I have some delicious white stoneground flour, that occasionally makes an amazingly tasty sourdough loaf. However, more often than not, I am running into a weird problem...
I use little water, 60 to 65% hydration, or 300ml water for 500g of flour, and 20g of starter.
When I first add the water, the dough is pretty easy to build a gluten structure. However, it doesn't want to rise, and instead just goes runny.
This flour makes decent normal bread in the breadmaker at 70% hydration, and the starter makes decent sourdough with wholemeal flour, so what am I doing wrong?!!
When it goes right, the white sourdough is delicious, but I'd like to improve the consistency in my results...
Are you building a levain or sponge with the starter before getting into making the main dough?
20g is not a lot of sourdough culture. What is your method of putting the dough together? Then maybe we can help more.
I add the water to the starter and mix thoroughly. I then add the flour and mix and knead until I have good gluten strength.
hi. Sorry, still not clear to me how you are doing this. Are you first making a levain with that 20g starter? (About 140-200g for a dough using 500g flour) And then building your bread? Also, my experience letting bulk fermentation go longer than 6-8 hrs results in too acidic of dough and the gluten bonds start breaking down to goopy mess, which means game over, make racker bread with it. That’s why a cold (4C) retard is done to slow the bacteria from making too much acid. If your fermentation is warm, that happens quicker. If you go 24 hrs it’s guaranteed.
Is it a high protein content flour (13-14%) or more an AP? How soon during the bulk fermentation does it go ‘runny’?
You say ‘white’ stoneground, so I’m guessing you don’t have issue with high bran content tearing your gluten network, but if there is bran at 60-65% hydration, are you sure it’s hydrated enough and gluten network really forms? Within container of bread maker, given enough gas formation, you’ll get enough rise.
I don't know the protein content, but as the same process works so much better with wholemeal, I am assuming very little?
I let it rise for 24 hours in the warm, and it does rise a very small amount, but trying to build the gluten again seems instead to make it break down, so that continued fermentation just sees bubbles coming to the surface.
The small amount indication-rise dough doesn't seem to lose its strength as much (I obviously don't re knead that, so its treatment is slightly different)
People make good sourdough loaves with all-purpose flour with about 9% protein, so that’s probably not it.
Could you explain your steps for preparing the levain, please? Quantities of flour and water for the levain, the time you let it work before mixing the bread dough, amount of time total from mixing dough to finish folds, end of bulk rise, and done shaping and proving before the bake, and if you do any cold retard before bake?