Help on Mixing, pointers appreciated!
Hi guys, I have been making sourdough at low hydration between 68% and 70%. Recently, after achieving an ear on the sourdough, I have decided to challenge myself to move on to higher hydration. But be it I did a 78% or 75% or even at 72%, it just doesn’t form a cohesive dough. The steps that I do (the same as the low hydration dough) is as follows:
1) Autolyse 1hr with salt added.
2) Add starter. My starter ratio is 1:2:2 and it is active.
3) Let the Kitchen Aid do the job with a dough hook (chilled) until window pane is formed.
4) I let it rest until it doubles before I shaped and put in the fridge for overnight fermentation.
This mixing by machine doesn’t work once I hit above 72% and there is no way to achieve the window pane. Once levain is added to the dough and the mixing starts, the dough become more slack than before. I even tried reducing the mixing time and use the lowest speed and it doesn’t work too. I also tried letting it rest in for like 20mins interval within an hour but the dough juz didn’t recovered.
The reason I switched from stretch and fold method to machine mix becos I realized that having a window pane allows me to reach the extensibility of the dough in a shortest time becos my kitchen is always averagely at 85F, which I have sent it to the fridge by the 4th hour after levain is added.
Does the machine mix destroyed the delicate gluten formed during the autolyse and the dough needs time to rebuild them? I realised that when I did the enriched dough for panettone, the hydration is so high and yet machine mix can still provide the window pane. So could it be the flour problem? I’m using bread flour with 11.9% protein.
It’s been very discouraging, it’s been 5 or 6 bakes and I’m still troubleshooting it.
Thank you so much and stay safe.
KL