So I've tried my hand at bread making three times now. The first time, my bread didn't really rise but I baked it anyways and it was a bread brick. The second time I tried a slightly different recipe and it still wouldn't rise so I chucked it before the baking process began. This time I tried combining the recipes and still getting loaves that are coming apart from the bottom!
I'm using a sourdough starter - I made the starter a couple weeks ago now with the simple water & flour recipe. I keep thinking maybe my starter is the problem but everything I can find online says it should be bubbly and sour smelling (which it is) plus if you put it in water it floats rather than sinking (which it does beautifully).
I've tried two recipes for bread making - the first calls for making a "sponge" which includes adding a few cups of flour to a cup of starter plus a little water and letting that rise. Well my sponge has never risen at all so I thought maybe I was just sponge impaired. I tried a recipe that calls for going straight to the kneading and skips the sponge. This rose a smidge but when I formed the dough no more rising action whatsoever and still the loaves in the oven seem to come apart and not bake correctly!
Can someone please help? My only friend that has made bread never used a sourdough starter and insists I just need to bake it with yeast....
I'll attach a photo of the loaves coming apart in the oven on the second batch - sorry it is upside down, I have no idea how that happened in the upload process! I haven't tasted them since they are still baking but I will follow up and tell the texture when they come out of the oven.
Thanks!!
The loaves are out of the oven and definitely not food... Very dense and still moist inside. I was worried there might be too much moisture but it is the exact same result as when I thought I didn't have enough!
I think my problem is 100% rising. It seems like the bread is all packed into a small space because it isn't rising at all until baking. I have tried a million things to help it rise including putting it in the warm oven with boiling water underneath!
and exact methods you are using to make these pieces of abstract art. No worries ......we will have your SD sorted out quickly
I know you said your starter is bubbly and sour smelling, but there are many different versions of bubbly . . . and not all equate to an active starter. My guess is that your starter simply is not active enough at the time you add it to your dough (assuming your dough and ambient temperatures are not too cold).
What would really help would be a picture of your starter at the moment you add it to your dough. If you take a picture right before you add it to your dough (along with noting the hydration of your starter) we'd be able to see right off if your starter is active enough for raising bread.
Cheers!
Trevor
That are easy to spot... ;-)
One is measuring ingredients by volume rather than weight. That can pose problems with inconsistency, especially with the amount of flour. If you switch to measuring by weight, fewer chances for booboos.
Two is the breads are crusting over before they've finished expanding in the oven, hence the massive tears. That's easily solved by baking under a cloche - a stock pot upturned on a baking sheet is a good temporary measure.
A good basic sourdough recipe is (by weight) 3 parts flour, 2 parts water, 1 part levain plus 2% salt (that's 2% of the weight of the flour).
Like dabrownman said, to provide better feedback, we would need to know your formulas and your methods . . . to me, it sounds like your starter is fine . . . if it's bubbly and smelling nice and floating in water, chances are the bad bacteria haven't taken over (usually that occurs about 2-5 days into the life of the sourdough) and that you have cultivated a healthy colony of yeasts and lactic acid producing beasties. Congrats !
It looks like your loaves are getting a little bit of rise in the oven, but it's uneven (hence the tearing at the bottom). The crust on one of them is really dark on top (suggesting that the crust set and hardened before it finished expanding) while the other is rather pale. In any case, the breads both look very under-baked to me, which probably explains why they're still wet in the middle. So that could be an oven/temperature problem as well. But it also looks like the loaves are a little flat, which could be a problem of gluten development, also potentially indicated by the tearing on the bottom.
Try following the formula suggested by Reynard, which is a pretty standard and failsafe one for making a good sourdough bread. 300 grams of flour, 200 grams of water, 100 grams of sourdough starter, and 6 grams of salt. Knead together for ten minutes or so. Let it rise in a warmish place for several hours, until it has blown up nicely (not necessarily doubled or tripled, but at least provided ADEQUATE evidence that yeast is at work . . . 3-6 hours, depending on the temperature -- ). Pre-shape your dough into a tight-ish but not-too-tight ball (a boule) and let rest for 20-30 minutes, until it starts to go slack again. Then shape the dough into your desired bread shape and let rise in a floured-cloth-lined basket or bowl. Just before putting it into the oven, give it some decorative shallow slashes with a very sharp knife. Put it into a 500 degree oven for 5 minutes, then lower to 480 for 5 minutes, then 450 for 20-30 more minutes until it is done.
Obviously, you will adapt to your own formulas but this is just a simple example of what you could do to produce a nice loaf.
If not, you might want to consider doing so in order to get a hands-on feeling for how dough feels and behaves at various stages when using commercial yeast, which is much more consistent. This will make your first steps along the learning curve somewhat gentler by not requiring you to do as much right away in order to get a decent loaf.
Learning the basics with yeasted bread is a good way of getting the feel of things. And as you can make a decent loaf in the matter of a few hours, there's far less of an investment in time if things do go wrong.
Besides, yeasted breads are by no means the "poor relations" of sourdough ;-) They're a whole world to explore in their own right. I suggest you have a look at the "lessons" section of this site and make use of the tutorials there. It did me the world of good when I did ;-)