Tartine basic country loaf: sometimes just too runny
Hi there,
Newbie quarantine baker here. I’ve now baked the Tartine recipe about four or five times. The first, the dough was pretty wet, hard to round and shape, and didn’t rise much. It also glued itself to the kitchen towels in my bowls during the later rise.
The second time was much better, and by the third and fourth, the dough was feeling much better, I was rounding it easily, shaping it nicely, dragging it on the counter to create tension, emulating the dozen videos I’ve now watched :-) The fourth oven spring was amazing!
And then, yesterday, it was just a floppy mass. I tried putting it back in the bowl and doing some more turns. I tried rounding it multiple times (as good as a turn according to the book), all to no avail. The (granite) counter under the dough would be wet, and the dough would just stick. When I finally sort of managed to round it, by half folding it onto itself with the bench scraper, it would spread out like pancake batter over the next while.
I eventually threw it out :-(
The weird part is that the initial bulk rise with turns seemed to be going well in some ways: a couple of visible quarter-sized bubbles, and the dough acquired that light bubbly feeling it usually does. But I could also feel that it wasn’t holding together as well as usual, and was sticking to the bowl more than usual.
Variations: I tried to let it rise in the closet under the bookshelf with the Internet and Wii and TV equipment that is always warm, instead of pouring endless bowls of boiling water to keep the oven warm. My whole wheat flour is also ancient (waiting on a Lindley Mills order), but I thought it fine because the previous batch used it and was the best ever.
Anyway, any hints welcome, especially those that will help build intuition on when to end the bulk rise, and how to understand the lack of structure the dough had.
And thanks for all the amazing discussion here I’ve been reading already before creating an account to post :-)
Zellyn
If none of your ingredients, measurements, or procedures changed, then what likely changed was.... the starter/levain.
If this last was your fourth/fifth loaf, then your starter is probably just now settling down into the mature phase.
It can take 10 days or more (up to 2 to 3 weeks), from the point the baby starter first started to consistently double within 4 hours of feeding, before it "balances", "matures" and "settles down" (gets used to its feeding schedule). The ratio of the LAB (lactic acid bacteria) to wild yeast has to settle in. The species/strains of wild yeast have to settle in. Those kinds of things.
So whatever hydration and procedural adjustments you made for those first few loaves, now have to be _re-done_, because you are essentially working with a different starter than you were the first few loaves.
The name of the game in starter/levain management is _consistency_, it needs a routine of timings, storage temp, feeding temp, ratios, hours since feeding before use, etc.
Anyway, welcome to the TFL club. (I've been hanging around and spouting off since September 2019.)
Bon appétit, amigo.
My starter actually took a long time (8-10 days) to become regular in the first place, and then I've been baking slowly over the next 2-3 weeks (first loaf: April 2), so I think it had settled down. I _did_ try adding a smidge more water to it (since the Tartine book describes the starter as being more liquid, and 100% hydration with 50/50 white/wheat is not terribly wet), but the levain had bubbled up very nicely, and easily passed the float test. Still, it might be sensitive to small changes: I think I had had a day or two of forgetting to feed it at 9am and not getting around to it until 3 or 4pm this week, so maybe it was a little unhappy?
One question, while I have your attention: is going down to 25g old starter, 50g water, 50g 50/50 flour (ie, halving the recommended amounts) to save on flour for the daily feed okay?
Thanks again,
Zellyn
You can easily go to 5 gram starter an feed it 1:2:2 or as far as 1:5:5 the later gives a stronger starter in the long run.
This last bake was with your "real" starter. So whatever you did previously (hydration%, bulk and proof times) to get good loaves, now needs to be re-worked.
This is a hard concept to get across. "Why can't I do with loaf #5 what I did to get a good loaf with #4?" (Assuming you did _everything_ the same.) And the answer is "You can't, because now it is a different starter, that requires a different amount of starter per amount of flour, different hydration of dough, and different bulk/proof times."
You now have to "dial it in" all over again. Every baker has to do this when the seasons change, when they change brands of flour, when they move, etc.
A small change in one thing, such as the balance or strength of the starter, or brand/type of flour, or ambient temp has repercussion effects on other things.
After a while, you'll be able to "read" the starter, and "read and feel" your dough, and be able to figure out the small adjustments as the aforementioned things change.
I think I'll just go back to feeding the starter 100% hydration then. It wasn't worth the disaster, and I'm not sure what to adjust to accommodate it.
So, when it's just failing to develop properly, and stays runny… is there something obvious to adjust? Increase the temperature and length of the bulk rise? I'm not sure how to tell when I'm in danger of over-proofing.
Thanks, Zellyn
"So, when it's just failing to develop properly, and stays runny… is there something obvious to adjust?"
When it's runny, the first things that come to my mind are:
- using less levain, as a percent of flour.
- using less water (hydration%) inthe dough.
--
Hydration is actually the #1 thing to always think of adjusting, as the individual baker is almost never using the exact same flour as the person who wrote the formula. Different flour almost always leads to a slightly different hydration percent, or other tweaks.
--
Also, just an aside, if you feed your starter any whole grain, you supercharge the strength or fermenting power, so you end up needing less of it, or bulk fermenting a shorter time.