FWSY Overnight Country Blonde Troubles
Greetings TFL,
This is my first post on the site so, "Hello!" I have been baking pan loaves for some time, and just a couple of years ago I began adding some sourdough recipes to my repertoire –mostly with success. This winter I felt the call to try something harder so I bought a dutch oven and Ken Forkish's Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast. Since then I have been a weekend warrior conquering recipes in order through the book. That is until I made it to the Boss Level: full-levain doughs. Disaster, alas. So I turn to you TFL community for help. And from all my pouring over this site, I know that there are more than a few bread champions out here to ride to my aid. !!
I've attempted the Overnight Country Blonde a couple of times now, and both times the proofed dough has come out of the banneton a shaggy mess. I try to reshape the dough, but as soon as I start working with it, it melts into a sticky puddle. Minutes of stretching, folding, and turning helped not a bit. In fact, the more I stretched it, the more liquidy it got. My latest failure tonight left me in such frustration that I committed the sin of adding about a cup more flour until I could get the dough to begin stiffening up. Then, as I had knocked all the air out (rather, the air came out as it puddled), I turned it back into the banneton and let it proof at RT for another hour. Then, straight into the pre-heated oven!
The result was a flat brick, yum! Here is a pic:
Country Blonde bread brick.jpg
I am nearly at a loss. The ratios (before the last-ditch addition of flour) were all double-checked. The dough bulk-fermented in the fridge for no more than 15hrs. It was shaped and proofed at RT for 5hrs. And before you censure me on the longer proof time, let me say that I was hoping that the dough would rise more since it rose hardly at all overnight. And it appeared to pass the finger-dent test. Oh and never did it smell alcohol-like–not over-fermented is it?
If it's not over-fermented, then what is destroying the gluten network? Acid from the LAB? And what should I do? At this point, I hope you all can understand, I need a real crackerjack of an idea before I will attempt this again.
Thanks in advance for all of your help,
Jeff