Hey all,
It's my first time posting here and I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to ask questions and learn more. For background, my wife and I have been baking whole wheat sourdough each week for about 3 months now. We've experimented a little (some rye here, some durum there), but normally we follow the whole wheat sourdough recipe in Tartine #1. We have yet to achieve some of the results that I've seen posted here, on theperfectloaf.com and in the Tartine book. Our crumb is normally pretty dense or a little dry.
Today, I come with a batch of loaves that didn't turn out well at all. We thought we understood some factors and were going on feeling and the end result proved that we may not. I'll first walk through each step with some timing and then at the end I'll share some pictures and a few questions related to the steps.
9:45am – Autolyse
695g whole wheat
5g durum wheat
300g all purpose
-----------------
1000g flour total
+
800g water
11:15am – Started leaven
200 grams water
100 grams all purpose
100 grams whole wheat
1 tbsp starter (15.5g) (This starter is removed from the fridge about 3-4 days before this and we feed it consistently twice a day to get it ramped up)
Note: This may have been one spot where we messed up. The leaven felt super young. It passed the float test, but just barely. It didn't smell to sweet at all to be honest.
6:30pm – Bulk fermentation
We combined the leaven with the autolysed wheat, some salt and another 50g water. We were shooting for 85% hydration. We followed the Tartine method of stretching each corner the dough from the bottom over itself every 30 minutes.
10:00pm – Pre-shape
We followed Tartine's instructions here as closely as we understood. We dumped the dough out of the bowl, floured the top and cut it in half. Then we flipped each half over and used the bench knife to pull the dough towards us, creating a nice round ball with a good amount of tension. We covered with a towel.
10:30pm – Shape
Again, we followed Tartine's instructions here as closely as we understood. We floured the tops, flipped each boule and then folded each corner over the center. We then flipped that over and sed a combination of our hand and bench knife to shape the boule.
11:00pm – Proof
After a short resting period, each boule went into a proofing basket. We covered these baskets with seran wrap and put them in the fridge to rest overnight.
8:00am – Pre-heat oven to 500
The dutch oven goes into the oven as the oven comes up to 500.
8:20am – Bake
We take our dutch oven out of the oven leaving the lid in the oven and we carefully transfer the boule from the proofing basket into our hands and then as carefully as possible we drop the boule into the dutch oven. This is usually more aggressive than I'd like it to be. It's a pretty decent drop into the dutch oven (it's not a combo cooker). We then quickly score it and toss it into the oven putting the lid back on. After 30 minutes, we remove the lid and let it bake for another 20 - 30 minutes depending on the color. This time around was the first time I stuck a thermometer in it. It read 215 F.
We repeat this process for the next loaf while the other loaf rests on a grate.
So that's that. The reason I'm here is because both of the loaves from this batch had almost no oven spring and had a really odd crumb. See photos attached. I'd like to understand the variables in this process where I could have gone wrong and how they affect the loaf. I'd really love to be able to read the crumb and understand where I went wrong so I can improve it for next time.
Questions
- If the leaven wasn't ready, would we have noticed anything different in the bulk fermentation stage? I felt really good about this stage this time around and it seemed nice and billowy.
- How much does the pre-shape and the shape affect the overall crumb?
- How much does the proof affect the overall crumb?
- How much does my starter affect the strength of my leaven and therefore affect my crumb? Should I be learning/understanding more about my starter and leaven before even considering the next steps?
Thank you
– Henry
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But from the photo it looks like the starter wasn't mature enough. Seems to be conflicting. So while I still think it was all in the starter (from the photo) perhaps it could be some other issue.
So assuming it's not the starter what else could be the issue?
You have 40% starter and bulk fermented for 3 hours 30 minutes. Can be long enough in the right circumstances taking your starter and room temperature into account. Question is... was the dough ready? One should go by the dough and not the clock.
Next possible problem could be... was it ready when you took it out of the fridge? If anything was off with the starter build and/or bulk ferment it might not have been ready.
Answers
Why not take a step back and follow a lower hydration plain bread flour loaf?
Immature starter, underproofed. Simple as that.
Expounding on Lechem, you should see rise in your bulk ferment. You don't need any yeast to get good dough extensibility as this is just gluten strands well developed-- it will do this on its own with just water. #1 mistake that I refuse to make any more is to take the dough too early; it never turns out well and it's just not worth it.
With starter inoculated at less than 8% I would not even bother looking at it before 18 hours. Also, assuming regular room temperatures of 75° or so, fermentation time is probably also insufficient.
Wow. Awesome responses so quickly.
So it seems that my starter is less than ideal.
Right now I have ~230g of starter that I keep in a mason jar and feed consistently twice a day (once at 8am and once at 9pm). When I do the feeding, I follow Tartine's guide, so I get rid of 80ish% and feed it 100g 50/50 white/wheat flour and 100g water. I can take a picture of it's activity if that would help.
Normally the night before baking, I make a leaven following the steps in Tartine. This specific time I did not follow Tartine and instead tried to make the leaven same day.
So some follow up questions:
Any other suggestions moving forward?
I let mine get very very frothy and bubbly. But you have to just get used to yours and what works and what doesn't.
Feed it and use it, feed it when it starts to break down and use it when it's at peak.
Watch for it to rise. I get about a 20-30% rise (I use a rectangular container and it's easy to see a higher volume). If it's not risen, it's not ready. Bubbles are not the same as increased volume.
If you're following a recipe that recommends a build then that will put everything in the ball park. However one should still go by feel. I've gotten to know my starter and how it behaves so I just know when it's ready. It took a long time to get to that stage. As a guide only...
If you keep your starter in the fridge and then build a preferment of 1:1:1 it can take anything from 8-12 hours to fully mature depending on your starter and temperature. Obviously if you then feed it again at the same ratio it'll speed up as you're using an already mature starter. Yours was 15g starter being fed 200g flour. While it has been fed a few times previously that is still quite a lot of feed. The more I think about it the more I'm sure your starter was immature.
As an idea why don't you try a different build with easier timings. You can split it into two...
First build can be 20g starter + 30g water + 30g flour. Leave that to mature overnight. It should be peaked and beginning to fall.
Second build: 80g starter from first build + 160g water + 160g flour. If you start this in the morning then 6-8 hours later it should be mature enough to use. Should be active, bubbly and have a good aroma (slightly alcoholic).
This is just an idea. You've got a nice mature starter from the first build and the second build just a 1:2:2 ration instead of the 1:6:6 ratio you had.
Your method was fine but go by the feel of the dough rather than just the timing of the recipe. The dough goes through a subtle change. You might find while spacing out the stretch and folds that after the first few it doesn't grow much but when you are coming to the end of the bulk ferment it has suddenly grown more then expected. But more importantly it feels different. You come to do a stretch and fold and you get a more elastic feel to the dough. It is billowy and aireated but on top of that kind of rubbery for want of a better word. It's a subtle change. Get to know it!
Finally, I think it best for you to drop the hydration for now to something easier to work with. Tartine is not a walk in the park at that hydration. Bring it down to 70% and work with that for now. Later slowly increase it.
A few things come to mind:
Hey all,
So I'm planning on baking on Sunday which means I'm a few days out from prep. The responses are super helpful but it is a little tricky to cross them with the Tartine recipe I'm following. So I'm going to write out my plan and see what you guys think.
Wednesday - Friday
Continue feeding my starter twice daily. 20% starter (eyeballing it), 50g flour (50/50 wheat/white), 50g water. Once at 8am, once at 9am. Right now it's very consistent, really vinegary but sweet. I think peak rise is about 6 hours after feeding.
Friday
9:00 PM – Start 2 part leaven like Lechem suggested
20g starter + 30g water + 30g flour (50/50 white/wheat)
Saturday
7:30am – Complete 2 part leaven like Lechem suggested
80g starter from first build + 160g water + 160g flour.
11:30am - Autolyse
700g whole wheat + 300g all purpose + 800g water
2:30 - 4:30 (depending on leaven) – Start bulk fermentation
Combine 1000g autolysed flour + 50g water + 400g leaven and fold every 30 minutes like Tartine says. It sounds like we should be a little more aggressive in the early stages and really let this go until it feels nice and stretchy/rubbery. I'm not sure if we've ever gone quote long enough.
6:30 - 9:30pm (depending on bulk) – Preshape
30 minutes later – Shape
I'll follow Tartine's guide to this using some of your tips.
Overnight proof in refrigerator
How long are we shooting for here? 8-10 hours?
Sunday
Pre-heat oven and then bake.
The timing on this depends on how long we should proof and when we finish the day before. We normally let the dough sit on the counter while the oven comes to room temp.
From my newbie starter thread people have recommended starting off the starter with a little pineapple juice to get it going. I didn't try that, but I have tried other tips people gave me like feeding my starter rye flour which is more robust, and the starter has been puffing up considerably more than it did when feeding the wheat/white mixture recommended in Tartine cookbook, almost twice as much as before. So maybe try that, and bulk ferment for longer and see how it goes.
Hey all,
I just wanted to follow up and say thank you. Since my last reply, I've made two batches (four loaves) with increasing success. Two key takeaways were 1. starting with a good, active leaven (duh!) and 2. measuring bulk fermentation by actual increase in volume and not just time/turns. The feel of the dough once it had correctly bulk fermented was noticeably different than past times. I've also started to use parchment paper to make transferring the boules into the dutch oven much less aggressive.
Thanks again!
Here are some photos: