Help! I need a prognosis?
Hi there, I had 3 really good bakes and i think i got over confident and decided to change things up. So i promised my co workers 2 loaves of sourdough tomorrow. But i decided to feed my starter 1:2:2 instead of 1:1:1 thinking it would make it stronger. I waited for it to double before using it , just like with my original starter. With all the other factors being almost the same as my 3 good loaves, that was the only change i made. Now it's been bulking for almost 9 hours and it doesn't seem to have risen much. Did i dilute my yeast too much by feeding it a higher ratio. Is my dough toast now??? Is there not enough yeast to raise the dough? Should i dump it ? If i wait longer will it rise? Can it be salvaged? I hate to waste food. My original 3 loaves that turned out good took about 9 hrs to bulk ferment. I want to cry. I'm gonna have to buy donuts for my coworkers instead. I jinxed myself by promising them the best sourdough bread ever.
Did you give the starter time to at least double? It would take longer with 1:2:2 feed than 1:1:1.
Surprisingly, i had decided to do a little experiment. I had fed my starter 1:2:2 , had some leftover and decided to feed the rest 1:1:1 to see which one would double faster. Well, it didn't seem like there was a huge time diff for both to double. and in fact the 1:2:2 slightly more than doubled, whereas the 1:1:1 only about doubled. I'm not sure if it was an optical illusion due to the jars. I of course decided to use the 1:2:2 starter unfortunately. But the conclusion was that there didn't seem to be a huge difference. Anyway I have some hope. Last night, at almost the 11th hour, literally, my dough seem to start rising slowly upwards (it may have been expanding sideways only for the first while) by about the 12th hour since i started mixing my dough it had almost reach the 6cup marking in the vessel (that's how i gauge when it was ready with my successful loaves, waited for it to rise to the 6 cup mark). It was at 5.5c and i decided not to wait til it reached 6 c bc i wanted to go to bed. i shaped and retarded the doughs , the dough seemed a little more slack and not as jiggly , puffy and light as my previous bakes . it's 7am now and i'm preheating my oven . hopefully it turns out! Thanks for your reply. Any thoughts as to what happened in my situation would be greatly insightful
well my first loaf just came out of the oven and i made another mistake. I decided to up my initial oven temp to 500 instead of the usual 450 hoping that would improve oven spring. but i think it worked opposite. the crust hardened before the yeast could work to its full potential in the first 20min. oh well, lesson learned. just stick to what worked in the past. curious what the crumb will look like. this loaf is narrower and not as tall as before