Hello! My bread is terrible, can anyone advise?
Hello! This is my first time using the forum, although I've often read threads for tips and gotten some great advice. There are some talented bakers here so I hope someone can help shed some light on a persistent issue I'm having with my sourdough loaves.
I'm an experienced bread maker, but I dove into the world of naturally leavened breads only a couple months ago. I'm following the Tartine method to the letter. My starter performs great--in the jar. I feed it regularly with 50/50 KA bread and whole wheat flours, and it rises/falls predictably, for about 2 months now.
I mix my dough as described in the book. Leaven always passes the float test. Typically I ferment at room temperature for 4 hours, turning every 30 mins (or more frequently), and usually it behaves as described in the book. Then I'll often refrigerate the dough overnight (b/c the aforementioned steps are usually happening late at night). I bench rest and shape the dough first thing in the morning, leave to rise at room temp for about 4 hours, then bake as directed. I use KA flour (date about 6-7 weeks prior, the freshest I can find).
But then...flop. Little oven spring, scores barely open, leaving me with ultra dense, chewy bread (which nonetheless usually tastes pretty good). It's not overly sour--I dislike a strong sour flavor. I've kept at this for 2 months, and I'm probably on loaf 50, with results varying from not great but edible as described above, to gross rubbery and directly into the trash.
I have no idea what's going on. I assume I'm screwing up the fermentation somehow, but there are so many variables and that's just a guess.
As a sidenote, for certain bakes--i.e. when I'm expecting company and really need the bread to turn out--I create a poolish using 100g flour/150g water/6g active dry yeast. Ferment overnight and add to the dough while mixing (in addition to the 200g leaven). Overall amounts of flour/water unchanged per the master recipe of course. When I do that, I get gorgeous, perfect, delicious, knock-your-socks-off bread. But I'd like to ditch the commercial yeast altogether and get these results just using my starter!
The only other variation from the recipe that I can think of is that I increase the salt from 20g to 26g. We just like the taste a bit better. Not sure if that could be impacting the fermentation.
Any advice?!? Thanks friends!
Your salt looks very high. Could you reply back with your recipe or formula? I’m not sure I understand from your post above.
Maybe I’m off base, but the yeast in the Poolish looks high also.
Have you seen this video? https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=265s&v=wuk8Ma4gaeA I work from Trevor’s video for Tartine Bread and have had very good success.
Dan
Hi Dan,
I use the recipe for the Country Loaf found in Tartine Bread, which goes as follows:
900g bread flour
100g whole wheat flour
750g water
200g leaven
20g salt (I adjust upward to 26g, we just like the taste of more salt in the bread)
This yields 2 approximately 2lb loaves.
Do you think the additional salt could be interfering with fermentation?
Thanks! Ann
I’d stick with 20 grams (2%) For now. As rule salt is generally 1.8 - 2.0%. After you sort out your problem you could experiment with more. But salt can slow and/or limit your rise.
Let us know your recipe proportions for your Levain and/or your Poolish.
Ok, will try that and see if the results improve.
The levain is made using 1 tablespoon starter (100% hydration) added to 200g water and 200g of the 50/50 flour mix and allowed to ferment overnight at room temp or until it passes the float test.
The poolish is made with 150g water/100g bread flour/6g active dry yeast, and allowed to ferment overnight in the refrigerator. I decrease the amounts of flour/water in the master recipe to compensate for the amounts in the poolish, so overall proportions remain the same.
I don’t use a lot of yeast, but I think it is often kept to 2% and often times much lower. From what I read above it your Poolish is 150% hydration using 6% yeast. I’m no authority but that sounds off. Too much yeast.
Where dit you get your recipe? I’d like to take a look.
Agree with Lazy Loafer, pictures would be a great help. It is obvious that you are very persistent and once we can determine your problem your breads should be magnificent.
Dan
For polish you need the tiniest amount of yeast. Just a pinch.
I go for 1% fresh yeast or a third of that if using dry yeast. On the rare occasions I'm using yeast.
You don't wish for a poolish to be over fermented.
yeast in it alt all. This is one if the most famous Chad Robertson Tartine recipes. Levain is French for Sourdough.
I think it is just over proofed and that is about it.
You said, “The levain is made using 1 tablespoon starter (100% hydration) added to 200g water and 200g of the 50/50 flour mix”
Sine I weight my starter, I’ll have to guess it’s weight. I’m guessing 1 Tbl starter 10 (for ease of math) grams. I calculate 5% inoculation. That on the low side. But maybe that is what the recipe calls for.
Give us a look at the source of your recipe.
Dan
Hey, thanks for joining us! It's always nice to have new folks chiming in. Have you figured out how to post pictures yet? That would help us a lot - especially crumb shots. We do loves our crumb shots. :)
It sounds very much like a starter issue, if your poolish bread is working out fine. How old is it? Rising and floating are pretty good indicators of strength, but there are other factors too. Tartine breads use a fairly low inoculation (low percentage of starter to overall flour) and sometimes they take a long time to ferment. What's your current room temperature? Overnight? I find sometimes that I just put the dough in the basement overnight (currently quite cool; about 15C overnight) rather than in the fridge and it is lovely by morning.
What is the dough like after the final shaped proof (4 hours)? Is it strong and bouncy? Or slack and droopy? If the latter, then shaping could be the culprit too. If you haven't seen it already, you might download Trevor Wilson's book at breadwerx.com. He gives lots of good information about starter strength, fermenting and proofing, adding structure and shaping.
Finally, you might try something simpler than a Tartine bread to get the hang of the differences in fermenting and handling sourdoughs. Try a 1-2-3 sourdough (search that in the search box on this site) which is essentially 1 part 100% hydration starter, 2 parts water and 3 parts flour, as well as 2% salt. If you use a lot of whole grain flour as part of that, then you might need to add a bit of water but as written it ends up to be around 71% hydration which is quite nice to handle. It's also a higher inoculation than the Tartine breads so will ferment more quickly (though still slower than a yeast poolish dough).
The top slice is from a "good" loaf using a poolish, the bottom two are from a "not great but still edible" loaf made with just the starter. Crumb isn't terrible but it was very dense and I got almost no oven spring at all.
The dough using starter-only IS extremely floppy after the final rise, but I don't think the issue is shaping...In general I'm pretty strong in that area and when it goes in the banneton it's springy and has great surface tension. Then it goes completely slack after the final rise.
Room temp for me (Boston in the winter) is 62-65 degrees.
And yes I am nothing if not persistent. I really appreciate the help! Thanks so much :-)
In Chad Robertson's book, where he suggests 3-4 hour bulk ferment, he is assuming room temp 78-82F This might translate to more like 6 hours for you. Or you could bulk in the oven with just the light on. Might make for better crumb/spring?
You said, “Typically I ferment at room temperature for 4 hours, turning every 30 mins (or more frequently), and usually it behaves as described in the book. Then I'll often refrigerate the dough overnight (b/c the aforementioned steps are usually happening late at night). I bench rest and shape the dough first thing in the morning, leave to rise at room temp for about 4 hours, then bake as directed. ”
If your dough is well fermented during the Bulk ferment, I think you will have good success if you bake the dough cold straight from the refrigerator and into a preheated Dutch Oven. I know it should counter intuitive, but many of us bake exactly like that. You can expect a really nice oven spring with this method. Scoring is also much easier.
A thought; Maybe the shaped dough that is left to rise (proof) for 4hr on the counter is the problem. The dough may be rising too much, causing the holes. Since the dough at the top is lighter than at the bottom, the large holes form there. Also, if it is over proofed that would explain the lack of spring.
Dan
That sounds good to me, DanAyo. So to put it all together, so as not to be too confusing. How about trying:
Feed starter in the morning.
Make leaven the next evening and leave out at your cool room temp overnight (13 hours min.) Should be bubbling and float in water.
Mix, autolyse, leave 45 mins to l hr.
Add salt and reserved water. Mix in well. Bulk at your room temp 6 -8. with 3 or 4 folds at 30 min intervals during first couple of hours, then leave. You are looking for pillowy, sleek dough, nearly doubled in vol., with large visible bubbles at surface (and small bubbles throughout if transparent receptacle.) As everyone says, watch dough not clock. Can cut time of bulk by using oven with just pilot light on. Robertson suggests 3-4 hrs at 78-82F It takes me 5 hrs. in my kitchen at around 74F
When happy with bulk, tip onto bench and gently pre shape. Rest covered about 20 mins. Then shape properly and drop into bannetons. Cover. Retarded proof in fridge overnight, or around 12-18 hours. Little if any visible rise.
Next morning pre-heat oven and dutch oven. Drop cold dough in straight from fridge, slash and cook as usual. Covered 20 mins, uncovered 20 mins. Cool before cutting.
Dan will correct if that's not what he meant, but I think that should work well. Good luck and report back!
Right On!
Dan
Wow—first just want to say how grateful I am that you folks would take time out of your day to provide real guidance to a passionate amateur. Thank you!
About the yeast amount in my poolish—noted. I will reduce (but hopefully will do away with commercial yeast entirely once I work out my fermentation issues.)
Thanks for consolidating these suggestions lesbru. I intend to try this method and will report back! One point of clarification—do you mean that I should make the levain 36 hours after last feeding the starter? A bit confused on that point. CR indicates that the starter should be fed the morning of the day the levain is mixed (in the evening).
Just a couple other points that I left out of my initial post, not wanting to write a novel. Like I initially mentioned I have been at this for two months and have tried many of these methods. In general my dough increases in volume only a tiny bit during bulk fermentation, if at all. I have tried proofing overnight (8 hours)in my oven with the light on, only to wake up to slightly bubbly soup. No gluten formation at all—complete fail. Even following CR’s method closely,
when I do the final proof I get next to no rise, just a little puffiness around the edges.
Suspecting that my starter was not strong enough, I started feeding it using filtered water, fearing that the chlorine in my tap water could be harming my yeast colony. I’ve also tried mixing dough with the starter directly, skipping the levain step. Same bad results.
Just some background. So many variables, arg, what a headache. But I am determined...going to try the method suggested and we’ll see.
Again—thanks!!!
Yes sorry. Not clear. Feed starter morning of same day. I follow Robertson pretty exactly, just allowing for my own kitchen temp and my fridge retarded proof, which he doesn't do but then i think he starts work at 5.00 am! If your starter is giving you a bubbly, lively levain, I don't think that can be what's wrong. At my kitchen temp I take about 13 hours for it to be perfect, you might need a little longer.I do think 8 hours oven light bulk would be too long - I get around 82F in the oven. So I'd be looking at around 3 to 4. It's such a stunning loaf when it happens it will be worth all your hard work to get there. And then it's never hard work again - except for the washing up.
As I read thru the posts - I was nodding my head in agreement with lazyloafer saying that the fridge may be too cold. I do my overnight retard in a cool room because my fridge is too cold. In general I'm looking for the amount of rise - not the amount of time that has passed - to know when it's ready to go in the oven.
When Dan was talking about going from the cold straight to the oven - I agree with that. But Dan seemed to think you were overproofing at room temp - and since your room temp is cool (like mine is), I suspect you are underproofing.
Anyway ... after you try Dan's suggestions if you still have issues and want to try a different approach, I would suggest between doing your folds at 30 minutes you keep the dough at 75-85F ... and then doing your overnight at around 45-55F (for however long it takes - for me it's 10-13 hrs) That's what I do and I get heaps of oven spring.
Hi Andy,
How much volume increase do you get during the final proof (at cool temp for 10-13 hours as specified in your comment)?
I see a bit of volume increase during the warm proof (when I'm doing the folds, I stretch the dough out and fold but gently enough that a lot of gas bubbles remain) ... maybe 25-35% increase in size.
And then during the final (cool) proof --- I get a good rise (about double what it was after the stretch and folds - or if comparing to before stretch and folds a fair bit more than double). Then when it goes in the oven I get another about 50% rise with oven spring.
I've seen lots of posts (and YouTube videos) describing poking the dough and watching how fast/slow the dent pushes itself back out as an indicator of when it's ready. But I just use the same weight of dough each time and I bake in bread pan so I know exactly how high the dough should be relative to the edges of the pan and I get consistent results each time without poking the dough.
I'm using a loaf pan with an inverted loaf pan covering the dough to hold the steam - so the dough has nowhere to go but up. Anyway, thought this might be helpful.
LoafSideView.jpg
not up to snuff (sounds to me like the yeast additions are making up for a low yeast starter) then maybe some special attention should be given to the starter to build a larger yeast population.
I don't want to add confusion to the thread but that's what I'm hearing between all this good advice.
It doesn't take much just a little extra time feeding and patiently waiting for the starter to peak, then feed again. Repeat. Add enough warmth about 26°C and at least as much flour by weigh as starter in the feeding.
Mini
Yes this was my initial conclusion as well. For the last several weeks I've been using filtered water only in feeding my starter and following a strict feeding schedule (1x per day in the morning, 20% innoculation, 100% hydration). I maintain my starter at room temp which as noted above is on the cool side (60-65F). It does rise predictably within a few hours. I wait to mix my levan until the starter is what I believe to be mature--strong vinegar and ripe fruit smells and very bubbly (usually after it has collapsed). This takes maybe 10-12 hours after feeding.
Despite this I'm still getting the poor results described in my initial post.
Any tips or insight on what I can do to ensure my yeast population in the starter is strong?
Thanks!
and a "strict schedule" may be the problem. It's good to be flexible during temperature and seasonal changes. Temperature has a enormous affect on how fast yeast and bacteria grow. Bacteria prefer the warmer temps while the yeast ( in the bacteria-yeast combo) do better at about 26° C.
My suggestions would be to warm up the starter during growth phases and cool it down to slow down growth. I also find that in winter, I need to double the amount, or at least increase the inoculation. Somehow the little beasties know it's winter and prefer to (go back to bed and) not work as hard as summer. Refrigerator starters are not so delicate but still benefit from a warm period to boost yeast once in a while. That's what building a levain is all about, getting the yeast happy and manipulating them for the desired flavour effects.
Over the years, my preferred starter water is boiled, cooled and stood overnight. That seems to cover most problems encountered with water, nothing fancy. The trace minerals remain, perhaps with less calcium but it works for me in almost any country.
Mini.