Young starter fermentation & baking questions
Hi Everyone,
Sorry for the long post and questions, but I am new to baking sourdough bread, and am having some issues with my starter's performance and in baking the loaves. My starter is now 14 days old and is a 50/50 mixture of Rye and AP flours. It is doing great, tripling volume in 12 hours, and smells fantastic. But, when I used it this weekend to make bread, it did not rise, nor taste, the way I thought it would. Here is what I did, and I am hoping someone can offer suggestions on where I went wrong... I am using Chad Robertson's method as my guide:
Saturday 7am - Mixed my levain: 100gm starter + 100gm flour + 100gm water - let sit covered at 70 degrees
Saturday 2pm - With some noticeable rise in the levain, I mixed my dough. 200g starter + 700g water + 1kg flour; then autolyse for 30 minutes, then salt and remaining water, then rest for 30 minutes. Stretched and folded every 30-40 minutes for about 2.5 hours, then about two more times in the evening.
10pm - The dough had risen a little (maybe 20%), so to continue with bulk ferment, I placed it covered in my 62 degree basement for the evening.
Sunday 8am - Dough had risen about 50% overnight, so I brought it upstairs to my kitchen (~70 degrees) this morning. I left it alone until noon.
12pm - preshaped and bench rested for 30 minutes, then I placed into banneton for ~45 minutes, before baking.
I preheated my oven to 500 degrees (without the Dutch Oven), for an hour before baking. I then placed my loaf into the non-preheated DO, covered, and baked for 25 minutes at 475, then uncovered at 450 for additional 25 minutes.
You can see by the photo that this loaf is flat, and the bottom is burned. I tried baking both with the DO preheated and not preheated, but the result is the same. This loaf is also almost too sour (I assume from the 24 hour ferment?)
So, I need some help....
Is my starter too young to leaven this bread and should I give it more time? How would you recommend feeding it at this point? Right now I am using about 40g starter and feeding it 60g flour (50/50 Rye/AP), and 60g water. I am keeping it in my 68-70 degree kitchen and feeding every morning. Do I need to alter this?
Did I bulk ferment for too long? Should I retry at a higher temp for shorter period of time and at what % increase in volume should I stop it? Then what?
Also, how do I get an amazing dark top without burning the bottom of my bread! This is happening every time! I find that whether I use a stone with steam apparatus or a DO I am getting this result. The only way I don't is if I use my steam oven. But, it is small, and so I am limited with what I can put in it. Any suggestions?
I would greatly appreciate any advice, thank you!
Farrah
My standard is based onTartine. I mix the levain in the morning and then mix dough at lunch or slightly after if a float test indicates I need some more time. I bulk for two hours with stretch and folds then it goes into the fridge. I shape cold the next morning which takes maybe an hour with a long bench rest. From there it is less than 3 hours to the oven. My kitchen now is about 70. You are going way longer.I use the poke test for the final proof and sometimes it is ready after 2 hours so I normally start heating my oven after 1 hour. When I started with Tartine loaves I was always over proofing with the times he gives.
do you keep your dough when you bulk ferment? At 70 in my kitchen the dough is not rising at all in the first couple hours. I was under the impression that you need at least 30% increase in volume before retarding in fridge?
Also, are you using a Dutch oven to bake your bread? Do you preheat it or not?
I'm guessing your oven is one of those with a bottom & top elements - maybe the bottom element is just too hot during the bake? Goes it have a fan or fan assist mode? 2 of my ovens are electric fan ovens with the elements round the fan so I've never seen the bottoms get burn in those ovens - maybe it's just something you need to work/experiment with in your oven... (And I think that if I were using a DO I'd pre-heat it first although I don't use them myself, just throw a cup of water into a tray in the bottom of the oven)
I also think you're fermenting too long - that's where the extra sourness is coming from. My breads get about 8-10 hours bulk ferment and the levian build takes 4-5 hours. (Although if I only needed 200g of levian, I'd take that directly from the starter jar which I keep in the fridge - my method isn't Tartine though)
-Gordon
That seems to be a long bulk ferment but isn't unheard Of What you do seem to have are irregular fold times - I'm not sure you did yourself a favour by folding late in the evening. In fact you would have potentially interrupted the build up of gas/volume that should be happening.
The other question would be the the 45 min final proof. I have not yet experienced a second proof of only 45 min. Generally speaking I believe naturally leavened bread has a longer final proof than that. It is a case of watching your bread - not the clock.
As a final note, for a long bulk fermentation I would use 10-15 % starter only. To bake in one day I would push the percentage to maybe 25%. I think you are around 25% there. I don't think that practice of altering the percentage of starter is peculiar to me. I adopted that practice after baking for a while and spending a lot of time researching/reading.
So much of sourdough baking is watching and feeling your dough and noting the changes and moving on at the right window of time. It takes a few bakes for most us to get that experience.
what is your indication to stop the ferment and then retard in the fridge? Are you looking for a certain % rise along with elasticity and bubbles throughout? I assume that if this is not happening in the first 8ish hours that the temp of the dough is too cool?
Gordon, you mentioned that you keep your starter in the fridge. How often are you refreshing it? Mine seems ravenous now, so I reduced the amount of Rye to 25%, and increased feeding to every 12 hours. I guess I'm a little hesitant to place it in the fridge at this point since it is 15 days old, and I am still learning this whole sourdough thing.
Thank you all for your input! It's so awesome to have this kind of support out there!
Cheers,
Farrah
I don't refresh my starter - that is to say, I don't throw some out and top it up.
However I'm using them 5 days a week, so every day I take some out, use it to make a "production levian" then top-up the jar and put it back in the fridge - although often if I've used more than half the jar I'll let it out for a few hours to make sure it's going.
I run a microbakery making between150 and 200 loaves a week, mostly sourdoughs.
Even when I wasn't doing the microbakery thing and only making 1 or 2 loaves a week, it still lived in the fridge - I'd use the starter directly from the jar, top-up the jar and leave it out for a few hours then back into the fridge until the next time. When I go on holiday I just leave them in the fridge.
There are 100's of ways of maintaining starters though - that's my method - it worked for me when I was making 1-2 loaves a week and now it works for what I'm currently doing...
I have 3 starters, white wheat, white spelt both at 100% hydration and rye at 150% hydration. The spelt is only used 3 times a week, the wheat & rye 5 days a week. In a couple of hours I'll be making up the levian for tonights mix & knead - the dough will ferment overnight then in the morning it's scale/shape/prove and bake - then into the shop and market. The starters are in the fridge, having been there since Friday afternoon... (So like me, they've had 48 hours away from bread making ;-)
-Gordon
Is the long bulk ferment partly why my dough didn't rise and the loaf flattened, or is it just that I am not used to high hydration dough and failed at shaping this loaf? I did the poke test and it seemed ready when I baked it.
I tried this recipe again last night with a shorter, warmer (78 degree) bulk ferment for 2.5hours, and the loaf flattened even worse this morning :-(
Since my starter is so happy and bubbly, do you think that I am still BF'ing for too long and should not worry about how much the dough has increased in volume? I think this is where I'm getting hung up, since I have (up to this point) only been used to working with breads that have added yeast.
Farrah
Gordon, I used my convection oven this time and the loaf did much better. I also made some adjustments to the BF, gauging it on dough feel, and I finally got some oven spring!
Thank you all for your help!
Cheers,
Farrah
I'm sure its good on the inside too.
Cheers,
-Gordon