Gummy/unbaked line in my dough - please help!?!
Hello!
This is my first post here altho I have often found answer on the forum here that have been very helpful ☺️
I have a problem with my sourdough which has started recently. I use only UK grown stoneground flours, the loaf pictures is 85% high extraction white flour with 15% rye and an inclusion of soaked rye, oats & malted wheat flakes (15%).
Recently I have been getting this line along the bottom of the loaf that looks like underbaked dough, but it is deffo baked long enough. I thought it might be the flours variations with a new harvest but I am still getting it even with swapping out a % of the white flour for a different brand.
Some of my baker friends said it could be over fermentation but now I'm convincing myself it is under fermentation 🤯
In January when it was very cold here in Sheffield, UK I was using 33oC water (ambient kitchen temp of around 13oC) to give a dough temp of 24-25 degrees centigrade.
I haven't changed the process accept for adjusting the water temp for warmer Spring weather, but this line keeps appearing and I'm at a loss as to what it could be.
Has anyone ever had this before and what did you do to get rid of it!?!? I've made a few different loaves and they have this line still, even with differing amount of flours etc.
These doughs are usually around 78% hydration which feels right for the flour. If anything slightly on the stiffer side as the stoneground flours can absorb more water.
please can anyone shed some light on this pretty please, it's driving my insane 😂😂
thank you in advance
Are you putting dough into a hot, pre-heated Dutch oven or other vessel at the start of the bake? Or placing the dough onto a hot baking stone or steel?
Or are you starting from cold? Cold oven, cold Dutch oven, cold baking stone?
Best wishes. Dave
Thank you Dave for your comment. I have a rofco bread oven so it's baked on a stone that's preheated for at least 1.5 hours at 250oC. I am ruling out the bake being the cause because of this! I'm now wondering if my starter is having a bad few weeks 😂
...it looks like the thin gummy layer goes All around the loaf, although most pronounced across the bottom.
Do you "bag" the loaf after placing it in the bread-form and during proofing and retardation? Is a thick "skin" of dried dough forming during the hours before baking?
Trying to think outside the box. Best wishes. Dave
You were right:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/30585/bread-waits-no-one-underproofed
Ohh that's interesting! I'm starting to think it's the flour now though, I've done some tests with different ones and the issue does not persist so I'm going to chat with the miller and ask if he couldn't think of a reason why! But this is all very useful for troubleshooting, thanks so much 🤗
I think I would try reducing the water amount in the dough first. pay close attention to dough temps top and bottom while the dough is in its final rise.
It could also be that by switching out the flours for heavier ones, you might need more volume in your banneton. I might risk saying I think you either need a smaller banneton or more dough in it to get more height on the loaf.
Thank you for your suggestions! I follow a recipe and then usually add/withhold water according to how the dough feels, which has always seemed to be ok but I will try reducing it next time! I have a feeling my starter might also be a bit unhappy. I had a really good run of great bread and without (knowingly) changing anything this has suddenly started happening so I am rather mystified!
Hi Mirrybakes, I'm wondering if you figured out the solution to this problem? I am having a similar issue that I cannot figure out. I use a similar 85% extraction flour and rofco oven. I check the temps of my breads, so I know they aren't underbaked and I never have this issue with white flour--so I think the denser flour has something to do with it. I've read that it could possibly be a shaping problem, but I haven't seen any definite solutions, so I thought I'd ask how you made out?
Thanks so much!
How do you proof and how do you put the loaf in the oven? If the dough is weak and you are rough with it it is possible that you are collaplsing the bottom.
I don't have an answer, but I did notice a few things. First of all, the gummy areas look undercooked, as if they got to the gelling temperature but not much higher. Second, those areas look like they might have been empty air pockets - like one gets sometimes form just under the crust - after they separated they got filled with the gel. Also, there are not many air bubbles in the gel, especially in the upper half of the picture. So the gel seems to have moved in there after most of the gasses had moved upwards. Also I don't see any signs of flow in the gelled volumes, suggesting again that the gel didn't take part in the normal convection of the bulk of the interior of the loaf.
So how could these things have happened? I wonder if it's something about the shaping technique, maybe some change you haven't even noticed. It would cause a few large bubbles at the bottom, the kind that often end up as empty separations of the crust. This idea might be supported by the kink in the middle, nearly separating the upper and lower halves in the picture. That looks like a normal kind of thing - there's always some disturbance where the seam is - but it would reduce any flow from top to bottom at that point. I also notice that the lower gel area has some bubbles in it but the upper does not. This again points to a lack of flow between the top and bottom.
That could maybe combine with a change in the deck temperature or uneven heat distribution. I couldn't tell the color of the upper and lower crust.
Anyway, I'm suspicious that during shaping, largish gas blisters are getting trapped near the seam, and their insulating properties have changed how the dough in their vicinity gets cooked and how it flows.
How about trying this: Make another batch of dough, enough for two loaves. Divide it into two. Shape one loaf the same as you've been doing, but for the other one, roll it up as simply as you can and put it into a loaf pan. Cook them in the same oven at the same time. See if the pan loaf doesn't have the gelled line and the other does.
TomP
What percent hydration? I would start by lowering it and see if that helps. The extra moisture could be leading to fermentation happening quicker than you’d like and it’s also possible that extra moisture is settling towards the bottom of the loaf. Just speculation without more details.
Thanks everyone for your input. I'll try and answer each question:
I proof in a banneton and take the dough out gently. My technique isn't anything special or different from many sourdough techniques--however, the flour that I use is a weaker wheat flour and 85% extraction, so I try to work with it a lot more gentler than any white flour dough that I'm use to.
Tom, you have some interesting thoughts. I originally thought that this may have been a slightly overproofing problem, as though many of the air bubbles on the bottom started leaking or collapsed altogether, forming a thick, compressed dough line that wouldn't bake no matter the temperature. I always take the temperature from the bottom of my loaves, and they always shoot beyond 205 degrees, often even a little higher than 210.
The dough is hydrated around 80% - 82% because of the characteristic of my flour. Anything lower than 80% and the dough is so stiff, its difficult to work with--even after an autolyse. 80% is as low as I can go to keep it somewhat extensible.
I just made a batch of dough and shaped the loaves as gently as I possibly could, while keeping them tense enough to stand. I'll know tomorrow if this helped or not. If I still have the line, I'm kind of at a loss. I don't see how it could be underbaked and have such a straight line, with a nice looking crumb directly above the line, and the temperature reading well above anything that should be underbaked. Another interesting thing about this particular dough--which had me thinking about the moisture settling to the bottom--is that after a night of cold proofing in the fridge, the banneton liners are soaked. None of my other doughs leave the banneton liner so wet, so maybe there is moisture settling at the bottom?
The liners being so wet does sound like it should be telling us something. I wonder if some of the added ingredients might be releasing water over thime.
During the autolyse, is the salt already mixed into the dough or do you withhold it until after the autolyse? If it's in the mixed dough, holding it out would promote extensibility, which might allow you to lower the hydration a little.
If the dough is stiff with lower hydration, you might be able to proof it freeform, without any banneton. I've retarded lots of loaves that way. After shaping I put them on a parchment-covered plastic cutting board, cover them with a sheet of plastic wrap, and retard them.
TomP
It really does look like the classic ring of gummy dough that forms if your dough is underprooved and then goes into a hot oven. The internal expansion smashes the dough against the inside of the set crust, causing that gummy compression layer just under the crust.
Before you go too far down any other rabbit holes of trading out flours and whatnot, why not try out a prooving test? Make a test loaf and OVER proof it for the final proof. Then bake it. See if you still get the gum line.
I sounds like you are talking from personal experience, no?
I always thought that underfermented dough cooked with small alveoli near the heat source and large near the top, or at least uneven distribution. The picture doesn't look like what I would expect from underfermentation. Suppose the issue was the acidification of the dough. In that case, your proofing solution might also work for that, given the additional fermentation time might lower the acidity enough to prevent the amylase activity from gumming up the works.
I'm only thinking this way because both posts describing this condition include a healthy amount of RYE in their flour percentages.
I'm curious if you figured it out with shaping? I'm about to do a batch of 30 tonight (I actually sell at a Farmer's Market) and I'm praying the batch is better. I never had this issue before and it has seemingly happened out of nowhere, but I'm wondering if it's one of these options:
-Shaping too rough
-Needing higher temp on my baking stone
-New flour? I switched to a new organic AP flour from a local
-Too high of hydration (I do 81%)
-Less rye & spelt in dough (right nowI do mostly bread flour & all purpose flour and then 8% rye and 8% spelt)
Praying this batch comes out without the gummy band at the bottom!
The OP mentioned a few times that they thought the issue might be their starter. I think that is at least a possibility.
When I was starting out, I was making bread with rye and wheat, and the lack of acidity from the starter, the cool dough temperature, and the relatively low temperature I was baking at (350F) caused the Rye's amylase reaction to overshoot and resulted in a gummy layer. Fixing the acid and a warmer oven fixed the problem.
My experience has shown two main issues: oven temp and nailing the proof. I use stoneground locally grown flour that's a lot softer than most high gluten refined flour, and I've found that it is much less forgiving with proofing, shaping and baking. Most of the time, my gummy line was from slightly underproofing. But I also noticed that sometimes I would nail the proof and bake a batch of 12 at a time in my Rofco, and some of the breads would be perfect, while some had the gummy line still. I then realized that the ones with the gummy line were going on a stone that wasn't heated as hot as the others. In fact, yesterday I was baking and had some extra baguette dough that I formed into a bun and was going to bake using the residual heat when I finished baking the rest of my breads. The bun was definitely proofed properly, but came out with a significant gummy line on the bottom--similar to the OP photo--and it was definitely from the lack of heat.
The last thing.. for anyone using a flour similar to what I use--it requires some very gentle preshaping and shaping. I was use to pre shaping tight dough balls and having a final shape with a lot of surface tension when using King Arthur flour, but with the softer stoneground flour, that will lead to a tight crumb and will often have very small pockets that don't open up--not usually concentrated to just the bottom, but often areas more in the center. Now my preshaping and shaping are so gentle that when I first started out being this gentle, I assumed the dough would just fall into a puddle when it comes out of the banneton--but that never happens.
With proper proofing, a hot oven and proper shaping, my issues have completely gone away.
One more thing.. I also make a couple of 100% rye breads that are naturally leavened. On one of the loaves, I would have issues with a gummy line at the bottom and that was an acidity issue. I believe this would only be an issue if the dough has a lot of rye in it (more than 50%?). For me I was using my rye levain right when it peaked--much like I do when I make wheat breads. Then I started letting the rye levain mature quite a bit longer to build up acidity before mixing the final dough. That really had a big impact and I no longer have any gummy lines in my 100% rye breads.
I hope any of this can be helpful because this was an issue that drove me crazy for a couple of months.