Frequent Flyer's blog

Sourdough Fermentation Data

We all know that all other factors being the same, the more sourdough starter in the dough, the faster the rise during bulk fermentation.

 Since your starter may resemble dough (60 to 70% hydration), others may use a liquid starter (200%+ hydration), and mine is the consistency of mashed potatoes (100% hydration), The percent of flour used in the starter (as percent of total flour) is unaffected by hydration. This is a concept I’ve seen in print somewhere and one I find very useful.

For fun, I sifted some whole wheat flour that I had ground to see how the dough behaves (more like white flour or more like whole wheat).  I liked the result and used most of the removed bran to coat the rolls with all over.  Taste and crumb were very good.  I chose to make rolls to maximize the amount of bran that could coat the bread.

Just for giggles and pure laziness, I didn't knead the Japanese Milk Bread this time - just a few stretches and folds like it was an artisan bread.  The dough was sticky and I just placed it into a loaf pan for sandwich bread.  

The water roux (1 part flour to 5 parts water) was 20% of the total dough and I used all purpose unbleached flour instead of the usual bread flour.

flour              100%

Water             33%

Milk                33%

I've used Reinhart's Portuguese Sweet Bread recipe to make Hawaiian Rolls for a friend on a couple of occasions.  I modify the recipe in his Bread Baker's Apprentice book to use a poolish at 100% hydration and to include more flour as I find this recipe very sticky for some reason.  The original recipe's overall hydration is not that high, but maybe I screwed up the measurements somewhat.  Next time I may try Floyd's Hawaiian Rolls recipe which is similar but includes pineapple juice.

It's been a year or more since I've made Jason's Quick Ciabatta recipe, so I made a variation first and followed the next day with his standard recipe.

For the variation, I mixed Jason's standard 95% hydration dough until it started to climb the mixer paddle.  At that time I added enough flour to make a 75% hydrated dough and retarded it overnight in the fridge. The next day, I shaped, proofed and baked the loaves.

....or my "tinkered with" version.  I love Eric's bread but needed to refrigerate the dough for time sake and chose to do that after shaping.  I shaped two loaves (used 1/2 recipe), placed in a couche, covered with oil sprayed plastic and refrigerated immediately.  The next morning I removed the loaves, placed on the counter while the oven preheated (about 30 to 45 minutes) and baked on a stone with steam for 12 minutes.  I rotated the loaves, and baked (I guess) another 30 minutes at 375F.