Problems with Hamelman Recipe - Vermont Country Sourdough
Hi there. I had a pretty good disaster with this recipe. It was the second time making a Hamelman recipe. The first time I did hand mixing and folding aka Forkish/Robertson/Hamelman slap and fold. The bread turned out pretty good but not as good as my breads following Forkish or Robertson.
My second attempt was using my new 6 Qt KitchenAid professional. I mixed using the times in his book and from info online and here to try and get about 1000 revolutions.
During the first mix the dough came out very smooth and resiliant instead of shaggy as described in the book. I did a bit more mixing but less than requested. The dough seemed to have a LOT of gluten development and was quite 'solid' yet elastic. I wondered at this point did I overmix it? Now this recipe is lower hydration than my other attempts at bread (about 40 bakes so far).
Now I built the levain for 125% hydration as requested but it was spent when I went to mix the next morning so I used by good 80% hydration levain and added enough water to bring it to 125% hydration.
So I have two potential problem areas
1) hydration was off so dough was too stiff at the beginning
2) my use of the KA mixer was wrong.
When I baked the crust was good, oven spring was so so, crumb was dense with a couple of very large holes (maybe an inch in diameter that went through the whole loaf. Taste was good but texture was lacking.
I know I should rebake the recipe but I shied away and went back to Robertson/Forkish.
Any insights or comments?