt the Forkish recipes and make them work, then I'll have to use a different source of recipes. My problems with the Forkish recipes for me are:
There are many recipes out there for sandwich loaves of all styles. Maybe there is one out there for you that won't require a lot of modification to get right. Looking forward to seeing your results!
I think you've got some good points as to what to try next. It sounds like you're in the UK - I found it difficult to make good bread when I was there, even using flour that was labeled 'strong'. Spoiled by good Canadian flour, I expect. :)
Anyway, were I you, I would do a couple of things:
And most of all, don't give up! :)
Thanks for the reply Lazy Loafer and your useful suggestions and observations. The yeast spread thing seems to be one of the key things to improve! I looked at the Trevor Wilson video. Great to see someone work dough so well!
Yes, based in the UK. I'm using a locally stone-ground, organic flour by Stoats http://www.stoatesflour.co.uk/ which at 12.8% protein seems to work very well.
I enjoy the taste too much to give up!
One can get strong flour in the UK and at the very least strong bread flour would be the same strength as what one would call AP flour which is what many prefer to use when baking that special Artisanal loaf. I don't have issues with UK or European flour and flour should not only be judged on strength but can be very good quality taste wise even if not as strong as other flours. Unless you're using what we call plain flour in the UK you will get a perfect loaf if you watch the dough and not the clock. You can get two bakers using the same flour and getting different results.
You could follow the same recipe with the same flour on different days and get a different result. Humidity can effect the absorbency of the flour. While it is true that UK flour does do better with less water I don't think it makes it lower quality. As a baker you've got to know how to bring out the best of ingredients used. Why would less absorbency mean lower quality? Just use less water. Also learning how to handle high hydration dough helps. Hydration will have a range and by no means when you use high hydration with UK flour does it mean it can't handle it. You've just got to know how to handle it. That comes with practice. The more I practice the more I find myself favouring higher and higher hydration and finding that what I once thought was high hydration is now too dry.
I like the idea of you sticking to one recipe and working at it till you get the feel for it. Watch the dough and not the clock!
Best of luck.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that UK flour isn't any good, it's just quite different from what I'm used to using so I found it difficult to get a good loaf of bread during the weeks I was there. My bread ended up heavy and dense, much like the bread shown in the photo at the top of this post. Given more time I probably could have figured it out eventually if I'd stayed longer and tried harder. :) So my advice about what to try might not be the right advice as I'm not an expert on baking with UK flour, but they might be worth a try!
I would like to add that I also use UK supermarket flour for 99% of my loaves - Asda/Sainsbury's/Whatever strong bread flour, for the white, wholemeal and brown. No problems here!