How do I stiffen up a floppy dough?

Hello! I’d guess you’re new to the world of sourdough; so am I! I’ve started making sourdough loaves for a couple of months now, and I’ve had my fair share of slack doughs.

My tips are:

1) lower the hydration: use less water. If you divide 262g water by the 350g flour: you get a 75% hydration level. You could lower it to 70%, that would make the dough more manageable or even 65%, that would be 245g water and 228g water respectively. 

2) not all flours are created equally. AP flour, by nature, has a lower protein content, so usually it can’t handle a lot of water. Also, you’d need to build up the strength of your dough in the beginning with slap and folds or just fold the dough onto itself. 

Hope this helps!

I'm new to sourdough recently too but have been baking feverishly... here's a few things l learned in addition to what H mentioned.

- you can build some gluten by mixing the flour and water in the final dough and let it rest for 20-60 minutes to develop some gluten before mixing in the starter and the salt.

- after your last stretch and fold, dough needs to be able to pass the window pane test

- dough may need a good heat shock when you put it into the oven, so if you have a cold pan with the dough going into a hot oven you will not get that.  are you preheating the pan in the oven and then dropping the cold dough in there?

- when you say.. "Maybe the pan of water protected it?" what did you mean, where was your bread pan in relation to the pan of water? not in it, right?  to create steam, you should have a hot pan in the oven and right after you put in the dough, put hot water in it to create steam (be very careful with that, you can get burns or shatter the oven glass if done incorrectly)

in the starter. That (and the flour) need to be used to calculate the hydration. Assuming a 100% hydration starter, you were working with a 78% hydration dough.Probably not the best place to begin your journey.Try about 68-70% with a stronger flour... 

Hello

You have a hydration level of 78% which is pretty high. 

I had the same problem in the beginning. Instead of lowering hydration i tried to skip the whole "fold/wait/fold/wait"-method. Many youtube-bakers love it but its not for me. 

Instead i dedicate 20-30 mins of slap and fold and now that's all I do with my doughs. Slap it until gluten process is done and I promis you that it wont collapse. Nowadays I also skip what youtube bakers call "Bulk fermentation)

1. Mix flour, water, levain, and salt (yes it's ok to add salt here)
2. Slap and fold until it's a chewing gum
3. Shape your loafs (or loaf in your case)
4.Put in refrigerator over night or in room temp until done 

There are so many bakers online that make this way to complicated

Here's a pretty good kneading video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbBO4XyL3iM

What is a loaf of bread is a good question to think about. Flour and water mix and starch and gluten are released. Yeast is added and starts eating the sugars/starches and giving off gas(CO2) which clump together and form bubbles in the dough. The starchy part forms the walls of the bubbles and the gluten acts as a netting to form those bubble walls. Both have to be strong. When you use bread flour (higher amount of gluten protein) the netting is thicker (and chewier, IMO). A good analogy is a bunch of balloons being held in a net.

When you make a loaf of bread, a lot of people say the idea is to "develop" the gluten. There is more to the story-again in my opinion. Gluten will pretty much develop on its own when water is added to flour. As you knead or S&F, the proteins are exposed to more water and more can develop but don't forget about the bubble walls. I prefer to call the process  "developing the starch". Just like mixing plain starch and water, sometimes it takes a bit of kneading/mixing/S&F to get the finer starch particles in contact with the water so it can absorb and swell-so it also needs a little contact time.  When the starch is fully "developed", it will form a smooth gel that becomes trapped in the texture and matrix of gluten strands and forms a "windowpane". That is when you know your dough will hold the gas bubbles efficiently in place, rise tall  and form a great crumb.

Just like bubbles made with soap and water-if there is too much water in ratio to the soap, the bubble wall is weak and will easily pop. If the bubble wall is strong enough but the supporting netting (gluten) is too weak (like the bubble wand being too thin a wire/string to support the bubble wall), it will collapse under the weight of the starchy wall and the loaf will not rise much.

So more gluten, stronger gluten, less water, more starchy development are all solutions to your problem and there are different strategies to achieve each of these goals.Maybe several things need to be done!

A little less water will make the handling easier. A little more kneading/S&F will develop the windowpane and give a stronger rise.

Adding gluten (vital wheat gluten or using bread flour) will get you a higher rise as long as the starchy development is in the ballpark-there is a wide range of what works for that but the bread will be chewier d/t the presence of more gluten.

Doing both may get you where you want to be.

Less water changes the ratio of gluten to starchy gel but if you don't "develop" the starchy gel, the bubble walls will be weak and pop easily yielding a flatter loaf.

I hope this helps answer your question.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Sorry about the huge/weird space in the above post. I pasted from a Word document and forgot about this and also forgot how to prevent this. The edit can look worse, as I recall so that is why a new comment.

Sorry!