Hi All - newbie here to the site and baking in general. I picked up the Flour + Water + Salt + Yeast book by Ken Forkish and am trying to work my way through the recipes. The first recipe for the Saturday White Bread was a success so I moved onto the Overnight White Bread and the dough seem incredibly wet - especially when compared to the previous recipe. The dough is proofing right now, but I don't have high hopes for it. The dough is viscous and didn't hold its sharp - during the initial folding phase or the shaping. It did rise overnight to about 2x/3x so that's good! Is that the way it's supposed to be or did something go wrong? I'm thinking the latter. Any advise would be great! Thanks!!
Here are the ingredients I used:
- All Purpose White Flour: 1000g
- Water 780g @93 Degree F
- Sea salt 22g
- Instant dried yeast 0.8g
The avg temp of my kitchen was ~70 degrees F
The avg humidity was about 61%
its a high hydration dough. Handling is more difficult but it should work. Dies the recipe call for kneading? A good knead when you combine the ingredients should develop enough gluten so that it holds a bit.
In case it doesn’t hold any shape, if you bake in a hot vessel (dutch oven or the likes) it will work fine. Not pretty buy fine otherwise.
That seems like a very high hydration recipe to me, especially given the very warm water temp, both of which would add the 'soupy' nature of that dough. I usually bake 500g flour weight doughs with no more than 370g warm water (around 75F), and those are tough to handle from a shaping standpoint. I know more advanced bakers can handle the higher hydration, but I've stepped away from the super wet doughs and am happier with bread I can handle more successfully.
Many S&Fs and coil folds early in your fermentation process would likely be very necessary and/or some Ribaud folding, all with wet hands and wrists, to build up any gluten, as any attempt at traditional kneading could be disastrous. Were you able to get to a windowpane stage by the last S&F/coil? That will tell you whether you've built up enough gluten structure or not.
I agree with the other poster...you might just need to dump that dough into a DO and see what happens. It might not be pretty, but it might be tasty! Who knows...maybe the overnight cold proof will help hold it all together when it comes time for scoring. I ran across this video the other day, which might have some helpful info regarding sticky dough. Let us know how it turns out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSnAjDJy_4s
Wow - I came looking for a forum just like this because i have exactly the same problem. I've been following the FWSY Saturday overnight bread recipe for the last 3 weeks (once a week). I'm following the darn thing to the letter, but my dough just doesn't look at all like the pics. If i'm being honest its a congealed mess when I 'pour' it into the dutch oven.
It definitely rises 300% (perhaps even a bit more) but cannot hold any shape. The proofing is a bit of a joke - if I put my finger in as suggested in the book, i'd lose it.
Here's the thing - the loaves do come out really nice, really tasty though i think they are a bit on the chewy side. The only thing i can think of is that i need to leave it in the tub for longer before cutting and shaping. I've tried leaving it in there for 13 hours. The book says 12-14 but the main guide seems to be volume.
Any ideas/thoughts?
Thanks!
Loafin' Oaf
I'm having this same issue with his breads. I just did an Overnight Country Brown and it was absolutely impossible to shape. I ended up dumping it into the proofing baskets.
I also just baked two loaves off the same batch, one had great oven spring the other just fell flat. I have no idea why.