Advice why my bread gets like this all the time?

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Lenko on 4 Apr 2020 at 23:28

Hi All! I am trying to improve my bread game and I think I hit a dead end. 

 

So my recipe:

120g levain (100% hydration, 50/50 white bread and whole wheat breat flour)

350g whole wheat bread flour (in this case I use wholemeal spelt but I have same results with wheat or einkorn as well)

150g white strong bread flour

375g water (75% hydration)

12g salt

 

What I do:

1. Mix water (minus 20g), levain, flour and leave for 30min to autolyse

2. Add 20g of remaining water, salt and knead it for 5-10 minutes.

3. 3x stretches and folds every 20 minutes. 

4. Leave to bulk fermet in the oven with light on until it rises to app. 50%

5. Bench rest for 10 minutes

6. Shape it to benneton and leave in the fridge overnight (usually 10 hours or so). 

7. Take it out of fridge app. 15 minutes before the baking, scoring. 

8. Baking it covered with stainless steel bowl (I don't have dutch oven big enough) for 240C for 20 minutes, then 200C for another 20. Tried also 30/10min, still the same result.

I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Bread is tasty and crumb is very light. I had similar result with the white bread only or 50% wholemeal. I really improved my shaping lately but it still goes to the sides instead of having good oven spring. 

Can someone please advise me? 

 

Thank you

 

Have you tried flipping the amounts of Wholewheat and bread flour. Your recipe is ~68% Wholewheat which makes it on the heavy side. Start with a smaller percentage such as 25 to 30% and see what happens. 
Your dough could also be overproofed depending on how warm your fridge is. I keep mine at about 38F. 
I also wondered about gluten development, but if you are kneading for ten minutes and doing folds, you should be okay. Maybe space those folds out a bit and make sure that your dough is well rounded and strong after your last set. If not, do another one. 

Here is how I do my final shaping..,

  1. Do a final shape by flipping the rounds over on a lightly floured counter. Gently stretch the dough out into a circle. Pull and fold the third of the dough closest to you over the middle. Pull the right side and fold over the middle and do the same to the left. Fold the top end to the center patting out any cavities or big bubbles. Finally stretch the two top corners and fold over each other in the middle. Roll the bottom of the dough away from you until the seam is underneath the dough. Cup your hands around the dough and pull towards you, doing this on all sides of the dough to round it off. Finally spin the dough to make as tight boule as you can.

A heck of a lot better! There are tricks to use larger percentages of wholegrain flour. One of them is to sift out the bran, feed your levain with it so the acid in the levain softens the bran and it won’t cut your gluten strands so much. 
Personally, I’ve stopped doing that since I’ve gone to using a mixer. I mix on speed two of the machine for 10 minutes and then do my folds. I get better gluten development than when i did it by hand. Mind you, i usually make 4 batches of 3 loaves each so it was quite tiring to do all that.
I also stick to around 40% whole grain although I have made loaves with 50%. The 50% loaves were straight flour (I usually have a bunch of other stuff in my breads). 

Hopefully this helps!

Your autolyse! Just mix the flour with the water and leave it for two hours. You will be amazed at how nice the dough will feel. Then add your levain, salt and extra water. I bet that will make a big difference in the strength if your dough. 

Thank you so much for advice. I will lower my wholemeal flour next time and see what happens with my improved shaping. 

Even though it looks awful, taste is so good we eat it in a day anyway. But of course I want it to look good as well ?