September 12, 2020 - 11:46am
levain pain de campagne
HI and help!!! I consider myself a fair to good bread baker, having done it for years. I'm into the various starters in Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. I've moved past bigas and poolishes, and am trying to perfect my French loaves using levain. The levain is great: stringy, smelly, bubbly and delightful. After mixing the dough, letting it go through its many folds, and rises, and then proofing it overnight in the basket, the problem starts. It looks great after proofing for 16 hours as per the recipe, but upon release, it collapses on the counter. I still put it in the preheated Dutch Oven, and it is edible, but it is by no means the beautiful crusty loaf i am after. What am I doing wrong? Can anyone help?
Lisa
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Sure sounds like it's over fermented/proofed. The obvious thing to do is cut back both and see what happens. Trying to match times in a recipe is usually a not so good idea. As everything is different, any times given are at best a general guideline. Good luck and enjoy!
Lisa, many have commented that using the timing in Forkish's book leads to over proofing - could be his temps are much cooler. Also, many have posted that his method of making a starter uses far larger quantities than needed.
I agree with Phaz, your dough sounds overproofed. I wonder if the temperature at which you are proofing is warmer than the temperature specified by Forkish in his book? Is this a cold retard in the fridge? Fridge temperatures above 39ºF the yeast will still be active and the dough will continue to ferment. I assume that this is a cold retard in the fridge, you could check your fridge temperature by placing glasses of water in various places in your fridge that you might place your dough to retard. After several hours check the temperature of the water in the various locations, you might be surprised at how much warmer your fridge is in some locations than others.
Many places in FWSY, pages 28 & 65 and more, he says his daytime room temp is 70 F.
On page 66 he says his overnight house temp is 65 F / 18 C.
The higher the temp, the faster the fermentation.