Hi, I recently baked some loaves, which turned out flat. They taste sour and are not gummy at all. The flavor is less complex and more one-dimensional from what I'm used to in homemade sourdough, but I recently moved and had to make a new starter over the past several weeks. I've posted the recipe and the steps I took below. My two theories are the starter or overfermentation, but I'm not sure it's either. I would love some advice on this, thanks so much!
The starter was consistently and reliably doubling in 8-12 hours at room temp. A few days before using it, the starter had been smelling more like acetone or vinegar after it peaked, but smelled bready/yeasty at peak. It did not smell overly acidic when I started baking with it, and no time during the process of making the bread did I smell anything overly acidic—it smelled bready the entire time.
Recipe:
930g AP flour (Gold Medal)
70g rye flour
100g starter (50/50 rye and AP...starter was doubled in size from feed, floated in water)
650g water
20g salt
20g sugar
Steps:
- Mix water with starter, add flour. Autolyse 30 mins.
- Add sugar and salt, mix.
- Stretch and fold every 30 minutes for 2.5 hours.
- Bulk ferment (it took 20 hours until doubled in size)
- Divide in 2, preshape, bench rest 20 mins
- Rest at room temp 1hr, then refrigerated overnight to bake next next (dough did not feel aerated before going into fridge)
- Took out of fridge ~2 hours until dough felt aerated, poked dough and it slowly but incompletely rose back in ~3 seconds
- Baked 460F for 40 minutes covered, 10 minutes uncovered
What was the loaf shape after shaping and before baking? The disk shape of the baked loaves seems unusual unless the loaves were disk-like before baking.
My impression is a combination of over-fermentation plus degradation of the flour. A very long fermentation would go along with the extra sour taste. Degradation could go along with long fermentation. However, you didn't say that the dough felt unusual during shaping or the handling just before baking, and that clouds the issue.
TomP
20 hours is a long time for bulk fermentation. Even with 10% starter, I would have expected a shorter BF (more like 15 hours, perhaps). Maybe that indicates that your starter is very acidic (it can be acidic without smelling of acid). If so, the pH would have dropped quite low by proof time. This would tend to reduce the yeast activity and increase the rate of degradation.
The starter isn't strong enough for your needs. I would suggest just leaving the starter for anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks before trying again. It is an easy fix - if the starter is strong enough. Enjoy!