I took Modernist Bread's recipe for their yeasted ciabatta and used a sourdough starter instead. My ingredients are as follows
515g Kyrol Premium High Gluten Flour (13.7-14.3% protein)100%
450g Water 87.38%
20g extra virgin olive oil 3.88%
50g sweet stiff starter (60% hydration) 9.71%
The dough was refrigerated after a short bulk ferment. I let the dough first come up to room temp before I attempted to divide them. My thought here is that the dough will proof better once it comes up to a higher temp.
When I took the dough out of my bowl to divide, the dough still had definition and puffiness. After dividing, I placed them on top of parchment paper and covered them with a towel. However, after a 20min proof, the dough look extremely flat and deflated. When I baked them, they came out more like flat breads than like ciabatta. I wonder what is causing the dough to deflate. Is it just overproofing? Does the dough need some kind of structure to support them while proofing?
Some thoughts on how to fix the issue:
1. If overproofing is the issue, then the obvious solution is to reduce bulk ferment time.
2. If the dough somehow collapsed due to lack of support, I can divide it while it is still cold so it holds its own shape better. My worry here is that it wont proof as well, but I'm not sure whether proofing is even necessary for ciabattas if I can manage to handle the dough well during dividing and transfering to the parchment papers.
3. If the cold is not enough, I can maybe add gelatin to the water so the shape holds up better. Still same issue with coldness and proofing applies.
Do you guys have any ideas on what is causing the problem here? Maybe the hydration is simply too high?
Lots of potential issues but not much info provided
- no mention of how starter amount was calculated for replacement of yeast
- no mention of starter flour type, maturity, rise
- with oil and sweet starter (enriched dough?) can retard gluten formation - no mention of kneading or mixing technique or time
- no mention of kitchen temp
- no mention of bulk fermentation time or likely temperature of dough when it went into fridge
- no mention of how long in the fridge (if dough is warm going in, it will ferment until it is cold... a short stay may only slow it a bit) this means fridge time is also bulk ferment time
- fridge coolness can mask issues by firming up dough
- no mention of amount of rise from bulk ferment
- not sure why it wouldn't be deflated, divided and shaped right out of the fridge
- no mention of shaping to deflate and build surface tension for proofing
Based on the info given it sounds like not enough bulk fermentation for an enriched dough and not enough shaping to enable proofing.
With more info someone might be able to help
I usually just rely on the puffiness and strength of the dough to determine whether the bulk ferment is done. I find keeping track of other variables to be tedious and unreliable for determining bulk ferment. For this dough I put it in the fridge early and let the bulk ferment complete (according to my senses) out of the fridge.
Starter flour type is the same flour I use for my bread. I used a sweet starter mainly to reduce the acidity.
For kneading/mixing:
1. I autolyse the flour with all the water 1h
2. Add starter and mixing with Rubaud method for 3min.
3. Rest 30min, then add salt and mixing with Rubaud for 3min
4. Rest 30min, add olive oil and mix with Rubaud for 4-5min.
5. Rest 30min, do 4 coil folds with 30min in between.
The dough did not collapse during bulk ferment and had comparable jiggliness to my more successful 80% hydration white doughs.
With regards to shaping, I thought ciabatta is usually not shaped? Every baker I watched on youtube always divide it and let it proof unshaped.
I would guess way underfermented. I make several recipes that do the bulk of their fermentation in the fridge…but without exception, they use fairly large doses of active dry yeast. Using only levain, I would expect a moderately long (2-3 hours) countertop bulk before retarding. I would also tend to use 3-4 times as much levain as you, though a longer pre-fridge bulk would probably work as well.
In my ciabatta experience, with or without pre-ferments, I’ll use 1.3% +/- ADY yeast, which works crazy good. 1.5-2 hour bulk, then size/shape and 45 minutes to load and bake! As close to instant bread as it gets. Never really been tempted to try levain only ciabatta since this works so well.
The Perfect Loaf guy did an article on levain only ciabatta a while back. Might want to check out his process.
Good luck,
Phil
Thx. I don't think it is underfermented as the loaf had a similar amount of jiggliness to my more successful high hydration doughs. This is the reason why I felt it might have collapsed during proofing.
~90% hydration or more is really high for ciabatta, but it can and has been done. perhaps if this is new territory for you, start with lower hydration and work up from there.
90% is "pa de vidre" (pan de cristal or glass bread) territory which is quite hard to avoid a flat profile. Take a look at JoyRideCoffee's video and another of his where he defies the laws of gravity. My 95% hydration levain based take on it also has loft.
Both examples below are 79% overall hydration levain based ciabatta breads, the first with 125% hydration levain, the second with 75%. The first is actually 79% including the 3% olive oil. They have the loft that I think you are looking for. Also, can't disagree with Maurizio's take on The Perfect Loaf.
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/59348/125-hydration-levain-ciabatta-76-overall-hydration
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/69449/ciabatta-how-many-things-can-i-change-once
I generally use King Arthur AP flour which has a protein of under 12%, so you don't need to go higher to achieve loft.
Having never added it to dough myself, I'd suggest against gelatin as an ingredient, you can get the loft without it. But ciabatta itself was invented by experimentation so, I guess, why not. However, ciabatta is a simple bread, and keeping it as "pure" as possible may be best without relying on foreign ingredients. Skill and practice should suit you better.
Hi alfanso. I have made a 80% levain ciabatta and a 85% biga ciabatta, so 87% hydration sourdough is the highest I have gone but it is not competely new territory. I have watched JoyRideCoffee's Pan de Cristal videos and his method for developing dough strength was the inspiration for my method of making this ciabatta.
One question I have for the two videos you linked is why did Joy Ride Coffee mix all the water at once for his 100% hydration bread video, but only mixed 87% of the water for his 106% hydration video and upped the hydration via bassinage. From my experience bassinage didn't have any noticeable possible effect for handmixing, so do you think he forwent it his new video?
For the ciabattas that you made, I am wondering why your way of mixing the dough in your mixer resulted in a tighter crumb? I have only ever made low hydration enriched doughs with a mixer, so am I not aware of how different mixing methods will affect the crumb structure.
Thanks.
JoyRide's reason? You may well be right about the difficulty of bassinage, but as his videos are without his own commentary one can never know.
My own experience has been to bassinage by hand, and with what I'd consider success. An example being the Bouabsa dough at 75%, where as much as 15% of the water can be held back to allow the flour to hydrate first. With few exceptions, like ciabatta and enriched doughs, I don't use a mixer. When a formula calls for more than ~70% hydration I'll often bassinage by hand. As most of the dough I make is mainly AP flour the uptake of water gets more difficult at the higher hydrations, and so I believe that post-autolyse bassinage is a good thing, even by hand.
If you are referring to the most recent post days ago, I'm certain that the gluten was overdeveloped. Due to the long retardation of both the levain and the autolysed F&W, by the time I was done with French Folds and the dough began mechanical mixing, it was quite close to developed, but still way too cold to ever come up to anything approaching ambient temp. I had to resort to a heating pad under the fermenting tub along with a much longer Bulk Ferment. Did either of those also contribute? IDK.
My M.O. has been to judge the completion of this dough by the slapping sounds and uptake/drop of the dough off the mixer's J-hook. You can see what I mean in the first two minutes of this video. By the time I was satisfied that happened, it was likely on the too late side. But that is only a guess as to why the crumb was tight for this style bread. Especially in light of the fact that it still obtained similar oven spring to more open crumb ciabatta I've baked.