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Sourdough: Documenting the experiment


glennbech

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Over the last few days, after completing a starter I'm happy with, I've been experimenting with sourdough baking. I guess I make a lot of the beginner mistakes, before finding a routine that works.

Inspired by this excellent forum, and this thread in particular ; http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=27634 I'm making another atempt, all will document it here and hope for some feedback.

In the mean time, I can tell you all about what went from at my last atempt, finished about 60 minutes ago.

- To counter the "pancake effect" on wet dough (mine was at 70%), I've read that it can be smart to throw in a glass or so of water on a cast iron pan or something to provide steam and better heat transfer during the first few minutes. This is said to help developing the crust.

Since I don't have room for pizza baking stone, cast iron pan AND bread in my electric oven, I used my turbo fan for a couple of minutes instead..... BIG Mistake !! :-)

After 20 minutes I had to take it out of the oven. It was turning black and burnt!

The botton, resting on the pizza stone, was turning into black carbon. And the top were also turning darker and darker. 40 minutes, and It would have been a black heap of coal :-)

Anyway.. I ended up with a bread that looks real good, a bit on the "over finished" side, but with an apealing a nice and airy crumb. Taste wise however... This is a disaster! The crust tastes burned, and the crumb is not baked 100%, so it "swells" in your mouth when you eat it.

My guess is that all this is the turbo-fan's fault. I swear to never to that again .-)

Edit:

After posting, I noticed that there Was a Q/A Thread fro the tutorial, with posts from 2006. Admins, feel free to move my post at will .-)

Edited by glennbech (log)
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Welcome to the wonderful world of sourdough and bread baking.

a) If the dough is that wet you need to support it in a battenton (linen lined basket) during proof. You might find it easier if you scale down the water a bit, to say 65% or so.

b) The effect of the steam is to gelatanise the outside to give a shiny crisp crust. Oven spring is governed by many thing, one which is not to overprove the bread, but also by the rate of heat transfer, especially bottom heat. Thats why putting the bread in direct contact with the hot stone helps - bread dough is a bit like a souffle, you are trying to make the gas and steam expand before it cooks and sets.

Edited by jackal10 (log)
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Welcome to the wonderful world of sourdough and bread baking.

a) If the dough is that wet you need to support it in a battenton (linen lined basket) during proof. You might find it easier if you scale down the water a bit, to say 65% or so.

b) The effect of the steam is to gelatanise the outside to give a shiny crisp crust. Oven spring is governed by many thing, one which is not to overprove the bread, but also by the rate of heat transfer, especially bottom heat. Thats why putting the bread in direct contact with the hot stone helps - bread dough is a bit like a souffle, you are trying to make the gas and steam expand before it cooks and sets.

a)I improvised a battenton with a basket and a linnen cloth. The dough started to fall down and spread outwards the moment I took it out of it.

I guess the Idea is to work fast then ?

The original Recipe I worked with sait absolutely nothing about support for a rustique bread with 72% water. Book authors should really try their recipes. I ended up with a pancake the size of my baking stone 1 cm thick :-)

b) I have a pizza stone, heat my electric oven to max (250c), and put the stone on the floor of the oven. I let the stone heat for 45-60 minutes. I guess this aproach is ok ?

By the way jackal10; I saw that you had made some kind of makeshift shovel for plywood or something to insert baguettes into your oven (Not sure what the proper english word for that is).... I saw the picture in the baguette demo thread.

I got Inspired and made my one from oak. A bit heavy, but works like a charm .-)

http://www.glennbech.com/2006/04/making-sh...ting-pizza.html

Edited by glennbech (log)
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Welcome to the wonderful world of sourdough and bread baking.

a) If the dough is that wet you need to support it in a battenton (linen lined basket) during proof. You might find it easier if you scale down the water a bit, to say 65% or so.

b) The effect of the steam is to gelatanise the outside to give a shiny crisp crust. Oven spring is governed by many thing, one which is not to overprove the bread, but also by the rate of heat transfer, especially bottom heat. Thats why putting the bread in direct contact with the hot stone helps - bread dough is a bit like a souffle, you are trying to make the gas and steam expand before it cooks and sets.

a)I improvised a battenton with a basket and a linnen cloth. The dough started to fall down and spread outwards the moment I took it out of it.

I guess the Idea is to work fast then ?

The original Recipe I worked with sait absolutely nothing about support for a rustique bread with 72% water. Book authors should really try their recipes. I ended up with a pancake the size of my baking stone 1 cm thick :-)

b) I have a pizza stone, heat my electric oven to max (250c), and put the stone on the floor of the oven. I let the stone heat for 45-60 minutes. I guess this aproach is ok ?

By the way jackal10; I saw that you had made some kind of makeshift shovel for plywood or something to insert baguettes into your oven (Not sure what the proper english word for that is).... I saw the picture in the baguette demo thread.

It's called a peel. Here's what a commercial peel looks like. They come in different sizes. I love your blog .. and that shovel! :biggrin:

Ilene

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This is what my schedule have been so far today....

12.00 Preferment time

I mix this into a glass bowl, and try to make my kitchen 30 degrees c.

230 g of lukewarm water

230 g of flour

114 g of sourdoug starter (57g water/57g flour)

Please note that I the eGullet tutorial state to use equal amounts of starter, water and flour in the refreshment phase. That would have emptied my Jar completely. I used about half of my starter in the pre-ferment. To compensate for this, I guessed that a couple of more hours in 30 c would do the suffice. Im not quite sure on this point. If anyone could shed some light, i'd be glad!

I also made sure to increase the size of my starter. So I now have more next time.

This is how it looks like after 5 hours. Nice and bubbely!

preferment.jpg

19:00 Dough time ...

The refreshed starter from 12.00

413 grams of flour

190 grams of water

This gives me a total hydration of about 68% (total water to total flour ratio).

I have a Kenwood Kitchen machine, and used it to mix the dough. I let the machine work for about 10-15 minutes on the dough, and added the water a little at a time.

After 10-15 minutes I have a real sticky dough. Actually, I've never experienced wheat flour this sticky before! The gluten is also highly developed, and I can easily do the "window test" .

I kept the bown with the dough in room temperature covered with plastic.

eltekrok.jpg

20:00 Turning the dough

The dough is rising a lot ! I tried to handle the dough with only oiling my hands and my work surface, but I had to add a couple of handfulls of flour after a while, as the dough were sticking to absolutely everything.

At this time I added the salt. (10g, or ~ 2.1%)

It was quite hard not to knead all the air out of the dough, and mixing in the salt at the same time.

post-rise.jpg

22:30 Shaping and Putting it back in the fridge

It's very funny, I've never seen a sourdough (Since Im a beginner at this) rise like this ! It's incredible! I lost a bit of volume at 20.00, turning the dough. Now it's right back up, or higher!

post-rise2.jpg

I put it in the fridge so that I can bake it for breakfast tomorrow morning. I'll post pictures of the finished result then!

Edited by glennbech (log)
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It's very funny, I've never seen a sourdough (Since Im a beginner at this) rise like this ! It's incredible! I lost a bit of volume at 20.00, turning the dough. Now it's right back up, or higher!

LOL, oh yes, I'm absolutely thrilled to see the bubbles in my sourdough each time, and seeing it GROW...so much so I tend to overprove.

Can't wait to see your finished loaf!

TPcal!

Food Pix (plus others)

Please take pictures of all the food you get to try (and if you can, the food at the next tables)............................Dejah

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My Experiment is now complete. Every step along the way documented, and I now have a baseline to experiment furhter on. Mission accomplished!

Here was today's program.

09.00 Baking

I put my pizza stone in the bottom of my electric oven, and preheated to 230 c for 45 minutes. I took the shaped breads out of the fridge, flipped my improvised bantenton onto my hand crafted peel Im proud of this one. Big Ugly Heavy thing. But I did make it!

After 40 mintutes. I took the bread out. It looks like this ;

finished-all.jpg

Results and reflection/conclusion

- I cannot trust my electric oven. The Breads were not done in 40 minutes. Since this is my first experiences, I was unsure exactly how long to leave them in there.

I took one out, and left one in there.

- I should have added some steam to the oven, for example by putting a cup of water in the oven with the bread in the beginning. I have gotten better crust earlier doing this. From now on, I wil always do that.

- I damaged the loaves when taking them out of the plastic bag they had been resting in overnight. (In the fridge). The dough were sticking to the plastic bag, and I lost some air when I peeled removed the bag.

- For some strange reason, I didn't get much oven spring. However, the dough fermented real well during bulk fermentation yesterday (20.00 - 22.30). Even in the fridge. maybe shorter fermentation period would have given me more oven spring ?

- My goal was 68% water in the comple dough. I however, suspect that my actual percentage is closer to 65 as I absolutely HAD to add a few fistfulls of flour to handle it during the fermentation (I took it out of the bowl, flipped it, folded it and put it back in the baking bowl).

- I was aiming for more air pockets in the texture. I'll try to get more oven spring next time.

- I believe the fact that I let my kitchen machine work with the dough for 10-15 minutes (5-6 minites more than I usual do) had a positive effect.

- The bread tasted ok, but nothing extraordinary :-) I'll keep working on my process. Vary fermentation times, sponge size, hydration levels until I get this perfect .-)

I guess I also need to go to a decent artisan bakery and see, and taste how a real sourdough bread looks like. It's been a while since my last visit .-)

Edited by glennbech (log)
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