Sourdough Failure - Advice and Tips

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Purejaz on

Hi Everyone,

I am new to baking and am looking to improve my sourdough baking abilities.

Having lurked in the background for some time, this definitely seems the place to get some good advice.

My latest attempt can be seen below:

Sourdough Attempt

The problems i am having are:

  • The bread whilst baking does not rise. 
  • The bread is quite dense (a little soggy/chewy).

Having read all the guides/other advice given are:

  • I think the density issue and rising issue could be caused by over proofing. Though i only proofed overnight in the fridge for 10 hours.

 

  • I was thinking it may be worthwhile increasing the hydration level. Apologies if i am being silly, but my calculation is that the recipe i use (shown at the bottom of the page is only 62% hydration). I am thinking of increasing this to c. 70%-75% hydration (by increasing the starter amount and water).

 

  • I also think i might not been treating my starter properly. It is a very mature starter. Having fed it with 100g wholemeal flour and 100g warm water, it rises only about 10% (using a 1 litre square kilner jar). Then after about 2 and a half hours begins to collapse to the original height. I don't think this is normal?

For reference, the recipe i am using is:

- 400g strong white flour (i only had 00 flour, so could this be causing some of the issue?)

- 100g wholemeal flour (this is also what i use to feed the starter)

- 100g starter

- 300g water

- 10g salt

I am also baking this in a Lekue, though planning to change for a dutch oven or la cloche.

Any advice/tips would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks

What temperature are you baking at? It looks like your bread did rise, it has lovely air pockets. It could be pale and soggy if you are not baking at a high enough temperature. I also googled a what a Lekue is. A lot of bakers use either a baking stone or a dutch oven because they heat up and retain heat well, so their surfaces can transfer a lot of heat into the bread, helping it rise and cook through. I'm guessing a Lekue won't heat up enough or retain enough heat.

Changing proofing times and measurements might help too, but I think the thing you can change to make the biggest impact is baking temperature and surface.

Thank you for the response. 

The way I baked it was:

  1. Preheated the oven (gas mark 7, for one hour with a cast iron frying pan at the bottom)
  2. Baked for one hour in the lekeu. Adding a handful of ice cubes to the frying pan at the beginning.
  3. Then took it out of the lekue turned it down to gas mark 4 and baked for a further 10mins.

Should I go for a higher heat? I believe gas mark 7 is 220.

Yeah i am go to purchase a la cloche or Dutch oven. The Lekue is to help me learn about consistency of the dough, autolysing, proofing etc. 

Many thanks again.