Hello, i am new to sourdough baking and to the forum, any advice welcomed!
This is using a rye starter with a mix of strong white and plain white wheat flours. I followed a recipe in Bread Matters, but changed the 3-5 hour proof in room temp to a 12 hour proof in a cool room.
The flavour is great, the texture is OK and I like the holes, but it's very flat. It didn't rise much in the proofing basket, and just kindof flopped out onto the baking tray. Possibly the dough was too wet?
Thanks! Lucy
Is needed before anyone can offer any advice. When you swapped a recommended 3-5hour proofing (hope you mean bulk proofing) to 12 hours you may very well have completely misjudged the timing according to temperature.
Just looked up bread matters recipe. Interesting.
1. Create pre-ferment
2. Form dough with levain from step 1.
3. Knead
4. Shape into basket
5. Proof for 3-4 hours (so you were talking about final proofing as there is no bulk proof in this recipe)
6. Bake
You increased the final proofing to 12 hours just in a cool room. Well unless cool enough (like a fridge) you'll probably over proof. If it doesn't fit into your schedule you'd probably have been better off refrigerating.
The active starter in the recipe is 300g and the flour added is 400g. That is a very high ratio and will proof quickly.
For others to comment and advise i'll post the recipe below...
B. Making a wheat Production Sourdough [PS] or ‘Production Leaven’
80 g Sourdough Starter (e.g. rye starter from above) *
200 g Wholemeal wheat flour
100 g Water (at about 35°C)
380 g Total
* That should leave about 20 grams of pure rye starter. Keep these 20 grams in the fridge until you want to make more rye bread or refresh it now to be sure of having enough in the fridge when you next need it. Mix everything together into a soft dough. Cover and leave in a warm place for 4 hours or until it has roughly doubled in volume. Then use this Production Sourdough to make your final dough. C. Wheat Bread Dough 300 g Refreshed Production Sourdough** 400 g Wheat flour (wholemeal, white or a mixture) 8 g Sea Salt 300 g Water (at about 30°C) 1008 g Total
** You will be left with about 80 g of Production Sourdough which is a hybrid of wheat and rye. Keep this in the fridge in a separate tub until you next refresh it to make bread, or add it into the remains of your rye starter, but remember that this will no longer be pure rye.
Method
Make a dough with all the ingredients except the refreshed PS. Knead until the gluten is showing good signs of development. Then add the refreshed PS and continue kneading for a few more minutes. At the end of kneading the dough should be soft and stretchy and coming away from your hands, but it should not be so firm that it doesn’t stick to the worktop if left for a few seconds. Dust a proving basket with brown rice flour (or wholemeal wheat flour). Form your dough piece into a rough round and, keeping the tucks uppermost, dip the dough in a bowl (or puddle) of the same flour so that at least the bottom half of the dough is covered in flour. Place it in your floured basket and flick a little more flour on any surfaces that might get stuck to the basket. Cover loosely with a polythene bag and leave to prove in a draught-free place for 3-4 hours. When you tip the proved dough out of its basket on to a baking tray or peel (a baker’s flat shovel for sliding loaves into the oven), mark it with whatever cuts take your fancy. Bake in a fairly hot oven to develop a really good crust. Alternatively, mould the dough piece up tightly and put it in a baking tin (or two small ones), aiming to fill the tin(s) about half full. Cover and prove until the dough is nearing the top of the tin or is beginning to feel a little fragile when gently pressed with a flat finger. Bake in an oven that is pre-heated to 230°C (or as hot as the controls indicate) for ten minutes, then lower the temperature to 210°C and continue to bake for about 30 minutes. The loaf should have a firm deep crust which cannot easily be depressed. This will gradually soften as the loaf cools and the moisture in the internal crumb migrates to the surface.
I did almost the same thing as you, Lucy; just baked it this morning. I used the same recipe, the only difference is that I use 80g of rye flour instead of some of the wholemeal wheat flour, and did a bulk ferment overnight (12 hours), then a proof for 1 1/2 hours, and baked in a Dutch oven. My kitchen is very cold (maybe 8C?), so I left it on the work surface as an experiment, I got pretty much the same result as you, with a flatter loaf than I normally get with a shorter bulk ferment at about 22C.
I will try it in the fridge next time, or maybe reduce the amount of active starter.
I'll see if I can post a photo in a minute.
Today's overnight version:
You've got a good crumb there just lack of oven spring. I'm having trouble with lack of oven spring at the moment. I'm going to start hand kneading for a bit longer (about 10 minutes) before proceeding onto stretch and folds with rests.
I generally do a smaller proportion of starter than in the recipe you just followed which gives more time and I do a bulk fermentation then knock down, shape and a final proof.
Going straight into a final proof is not something I do.
You'd benefit from more kneading... shaping, keeping it out at room temperature for about and hour then refrigerating. Then bake straight from the fridge next morning. Test it before baking though if it needs a little longer then you can always finish off the proofing when you take it out of the fridge.
...near enough with shorter ferment:
I haven't. I'm getting there but I still need to develop the gluten more!
Now I have time on my side which helps. You go straight into final proofing so you only rely on kneading. Make sure you're kneading enough.
I actually almost made a new thread about Andrew Whitley's sourdough method just this past weekend. I don't have Bread Matters, but my sister-in-law gave me Whitley's Do Sourdough (which is part of a sort of hipper UK version of of our U.S. "For Dummies" series) over the holidays.
It seems that he presents a similar method in both books:
1) Creation of a "production sourdough," which is what I would call a leaven/levain
2) Mixing of a "soaker" of the flour and water that will be incorporated into the production sourdough (different from the use of "soaker" I see in other recipes, which usually refers to the softening of hardy grains--this seems more like the "autolyse" phase of flour and water in other SD recipes?)
3) Combining of "production sourdough" with "soaker," and minimal mixing/kneading
4) Immediate shaping
5) Proofing for 4-5 hours before baking
It really does seem that Whitley entirely skips the first/bulk fermentation phase! I have a hard time with this, because (as AbeNW11 sort of suggested) it seems to rely so fully on that short mixing time for gluten development. I have become really attached to a bulk fermentation phase that incorporates at least 4 quarter-turns of stretch-and-folds over the course of 2 hours...I can't imagine getting a comparable result in texture or flavor without a full first fermentation.
Sorry to digress from the original subject of the thread, but I do think that this is related: Part of your problem might be the seeming elimination of the first fermentation process of the final dough! Any thoughts on the Whitley method are welcome.
looks like it got baked before the dough was done with a bulk rise. The yeast were just getting into to cranking out gas.
You mention the flavour was "great" can you be more specific? Was it sour? if so... then I would be thinking about boosting the starter before the next loaf and feeding the rye starter a little wheat mixed into the rye flour food. Let the starter reach maximal expansion (poking the top every so often) and letting the starter fall a little before feeding again.
A few days of careful feeding and rising to peak should help build the yeast numbers. Tell us more about the starter.
Mini