Hi everyone,
I have just made my first sourdough which has unfortunately turned out disastrously! So I have signed up here in the hope that I may be able to get some advice on where I went wrong. Apologies in advance for the long post!
Just for a bit of background: I have been making bread since the end of last year. Before moving onto sourdough I have been practising making crusty white bread. I use Richard Bertinet's slap & fold technique. While I wouldn't say I have mastered it, I feel I have become fairly proficient – I am able to turn the 'porridge-like' mixture into a smooth strong dough without too much issue. If making bread I will bake it it in a cast iron casserole, taking the lid off just for the last few minutes. If making pizza bases I use a stone. The results for both have been pretty consistently good, so I decided it was time to give the sourdough a try...
The main issues I have encountered are as follows:
1. The starter recipe – again I am following Richard Bertinet, using his starter recipe from Crust, which says to refresh the starter in the ratio 1/1/2 (starter/water/flour). My first issue is with his quantities – his starter recipe ends up with 800g. In his book he says to use 400g to make 2 large loaves of bread and keep back 400g. However, topping up the remainder in the ratio 1:1:2 would result in 1600g, i.e. double what he had previously. I saw that someone else had posted about this, and I agree that the numbers in his recipe simply don't add up.
Am I correct that if I want to maintain the same amount of starter, if my ratio is 1:1:2 (i.e. 4 parts in total), then I should retain 1/4 of it each time? I am using half of his quantities in the book, so for a 400g starter I discard (or use) 300g, and top up the remaining 100g with 100g water and 200g flour.
2. The consistency of the starter - Bertinet's starter seems to be extremely stiff and difficult to work with. I am used to 'sticky' dough but I have found the texture of the starter has become almost like chewing gum. As soon as it touches anything it seems almost to bind to it. With wet hands or floured hands I cannot touch it without it completely sticking to me.
When I added new flour/water to the starter to make the bread, the entire ball of dough took on this texture. Although the overall hydration was the same as my normal white bread (around 75%), it was far stickier. However I did manage to get it into a ball and back in the bowl.
3. The resting stages of 1h went OK, I took the dough out of the bowl with scraper, stretched and folded, reshaped, put it back.
4. Here is where things went really wrong... I left the dough overnight to prove, around 18h. I dont think it's too cold or too hot, as this is the same place where I was leaving my starter. However, while my starter had risen and developed the honeycomb texture (lots of bubbles), the dough did not appear rise at all in the 18h period. on the face-up side the dough had dried out somewhat, forming a bit of a skin.
5. I decided to cut my losses and just try cooking it. Unfortunately the dough was completely stuck to the cloth despite plenty of flour. The skin which had developed burst and inside the dough was like porridge again, just spilling out everywhere. It seemed like there was absolutely no gluten structure despite doing probably more slap+fold / stretch+fold than I would normally do with a white loaf.
I reshaped into a ball and just shoved it in the oven! As expected by that point it has come out completely flat/dense. It is more like cake than bread. I gave it a try and the final disappointment was that it didn't even taste nice - barely any flavour at all.
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I would be really grateful for any advice! I feel I might want to try a different starter recipe as I would like to keep it in a jar in the fridge, rather than having to keep a solid starter in a big bowl.
Many thanks in advance,
Henry
Just for comparison, here is a photo of my nicely risen normal white bread and the flat sourdough!
Welcome! You've come to the right place.
Can you describe you starter maintenance? 50% hydration starter that feels sticky like bubble gum has way too much acid accumulated, and flour is degraded. I've had that problem. Feed it a few times in quick succession, just when peaked. The sticking should disappear and it'll become much more pleasurable to handle the starter.
I agree with Ilya that a good place to look is your starter maintenance.
Beyond that, 18 hours proofing seems excessive, especially at room temperature. Sticking to the cloth would support that. You didn’t explicitly state your formula, but as a point of reference I will typically use 130 gm of levain for 2x 1000 gm loaves, bulk ferment is around 5 hours and retarded overnight in a refrigerator before baking. My loaves nearly always have 35-40% whole grain flour, which speeds up the fermentation somewhat, but not by a factor of >3.
-Brad
I just tried the starter recipe and loaf from Crumb, which, from your description, sounds as if the same as from Crust. He states that one should feed the leftover starter (“ferment”) with 200g water and 200g, thus equaling 800g new starter. That ratio would then be 2:1:1. On the other hand, if you do as you suggest, you’d have to first discard 200g of the leftover starter to end up with 800g. If you do that, it will indeed be very stiff, but I have used that starter ratio in other non-Bertinet recipes and it works quite well.
Crumb, BTW, is riddled with errors; he published a list of corrections on his blog. I used his original, incorrect starter recipe for my first Bertinet loaf, and it was a gooey mess. Because of the error, the dough was about 83% hydration and the “slap and fold” technique was enormously strenuous and never reached any semblance of a bakable loaf. Not sure if I’ll try again, because not sure worth it when other recipes work so well.
Wish you the best! Let us know what worked for you.