Getting a good rise and texture on whole wheat sourdough
Hi all,
I'm fairly new to bread and sourdough, and have been making whole wheat sourdough every other week for almost a year. The bread flavor is pretty good (well I forgot to add salt on the bake I'm sharing a photo of, but otherwise good!) and it develops a lot of air pockets. However, I can't get a very high rise on it, and the texture of the dough is extremely dense and chewy. Is there any way to get a fluffier loaf with this high percentage of whole wheat (60%)? I do about three hours of pull and folds every 30 minutes, then stretch, fold, and roll on the counter, and then after a 30min bench rest I let the loaf prove either in a warm place for 3-4 hours or in the fridge for about 12 hours. I bake it in a round dutch oven. Here are the proportions I'm using (it's almost 75% hydration I think), based on the NY Times Tartine recipe:
100g leaven
350g water
200g regular bread flour
275g mixed high-protein whole wheat flours (currently using two different whole wheat flours and a rye flour)
50g discards (to make it taste more sour)
10g salt
Suggestions welcome! Thank you!
Welcome to TFL.
1. What country are you in? (This is an international forum.) It does make a difference because flour varies so much between countries.
2. What kind of water are you using? Bottled/purified, bottled/spring, well water, raw municipal tap water, filtered municipal tap water, what kind of filter, etc.
3. Was adding discard in the NY Times recipe, or was that your addition? (It doesn't sound right.)
4. Can you provide a link to the recipe so we can see where you deviated? You said "based on", therefore, if I take that literally, then you didn't follow it as written.
5. Exactly what brands/types of flour are you using? Please be specific. Sometimes it matters.
6. What bread cookbooks do you have? It is easier to refer to original works, so that we reference the same things, and then more people who can help will already be familiar with that author's system. In my observations, new bakers go awry when they try to combine different "systems" before they master one method/system.
7. When you say "100 g leaven", did you elaborate a "young leaven" from 1 tbs of recently refreshed starter, adding 200 g water, 200 g flour, and waiting overnight, (as per page 47 in Robertson's Tartine Bread) or did you just use 100 g recently refreshed starter fed 1:2:2 ? The confusion between "starter" and "leaven" is resolved when the baker describes the exact procedures, proportions, timings, and temperatures. As you are new here, we don't know yet what _you_ mean by "leaven." And without a link, we don't know what the NY Times meant by "leaven."
Thanks so much for these questions!
1. USA, in the Northeast. The bread flour I'm using is from the grocery store. The whole wheat and rye flours are from a mill in Pennsylvania.
2. Tap water. We have slightly hard water.
3. Adding discards was my change to give it a more sour flavor.
4. Here's the original recipe: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016277-tartines-country-bread
5. The bread flour is King Arthur. The other flours are a mix of bolted whole wheat, whole wheat, and rye from here: https://castlevalleymill.com/Store.html
6. I haven't used bread cookbooks! I've tried methods I found online, including this Tartine recipe, and another from a blog called "No Knead To Worry" which didn't work as well. Is there a cookbook you recommend?
7. Yes, it was a young leaven -- I used 1 teaspoon starter and 66g each water and flour (the same proportions you named) and left it for at least 12 hours.
Similar?
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/59799/need-helpwhat-went-wrong
Is it cold in your kitchen?
Possible shaping error during rolling?
That looks really similar to mine! I'm always cold so my house is at 75F -- I forgot to leave this one in the oven between pull and folds, and did do the overnight prove in the fridge, but it definitely wasn't exposed to cold temperatures until it went in the fridge. Do you have suggestions for how to learn better rolling techniques? Or do I just need to stretch/fold/roll more times?
"cold" is relative I suppose. Yeast activity changes radically based on temperature of the dough (affected by room temp but also ingredients' temp).
For shaping the issue is to ensure that you are merging the dough without gaps. Shaping videos might help on youtube.
(Sorry for the delay. )
1. As implied by happycat, it does look a bit under-fermented.
2. The crumb also looks a bit off or degraded in some other way. And I suspect the added starter discard damaged it. Frankly, adding extra starter or discard is not the normal way to increase the sour taste. I'll leave that to another discussion.
But it does look like the acid in the discard might have harmed or somehow degraded the gluten formation in the dough. So, leave it out on the next bake of this recipe.
3. I could not see the recipe because it is behind a pay-wall. If the recipe did not call for rye, then don't use any rye until you first master the recipe. Rye just behaves differently than wheat flour, and depending on the proportion can alter fermentation, acid level, gluten structure, etc.
4. As a general principle, newbies can learn and progress faster by following recipes as written, and then once the recipe is mastered, go on to tinkering, experimenting, and tweaking.
Again, welcome. And please feel free to post your bakes!
Good luck, and bon appétit.
This is so helpful! Thank you. And sorry for the slow response, I didn't get to bake over the holidays.
I incorporated the old discard following advice from a friend on increasing the sour taste. I just redid the bake without it, and following the recipe exactly (with the exception of the flour -- I still did about 60% whole wheat, but left out the rye, since as you noted it didn't call for it). Sorry about the paywall.
The loaf turned out way better! I'd still love a better rise and stronger sourdough taste, but it tastes great and the texture is vastly improved. Thanks again for all the advice :)
IMG-9656.jpg
I agree with Dave, overall the crumb shows the dough was underfermented, yet there are signs of gluten degradation which you do not see in underfermented loaves. I suspect that adding the discard has added unwanted extra acid to your dough which accelerated the gluten degradation caused by the proteases.
I would definitely avoid adding discard to avoid this issue. I also agree that if you’re new to sourdough baking you should try following the recipes more closely. It is amazing how a small deviation can cause problems.
Given the length of your bulk and and warm proof I would have expected your dough to be overfermented so I have to wonder about the health of your starter. Is it up to the task of making a good strong levain?
Another possible source of under-fermentation is chlorine and/or chloramine in municipal water.
You didn't say if your tap water comes from a well, or a municipal water plant.
Hard water is okay, as yeast usually like the minerals. So well-water from your own well should be okay. (unless your local aquifer is polluted.)
If your city tap water is known for a moderate or stronger chlorine smell , that could inhibit yeast. Letting water sit out overnight to let chlorine out-gas can help. Cover it loosely with a paper towel to keep out dust, but it needs to breath through and around the cover.
If your municipal water plant has a web site, check it to see if they use "chloramine" or "chloramines". If it does, then I don't think any type of filter gets rid of them. Chloramines in the water usually mean the sourdough baker needs another source of water. (Someone please correct me if that's wrong.)
My experience with bottled _filtered_ water is not good, because yeast like minerals, and filtering takes most minerals out.
I always use bottled _spring_ water, because it has no chlorine and does have minerals. My starters and breads do well with it. I just get the cheap stuff from Big Lots or Kroger.
Dave our municipal water contains both chlorine and chloramine. I filter our tap water and can successfully bake with levains/starters/dough made using that filtered tap water. The charcoal based filters are not known to be able to remove the chloramine, however, I haven’t had an issue with the water.
Benny
Thanks. And I just now picked that up reading your comment in the thread from "thiago" in Toronto.
That's good to know. Either I am mistaken about chloramines being bread-killers, or maybe Toronto's level of chloramines is under some critical threshold.
It's sort of rare that water makes or breaks bread, but when it is the culprit, it's often the last thing to be suspected.
I think you are correct in thinking that chloramine is a microbicidal and correct that Toronto’s levels must be low enough not to have a significant effect if your starter is healthy enough. I wouldn’t be surprised when I used to feed my starter whole red fife that the times it became sluggish and I had to boost it with whole rye if in part at least, the chloramine contributed to it. I’ll never know and I’ll stick to an all rye starter now which seems to be fine with the level of chloramine in the filtered water.
Adding my account of things... My tap water contains both chlorine and chloramine and I don't filter it. No problem with my starter and my starter is hardly a slow working one!
While it would depend on what microbes one has in their starter and the levels of chlorine and chloramine in the water, honestly I think water being to blame for a sluggish starter is mostly erroneous.
Making a starter with such water propagates microbes that will be better adapted to such conditions.
We've tested our water and I don't think it had excess chlorine, but I do think it's from a municipal water plant (and it is hard). We leave water out overnight to water plants so I'll use that for bread next time. Thank you!
@af:
In regards to bread cookbooks, that's a subject of much fandom, and some passion around here.
I think it depends on what baking style/system you like, what types of breads/flour you like, and whose writing style you are comfortable with.
I have over 20 hard-copy bread cookbooks (all bought used or heavily discounted, I never pay close to list price, or Amazon's normal selling price.) And even more in just Kindle ebook format from when they get super-discounted.
--
Some more questions, in regard to recommending a cookbook:
Do you have a mixer, or do you prefer no-knead?
Do you normally prefer bread with over 50% whole grain?
Same day formulas, or is over-night okay?
Sourdough? Commercially yeasted? Or both?
Kindle or hard-copy? For ebooks, you generally need a large tablet or a notebook computer in the kitchen. Some people don't mind, but some people just hate using ebooks while cooking due to the normal flipping back and forth.
I have a mixer with a dough hook, and am open to same day and overnight recipes, and sourdough or yeasted. My only constraint is that I can't knead extensively by hand, and I do prefer whole grain recipes if possible, especially those that keep well in the fridge/freezer!
The bread cookbook that is currently getting the most raves on TFL is Hamelman's Bread, the new 3rd Edition.
Currently on sale for under 36 US, new, at the 'zon. And I think it matches your needs.
If you'd like our webmaster, Floyd M, to get a few pennies commission from the sale, use the amazon link in this comment: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/498349#comment-498349
I absolutely will get it! Thanks so much for the recommendation.