https://www.youtube.com/embed/RjSEPfOi80s
I made a dough recently and ended up with a super slack dough, one that looks like aligot!
Needless to say, I couldn't fix it short of adding more flour / gluten.
Here's some details about the process:
- Dough was 20% whole wheat / 80% unbleached bread flour - 500g. Weight includes 100g of flour in the levain.
- 70% hydration - 350g. Weight includes 100g water in levain.
- 1% Salt - 5g. Added after I mixed levain and flour.
- Knead on kitchenaid until smooth and dough has passed windowpane test.
- 6 hour bulk ferment at room temperature (31C / 87.8F in Singapore)
- 6x stretch and fold every 30 min. (Dough was strong and elastic at this point)
- Rest for a further 3 hours at room temperature.
- Dough doubled in size nicely, but when I moved it on to the table to shape, dough became really slack.
- I tried rekneading the dough, but it lost all elasticity...
- Basically, I made aligot without cheese and potato ;D
My guess on why this happens is that either the dough got too acidic, or the proteolytic activity destroyed all of the gluten network...
Any thoughts?
and not enough salt. You over-fermented. Especially at 31 C.
To end up with 500 g flour in your total dough, try:
454 g flour, 92 g of 100% hydration levain. (454 + 46 = 500).
Try 1.8% salt, to slow fermentation.
Do not use any WW in your starter/levain, as that will speed things up.
If you develop window pane in the mixer, you do not have to do many (or any) stretch and folds. 6 sets of s&F _after_ window-pane was achieved likely over-worked the dough.
For sourdough, the general rule is (though there are exceptions) the dough should not double during bulk ferment, but maybe increase by 25-50%.
Did you do a "final proof" after shaping?
Bon chance.
My guess 6 our fermentation on 31°C is to long.
You got 20% preferment flour.
I did a fermentation on 30°C once and it was increased in 1.66% in hight in 2,5 ours.
With more or less the same amount of preferment. Maybe 2 a 3% more.
Has anyone encountered this 'texture' before? I have heard of slack dough that can be tightened by rekneading, but not like this O.o.
I didn't get to shape for a final proof because the dough became a puddle pretty much ><
Yup, I had some success with a 2 hour bulk ferment followed by an overnight fridge retardation before, but it ended up being a little too sour. I wanted something a less acidic while still getting a good rise, so I increased the proportion of levain, and did away with the overnight ferment.
Those are great suggestions, I have a lot to experiment with over the next few days :)
What is interesting to me is that with commercial yeast, you can overproof a dough and it never reduces to a puddle. Reknead the dough it recovers. SnF too much, the dough still works as long as the gluten strands aren't broken. All in all, the dough is incredibly resilient and truly a joy to work with.
For sourdough on the other hand, LAB adds acidity, proteolytic activity, and competition for food (just to list some of the new variables). No doubt, they improve flavor tremendously, but at the expense of the dough's resilience. I have much to learn...
I would agree that it has over fermented for a couple of reasons. 6 hour bulk fermentation at 31ºC is very warm for a very long time with 20% prefermented flour. Then the salt which usually slows down fermentation is on the low side of only1% rather than the usual 2% also speeding up fermentation. The acids really build up and the proteases have too much time to break down the gluten structure and then you get a loose dough mass having loss structure.
Increase the salt to 2% and cut the bulk fermentation. You could also include a cold retard in the fridge after final shaping instead of room temperature fermentation.
Benny