Sourdough Bread Troubleshooting (Part 1)

[Sunny Simmons Steincamp]

I'm no photo expert, either, but I've been doing a lot of food photography since I started a cooking blog. One thing I only discovered recently is that my camera (a Fuji Finepix, can't really remember the model number at this moment) has a close up feature. There's a button you can press that takes it to one of two settings, for shots as close as an inch away from the subject! That cleared up my blurring problem to a huge degree right there.

The other thing I found is that lighting is far more important that I'd ever realized from just taking pictures of family & stuff. I had to take out the energy saver bulbs (flourescents) and replace them with high wattage incandescents in a stand lamp to get that taken care of. Of course, it's a pain to drag that into my kitchen every time I want to snap a photo of something I'm doing, so I don't always do it, but it makes a huge difference when I *do* go to that trouble.

One more thing... if you have Photoshop or Paintshop Pro, you can tweak & play with the images even further.

That being said... I'm glad you posted this. I've been meaning to make a new starter for a while, and keep getting sidetracked. When we moved to our new home two years ago, I discovered that whatever strain of wild yeasties we have out here makes WONDERFUL tasting bread! That's one of the things that makes sourdough so interesting and fun, in my book... the differences in flavor you can wind up with.

[DanielBerman]

Thanks! My starter jar is always gloopy - it didn't feel honest to clean it up

Lighting is clearly going to a problem - we have little natural light in our kitchen, none direct - which actually makes quite a nice environment during the day - so long as you have a tripod. But at night... the photos need a lot of 'white balancing' - if your camera takes 'RAW' format pics you can do all that yourself (and maybe cut out the need for changes of bulbs - but I need to be more consistent - the dough below seems to change colour!

anyway, on to the bread...

After about 8 hours, the starter has started to bubble - not wildly, but enough.

I pour out the starter - weighed out to 200g - it gives me a chance to see how fluid the starter is, which gives me a feeling as to whether i will need more or less water.

Adding flour (450g strong white & 50g rye) and 1 tsp of salt, i mix them up to a rough dough

Then, using Dan's approach, i give a series of short kneads - 10-15 seconds - spaced 10 mins, then 30, then 1 hr...

After 10 mins

After 1 hour & 4 mini-kneads

Now its going into the fridge for a (probably longer than ideal) retardation - because bed is calling... Its tacky but not sticky, and slumps nicely in the bowl. Hopefully it will be hydrated enough to give a nice open texture...

Edited November 28, 2006 by DanielBerman (log)

[DanielBerman]

Well, as usual, my baking run lasted late into the night - and i got more excited about the bread than about the photography... But here goes...

The dough got a good 12 hours in the fridge - and came out relaxed, but with very little fermentation (pain a l'ancienne anyone...)

It made a good windowpane, and was left to rise for about 6 hours.... giving a lovely soft, wet-ish dough - but still quite manageable. It needed a pastry cutter dipped in water to separate it into two parts - one for a long banneton, one for a round one.

Making sure not to degas too much, I made a rough batard and a boule, and put them into well floured bannetons (actually maybe not well enough as the batard stuck coming out...) This photo is horrible - think I must have been quite distracted!

They proved nicely, nearly doubleing within about two hours. I flipped them out and slashed them

They were baked on an oven stone, at 470F initially (as hot as I can get my oven), with a small cup of water thrown into a hot pan underneath. Reduced to about 400 after 10 mins - about 35 mins overall - I took them out when the internal temp was 205F

Boule

Batard - Cut

Very pleased with these - the texture is nice and open, but still substantial. There's a lovely thick crust, which tastes really toasty, and a pleasant but not overpowering sourdough tang. As the flour mix was 10% rye there is a nice hint of the rye, and the bread feels a little less refined.

Best of all, my almost-three-year-old son come back from creche yesterday and asked for some of Daddy's bread for his treat!

[glennbech]

Excellent pictorial! I will have to get some of those bannetons right now ! :-)

About the bannetons; Where did you get yours? Are you happy with them?

[danlepard]

Your bread looks really good. It's quite amazing really, thinking that you've taken it from this:

to this:

Now if only we could get the high street bakers around the UK to do the same.

Dan

[DanielBerman]

Your bread looks really good. It's quite amazing really, thinking that you've taken it from this:

to this:

Now if only we could get the high street bakers around the UK to do the same.

Dan

←

Thanks dan Every time I bake it gives me a thrill...

BTW - I baked your currant and cassis loaf last week - it was delicious.

[DanielBerman]

Excellent pictorial! I will have to get some of those bannetons right now ! :-)

About the bannetons; Where did you get yours? Are you happy with them?

←

thanks glenn - I'm looking for some record of where I got them - when i dig it up I'll let you know. I love baking with them - money well spent.

dan

[fanny_the_fairy]

Batard - Cut

Wow Daniel the bread looks amzing. I must try it over the week end.

And the picture is great too - very sharp and a nice colour balance.

- fanny

[jackal10]

http://www.brotformen.de/

[snowangel]

I'll know tomorrow when I bake, but it appears that I may have finally achieved success with my sourdough starter. I'm starting with some basic loaves (I've been using BBA for advice).

But, next on the docket (per the kids) is sourdough English Muffins. My barm is fairly thick, and I'm looking for some ideas on proportion of flour to barn to water.

[aguynamedrobert]

That's great you are doing your own starter...I haven't done that since school. The one thing interesting about that is that with sour dough your bread will taste different in different spots that you make it due to the bacteria and yeast that is in the area...how long have you been making your own starter for?

Robert

Chocolate Forum

[Fromartz]

I posted an excel spreadsheet of a calculator for people who like to make sourdough bread. It works in grams but it also automatically converts to ounces. Check it out and offer any improvements. I couldn't figure out how to post it on eGullet so posted it here. Sourdough calculator

It's pretty self-explanatory, you need to enter the weight of your starter, the percent of starter in the final dough, its hydration (in baker's percentage), the hydration of the dough you want to make (in baker's percentage), and percentage of salt (which may differ depending on salt you use).

The calculator then tells you how much water, flour and salt to add to the starter to make the dough.

Thanks to the original too http://samartha.net/SD/SDcalc04.html, where I got the idea, but his does not convert to ounces.

[Niamh]

Hello Everyone,

Well, for my first ever post in Egullet I would have hoped to start with something more cheery, but unfortunately, it's been a bad day for breadmaking...

I tried my first ever breadmaking attempt today, using the Castilian Sourdough recipe from "The Foods of Spain and Portugal" by Luard. Suffice to say it didn't work out, but what I am looking for are specifics on the smell of the starter. Luard doesn't mention, but other things I have read say it should smell "fresh". Mine smelt earthy, but I went ahead and used it, not sure what fresh smells like and thinking that I would know as soon as I tasted if that wasn't right. It wasn't! The bread tastes like mouldy facecloths.

Maybe I was silly to have used it, but it didn't look off and I really had nothing to compare it to. It bubbled and did all the other things she said it would, but because of the taste and the fact that the bread is as flat as a pancake, I am assuming that it was a starter problem. Could anyone tell me what the starter should smell like, and why it might have gone off? The only thing I can think of is that the temperatures might have been lower than they should have been (about 20 degrees celsius), and might have fluctuated by 2 - 3 degees over the 48 hours. I am a real baking novice, so you'll need to speak very slooowwwly

[jackal10]

The starter should small yeasty and sour.

Not to worry though, Take a tablespoon of your starter into a cup of water and a cup of flour, and ferment covered in a warm placce for 24 hours. Should be bubbly and smell yeasty.

IF you want do this (refreshing) again.

Sourdough is very slow compared to yeast.

To make the bread make s ponge first and ferment that for 12 hours,

then make the dough, which will tak about 4 hours at 90F to rise.

[naes]

Are you trying to do a natural starter (just water and flour) or are you doing a yeast starter (water, yeast, and flour)?

If you're doing a natural starter, then you should use organic flour and distilled water. The pesticide and fertilizer residues in regular flour and the chlorine in tap water can interfere with the ability of the natural yeast spores to take hold in your starter. You shoud also sterlize any implements (bowls, measuring cups, spoons, etc) before you use them. You can just boil the items to sterilize them. If you don't sterilize, then you run the risk of having a moldy starter. However, if you're doing a yeast starter, then you don't have to worry about any of that since you're introducing enough yeast to overcome all of those issues.

Building a sourdough starter takes almost a week. If after four days of building the starter you don't see any activity (no bubbles, no yeasty/sour/alcohol smell, etc), then you need to throw it out and start over. If your book doesn't give you detailed instructions on how to properly begin a starter, then you need to look elsewhere.

If you're bread came out flat, then it sounds like you didn't ferment the dough enough. Forget about the "ferment until doubled in size" guideline. In general, what you should look for is spongy surface with lots of trapped gas. Coat your finger in flour then stick it into the fermented dough at least halfway up your finger and pull it out. The indentation from our finger should remain in the dough and the area around the indentation should start to collapse. You don't want the entire surface of the dough to collapse, that means it is over-fermented. You just want the area about the size of silver dollar to collapse into the indentation. That's when you know it's fermented enough.

Good luck!

[Fromartz]

I have created sourdough loaves with both organic and non-organic flour and both work fine. I use spring water (not distilled) and it works fine. The chlorine in tap water may inhibit natural yeast, but I have used tap water as well and it has worked.

The question I have about your starter is, after you fed it (ie, with fresh flour and water) and set it aside, did it rise as well as get bubbly? If you do repeated feedings to a dormant starter, allowing it to rise with each feeding until doubled in size, you will get a very good starter. But you need to start with a sourdough starter, which as the previous writer pointed out, is different from a starter you create with commercial yeast.

[danlepard]

Hi Niamh,

Looking at the recipe on amazon.com, these are the changes I would make to stay true to the author's method but ensure a better result. I only have access to the US edition which is in cups but you should get the gist of it. I have a topic on my forum about what type of flour to look for in Spain:

http://www.danlepard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51

First of all the instructions (on page 110 in the US edition) for the starter might not always work well. Working "1 cup of flour with 1/2 cup of water to make a thick cream" (para 1 in the method) will probably make dough rather than a thick cream, so start with 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup water. Try mixing equal quantities flour and water, ideally part whole-wheat or rye flour as this will be more likely to contain the wild yeast and bacteria you need for fermentation.

Next, Luard leaves the starter mixture for 24 hours, then adds another "cup of flour and 1/2 cup water. Set aside for another 24 hours to bubble and ferment." Though in the book Luard describes people making a sourdough from scratch with only 48 hours for the fermentation to set in the starter, I have never encountered this nor been able to make it happen that way, unless there is someway to add some old starter - perhaps some that remains on the inside of a favourite wooden mixing bowl. People making bread the traditional way sometimes have a wooden bowl they use to make bread in, that is only just scraped "clean" after the dough has been made. Traces of yeast and bacteria would be left in the bowl ready to be reawakened the next baking day, and perhaps this is the secret to this loaf?

What I would do is, after leaving it for 24 hours initially, stir in another 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup water. Leave this another 24 hours then remove 3/4 and add in 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup water. Continue doing this until the mixture is bubbling and smells slightly acidic. If you continue doing this day after day, eventually fermentation will commence. You just need a little faith along the way, nature will do the rest. Then, as the recipe says, freeze half of the starter. I've been hearing many reports from bakers telling me this works well for them, though I haven't tried it myself.

Back to the recipe. Once your starter is bubbling, use the amount Luard suggests - 1 cup starter, 5 1/2 cups flour and 2 1/2 cups (I would use 3 1/2 cups) water - to "make a soft, very wet dough." As in the recipe leave this at warm room temperature (22C - 25C) for 12 hours. Then add 5 1/2 cups water, 4 - 5 level tsp salt, and sufficient water to make a soft dough - the recipe says 1 1/2 cups but you may need more.

Knead as the recipe says, but where you are told to "leave the dough for an hour or two until it doubles in size" I would guess you should leave the dough for 4 - 5 hours (at 22C - 25C) until you can see bubbles forming in the dough. Then follow the remaining instructions for the recipe.

Hope this makes sense.

Dan

[Niamh]

Wow, thank you all for taking the time to help me out. Dan, the advice on flour in Spain was great - I could only find one type too. I will take my life in my hands and be a bit braver about asking around. Once I have found good flour I will give it a go again, following your tips, and then I will report back!

The starter was natural, but didn't rise at all really. I need to rack my brains to find a good, warm place in the flat. It seems to be 20º wherever I go, and there's no airing cupboard, which others have told me works well. I hope it does work at some point, like I said, I am total beginner, but there is something very fun about the whole process. I haven´t even managed an edible loaf yet and I am already addicted!

[Desiderio]

When I need a warmer place in my house , I use the oven with the light on , it makes a nice warm enviroment for poolish, sourdough etc.

[Baggy]

Hey! Hummingbirdkiss – that look’s a great loaf. From the small hole size, I bet you’ve got a really active starter. Jeniac42 has a good idea – depending how much water you were adding already you can try increasing it, provided it’s not too difficult to handle the dough. You could also try reducing the amount of starter you use and that would give you bigger holes.

Comment on saving starters – you really can just put some in the freezer!!! I used to cool mine overnight in the fridge in a plastic container. Then freeze and do the reverse on unfreezing. I used to give it 24 hours in the fridge to melt it before feeding.

Edited February 28, 2007 by Baggy (log)

[JohnnyH]

Hey!  Hummingbirdkiss – that look’s a great loaf.  From the small hole size, I bet you’ve got a really active starter.  Jeniac42 has a good idea – depending how much water you were adding already you can try increasing it, provided it’s not too difficult to handle the dough.  You could also try reducing the amount of starter you use and that would give you bigger holes. 

←

Can you explain why really active starter or using less starter would lead to larger holes in the bread? I've been working on this for a while now with mixed degrees of success.

[Baggy]

I’m not sure if I can explain the observation fully. I have been trying for a long time to find ways of getting large holes to form in bread in a predictable way. There’s a long list of things, but even with yeast there is a very clear increase in hole size as I reduce yeast levels. This is proofing to the same volume before baking.

Another factor working in favour of larger holes is under-proofing which, I think, allows the steam to blow up the loaf (oven spring) without overstretching the dough. With under-proofing the holes go translucent. As spritzing the crust gives a gloss, I assume that this is because the steam gelatinises the starch. But the overall impact seems to be different from natural starters, where the whole loaf takes on a translucent sheen (not just the walls of the holes). This is might be due to the starch being more hydrated and so cooks down to a glue (and gives the loaf longer shelf life).

So I’m guessing that a loaf made with an active starter is going to have smaller holes and look more like a yeast-made loaf.

What other things have you tried (maybe we should start a ‘large hole’ topic)?

[hummingbirdkiss]

Ok honestly???

I do not understand a lot of this stuff ...relative humidity..wet dry ratios... percentages all of that!!! I am sorry ....so please

could some one spell it out ..ABC how can get a perfect loaf of sourdough with all kinds of sizes of holes in it? Just tell me what to do very simple form..I cook by learning a process and a great sense of feel ..the technical stuff well... I love reading it ..am impressed by how it sounds and have no clue how to apply it ..I am sorry

I would be very grateful for the help so thank you so much in advance !!! OOOXXX

[glennbech]

Another factor working in favour of larger holes is under-proofing which, I think, allows the steam to blow up the loaf (oven spring)

I Agree... However! I wouldn't recommend trying to use a low hydrated dough (60-65%), under proof and hope for good results. In my experience Two things will happen ;

1) The good news is that you *will* get large holes, the only problem is that the texture of the bread around the holes will be very dense.

2) The bread will crack up. No matter how much steam you can create in your conventional oven, under-proofing a low hydrated dough will very often lead the gringe (cut) to be fully expanded, and the oven spring pushes the bread further out creating additional cracks and strange shapes. I've tried ice cubes, pans of water in the bottom of the oven......

In my experience high hydration (70'ish) and hot-stone baking is the key to a fine texture and lots of holes.

I've had boules lookign flat and unpromising blow up themselves up like bowling balls inside my oven. I think that's the thing I enjoy most about baking :-)

I have some pictures documenting the baking process in my foodblog

[glennbech]

I do not understand a lot of this stuff ...relative humidity..wet dry ratios... percentages all of that!!! I am sorry ....so please

Things can be a bit confusing at first, but you'll get the hang of it ! Here is the ABC on how to get a great loaf with open holes. Anyone please correct me if Im wrong here.

- All ingredients in a bread recipe are compared to the weight of the flour. This is called baker's percentages I believe.

- Hydration level usually refers to the amount of water in the recipe, compared to the weight of the flour, and *NOT* the percent of water in the total dough. This can be a bit confusing at first.

- So... Let's take an example basic recipe. (Should give you a wet challenging dough to handle, but should produce good open textured loaf) The starter should be active, lively and bubbly, and be aproxemately 50/50 water and flour. The "real" water content is close to 70% in this recipe, due to the wet starter. Some will probably suggest even wetter doughs, but they can be challenging to handle in the beginning.

1000g (1 kg) AP flour (100%)

650g (6 dl) Water (65%)

20g salt (2%)

300g Sourdough starter (30%)

- As you can see, all ingredients are given in the percentages of the flour weight.

The water content is listed at 65% this does *NOT* mean that the fina dough has 65% water in it, only that the water's weight is 65% of the flour's weight.

My online tool for calculating percentages

- To help with oven spring , bake on a hot stone. And make sure there is steam in the oven during the first 3-5 minutes of baking. I usually just throw 1 dl water in the bottom of the oven, a couple of times.

Did any of this make any sense ?

Edited February 28, 2007 by glennbech (log)