Sourdough Bread Troubleshooting (Part 1)

[glennbech]

Desiderio, those look very nice indeed.

My own problem at the moment seems to be with inconsistent starters. Perhaps its the weather, but I'm finding my starter varies a lot in its potency from batch to batch, though I make it the same way each time (or think I do). It went really sluggish last weekend, and I managed to produce some nastyish under-risen loaves as a result when I lost patience with the wretched stuff and baked too soon. This weekend it's rocking. (I also tried Glennbech's "use the oven floor as a hearth" method with good results.)  I guess the trouble with sourdough is that the price you pay for doing things "naturally" is a loss of predictability. But then I never found commercial yeast that predictable either!

←

LOL, nice to hear that others are struggeling with starter inconsistencies as well. I'm a very inpatient person, so when a dough doesn't rise fast enough, I pray for oven spring and put it in the oven, instead of waiting.... Usually ends in disaster, like here... http://www.glennbech.com/2006/04/sourdough-disaster.html

[glennbech]

Well well I have alot of bread now  ,By the way the taste of both is very nice , the walnuts one is very very tasty ( the toasted walnuts made a difference  ).

←

I baked some very successful walnut bread today as well. Sinice I came home very late last night, I had no sponge to start with this morning. I decided to go for a yeasted bread instead. So, I'll post pictures when I have sourdough walnut results .-)

(When baking with yeast, I use a trick I picked up from a Norwegian book, and create a sponge from water/flour, just like a sourdough pre-ferment. I use just 1/2 tsp. of dry yeast in the sponge, and leave it to triple in volume for 6-7 hours. (It works overnight in the fridge as well). In the dough, I add maybe 3/4 tsp. of more dry yeast and proof and bulk ferment the dough a lot longer than usual for yeasted bread. In this way the taste of yeast is reduced significantly, and the loaves rise just fine given just a bit more time!)

Back to the walnuts!

In Dan Lepard's recipe, that I tried today, he suggests making a "walnut paste" from honey, walnuts, water and butter to put into the dough as well as having walnuts in it.

I guess this is just another trick to add more advanced flavour to a bread :-) You end up with getting a very subtle walnut taste from the crumb as well as having havled walnuts... Very nice!

For my sourdough walnut breads, I'll try to roast them as well .-)

Geat baking by the way Desiderio :-) Excellent oven spring. Do you know why one loaf was darker in colour before baking ?

Edited May 15, 2006 by glennbech (log)

[Desiderio]

Thank you Glenn ,do you mean the walnut one next to the white?If is that its because it s made out of whole wheat , white whole wheat and bread flour in a small %.I like the idea of the walnut paste by the way sound yummy.

[glennbech]

Walnut bread coming up....

I tried Dan Lepard's walnut bread from the "Handmade loaf" the other day, but I do not share his passion for putting Honey in bread .-) I also wanted to try a 100% sourdough variant.

I made one Real big discovery here that alters my base process ; When making a sponge, a significant amount to the liquid vaporizes. During a period of 12 hours, my 300g sponge lost 40g of water. This means that the sponge is no longer at 100% hydarion, and that has to be calculated in when doing the final hydration calculation.

I also became a bit confused on how to do baker's percentage calculations with Leaven. Dan lepard, in his book "The handmade loaf" treats the leaven as any ingredient, and do not include the flour in the leaven in the flour total. I've done the same here.

The disadvantage of doing this, is that percentages of ingredients like the salt, is not really a percentage against total flour, but total flour excluding leaven flour.. Does this make sense ?

Can Anyone please fill me in here ? I Might have to change my baker's percentages calculator found here http://www.glennbech.com/bakerspercentage/index.html

Walnut paste

50g roasted walnuts

20g olive oil

20g syrup

10g water

I mixed these ingredients in using a mortar and pestle until it became a smooth paste. Pure meditation :-)

For the dough

260g white leaven (65%)

400g white flour Gluten and Vit C. enriched (100%)

100g Walnut paste (25%)

100g roasted walnuts (25%)

11g Salt (2,75%)

5g vitamin C (1,25%)

I mixed the leaven, water and walnut paste on one bowl, and 380g standard flour, a dash of vitamin C and 20g dried gluten powder in another. I mixed everything and combined the contents of both bowls.

Using my Kenwood Kitchen Machine I combined the inital dough, using very slow speed. I rested the dough for 30 minutes, added salt and walnuts, and mixed further on slow speed. I've decided to start using my kenwood for the initial mix from now on, as i started losing 10% of the doigh as it stuck to my arms and fingers :-)

I then did 2 some 10 second kneading / 10 second rest. And bulk fermented the dough for 3 hours, doing a flip every hour.

I'm going to shape two 500g loaves now, and maybe bake one, but definitly put the other one in the fridge for comparison. .-)

.... To be continued ... :-)

Edited May 15, 2006 by glennbech (log)

[Desiderio]

OHHHH looking foward to see the continued .

[glennbech]

.... On oven temperature

I'm so glad I bough an electronic thermometer, since my old oven doesn't have one. My oven reports 200c aproxemately 10-15 minutes before it reaches that temp. It actually says it has reaced 200 when it's about 160, thats 20% off!

Just a Head's up to all of you with old electric ones! :-)

Edited May 16, 2006 by glennbech (log)

[jackal10]

Glenn:

You need to compute two sets of numbers in terms of bakers percentages: the total for the overall loaf, which includes the flour and water in the leaven, and seperately the percentages for each step, wher the elaven is trated as another ingredient.

The first series gives you, for example, the overall hydration and salt etc.

The second is easier for a working baker (leaven - 100% water, dough 50% water, 20% leven, for example)

[glennbech]

Jackal10; Thanks for clearing that up .-) However, the consequence of this is that all recipes I've been using uptil now holds a higher salt percentage than 2% since the 2% is measured of the flour, excluding leaven. I'm still going to use a 2% of *total flour* for salt .-) Better for my health .-)

[glennbech]

... And The walnut bread arrived ....

Here is the result of my 100% sourdough walnut bread with a walnut paste mixed into the dough.

I made two loaves of aproxemately 500g and baked one straight, with little proofing (~ 1 hour). The other one I retarted overnight, and were baked from cold the morning after (Yes, I did get up 6am before going to work to bake my bread, I know I'm inpatient! *grin*) .

I was not very acurate when splitting the dough in two, but as you can see, a very interesting observation can be made !!!

The loaf that was kept in the fridge (at 370 g after baking) definitly has more volume, and almost 10% less weight than the other loaf not kept in fridge (410g after baking) !

The volume increase was partly added in proofing, and partly in oven spring. I Noted a very significant increase in oven spring for the retarded dough.

Another Interesting observation, that I have seen before, is that when dried gluten powder is added, I get a more even crumb. Can anyone verify this statement?

This is a ~ 67% hydration dough (65% base pluss 100g more or less 100% hydration walnut paste)...

If it was a pure 10,7% gluten content, supermarket flour dough. I believe it would have been more uneven and would have had larger holes. The gluten content is beefed up to around 13% using dried gluten powder in this recipe.

I am not sure I like this effect, and that I will keep adding the powder! Does anyone else do this ? I know for sure that industry, and mass produced bread contains it .-) Maybe I should keep it out of my artisan kitchentop craftwork .-)

Anyways ; Happy with the results, at least for the loaf that I retarded for ~12 hours in the fridge. It was a lot easier to slash before I put it in the oven as well. Taking it out of the fridge, it was real tight.

Any comments adding gluten? I think what I got out of this (besides a good tasting loaf) was the experience that will put fridge-retardaition forveer into my "baseline" process .-)

Another technical detail; I make the following observation on the crust and crumb development over time. Is my observation in line with what others observe ?

1) After baking the bread is HOT, the crust is hard and crisp.

2) At some point after, the loaf starts to cool down, the crust is still crispy

3) The loaf is lukewarm, the crust starts to moist

4) The loaf is cold, the crust is still a bit moist

5) Left in room temperature, unwrapped for 4-6 hours, the crust of my loaf is drying up and and becoming more crispy again.

Put in other words and into a technical questions ; How do we best handle and preserve hot baked loaves?

By the way; These laves tastes just fantastic roasted with a bit of honey. Even with Scrabmled eggs or strawberry jam ;-)

Edited May 16, 2006 by glennbech (log)

[glennbech]

... And here's a shot of my setup for provong. The measuring cup is for looking how the dough goes by, in the bottom right corner there's a digital thermometer that keeps track for the temperature at the dough. There's a 20W halogen lamp that keeps this system at aproxemately 30c ...

The proving basket is all wrapped in a plastic bag from the local supermarket do avoid dehydration.

... Any other good ideas ? :-)

Edited May 17, 2006 by glennbech (log)

[Desiderio]

Tonight I have baked some sourdough ciabatta bread , and they turn out very very nice.

I made the same base more or less but the dough was extremely wet , I mean very very hard to work with, but the ciabatta's came great.

I was very courious to try to make ciabatta becasue I really like them , so now I can have them with my sourdough

Edited May 18, 2006 by Desiderio (log)

[glennbech]

Desiderio: They look real good! :-) How long did you proof then and how? If the dough is very wet, you need some kind of support right ?

Looks tasty as well .-)

[Desiderio]

Desiderio: They look real good! :-) How long did you proof then and how? If the dough is very wet, you need some kind of support right ?

Looks tasty as well .-)

←

Yes very tasty indeed , the crust is very cryspy very nice.

The proofing , about the same a sfor the other bread then in the fridge for 12 hours or so. When I came home form work I got the basket out of the fridge got half of the dough ( put the other half back in ) and I divided in 5 large stripes on a well floured surface.Let them stand while I was heating the oven for apporx 40 mins.The just slide them in the hot oven with usual steam ( got the steam out after they started to get color)

Ciabatta bread dont need support cause has no shape to hold its just a striped of extremely wet dough , I think the normal its around 75% or more for this bread.

It doeas oven srping a lot in the oven so dont worry if you have a pancake .I did use a higher ratio of starter but it didnt seems to alter the taste .

[devlin]

Everybody's breads are looking gorgeous.

Here's a question (and thank you glenn for your response above), what sorts of water temps are folks using? Warm? Cool? Anybody paying attention to the temp of the dough at any stage? Both Hamelman and Silverton note desired temps of water and dough (as does Reinhart now and again). Is this an issue we should be paying more attention to?

[Desiderio]

HI Devlin , I personally not paying attention to the dough temperature , even if in the book ,like you said he ( hamelman ) says to check the temp.

I am currently using water that I leave overnight out in a container so I would say room temperature, more or less. Maybe leter when I have more time and room to work with I will try to check temperature, but for now is already too much work as it is and the results are very satisfying ( but I am not seeling it its just for home consuming ).

[glennbech]

Everybody's breads are looking gorgeous.

Here's a question (and thank you glenn for your response above), what sorts of water temps are folks using? Warm? Cool? Anybody paying attention to the temp of the dough at any stage? Both Hamelman and Silverton note desired temps of water and dough (as does Reinhart now and again). Is this an issue we should be paying more attention to?

←

What temperatures do Hamelman and Silverton suggest? I know that Dan Lepard suggest adding water at 20c, and claims "room" temperature" to be at around

25 in his book "The handmade loaf" that is..

When proofinfg and bulk-fermenting the same day, I try to keep my dough at 30c, and use a proofing setup as I showed earlier with a halogen lamp and a digital thermometer.

My theory is that 30c favours the yeast, and the dough rises well, but will become less sour. Lower the temp a bit, and the dough will rise slower, and become more sour. This is just my prefernece.

I've seen the Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis vs. yeast graph at different temperatures somewhere around here, but where not able to dig it up.

Devlin; What I really mean, and what is really relevant to your question, is that initial water temp. is not very important, when you're bulk fermenting for 3-4 hours, and proofing for the same amount of time. If you take no special action (like artifiicial heating) the dough will move towards "room temperatore", whatever that is during that time .-)

I'm considering making myself a "proofing/fermenting" box, with a "electric heating blanket", and an insulated box so that I can experiment with differnet results, from let's say 25c and 31c ...

Edited May 18, 2006 by glennbech (log)

[Desiderio]

Hamelman goes around 76F for the dough and the proofing.

I dont check the inside temperature, and when I do bulk fermentation I dont put it in any particular heating /warming device.My baskets are too big dont fit into the oven for now .I just kept them out side the kitchen usually is warm expecially nowdays ( house temperature goes between 70 and 74 F ).

I didnt have any problem proofing the dough this way , I always noticed it usually proof very good so I didnt bother with other complications.

In my idea I want to make this bread making as easy as it can be because if it have to be a routin ( I bake at least twice a week ) it needs to be doable , with family and a full time job ,I reaaly want to bring it down to my level of life , if it makes sense .

Going back to the sourdough ciabatta , I baked the other half today ( the dough was in the fridge ) and I shaped ( or try to ) in a big round loaf ( didnt have any patience and wanted to get it out of the fridge ).It turn out very nice , complitely different form the ciabattas , weird how the same dough shaped and proofed differently come out a different bread.

Well I am pleased with the result I think form now on I am going to try a very wet dough it might suit my taste better , even though its a pain to deal with , I will try to find some banneton for it though.

Happy baking

[glennbech]

I didnt have any problem proofing the dough this way , I always noticed it usually proof very good so I didnt bother with other complications.

In my idea I want to make this bread making as easy as it can be because if it have to be a routin ( I bake at least twice a week ) it needs to be doable , with family and a full time job ,I reaaly want to bring it down to my level of life , if it makes sense

You're absolutely right here. It's the process that works for you routine that counts .-)

I have a question about storage; If the loaf is to be eaten two days from baking, will it keep most fresh put in the freezer, or just wrapped in paper? Any Ideas on when to Freeze, and when to wrap?

[Desiderio]

I personally keep all my baked bread in plastic ( ziplock type ) bags , or paper bags and plastic grocerie bags ,usually sourdough it really tastes better after I would say one or two days from baking, i think it does increse in flavor.

For freezing I would probaly put in a freeze ziplock bag so it doeast get any frezer burns.Well and ofcourse just make sure its nice and cool before putting it in to any type of bag expecially plastic.

Oh and by the way , I have to thank you all very very much , its soo satisfying been able to eat and offer a fresh made sourdough bread , that is actually a very good bread ( cant find anything like this around here I swear ).

Thank you ))

Edited May 18, 2006 by Desiderio (log)

[rooftop1000]

Sunday was bread day here 3 lovely loaves of soft white sourdough bread. We ate one gave one to my mother and managed to snap a picture of the third one. I cut a few slices to toast at work in the morning, intending to get the interior shot in the afternoon for you. Anyone remember the Pet disaster thread? where I may have mentioned my new doggie eats any and everything?....SHE ATE MY BREAD

it didnt agree with her either

[glennbech]

well; your dog eating your loaf is kind of a compliment... Isn't it ? Looks like you got real good spring, even if it's a bit hard to say from that angle. Nice and golden crust, looks very tasty .-)

I've been reading up a bit on the microbiology behind the sourdough

processes. It seems that the Bacteria living in symbiosis with the yeast is utilizing maltosis, which is useless to the yeast.

Any recipes with added maltosis? I believe beer brewers are very familiar with that product.

Anyone ?

[glennbech]

Got up early today to bake this;

- Simple white leaven bread, 600g. It was a real pleasure to work with since the dough were tighter than normal. I forgot to measure in the "actual" hydration of my pre-ferment this time (it dehydrated by 13% overnight!), and instead of getting a 67% bread as planned, i got a 63%.

Since I'm chicken, and didn't dare to go "all the way up" on my oven temperature for the first 5 minutes, and because of the reduced hydration, this didn't get as much spring as I hoped for.

But It looks good, smells good, and hopefully tastes good as well .-)

Remember to weigh your pre-ferment before baking with it ! .-) you *might* think it's 150g flour & 150g water in there, after 12 hours, but it most probably isn't ! :-)

Edited May 19, 2006 by glennbech (log)

[glennbech]

About a moist crust...

I've noticed the following things happen the first hour after taking the loaf out of the oven ;

1) The Loaf os HOT, and sounds hollow whne I tap it. Crust is very hard and crispy.

2) The loaf cools down and I can hear "cracking" as it sets.

3) The loaf starts to cool further and is getting softer. I guess moist from the crumb is starting to affect the crust.

4) The loaf is cool, and the crust is not crispy anymore.

Am I doing something wrong ? The one i baked (previous) post is lying on the table top, uncovered, and are staying until I get home in 6 hours. Will this help?

How much does air humidity have to do with crust becoming soft? Anything I can do to counter it?

Edited May 19, 2006 by glennbech (log)

[Bill44]

Glennbech, dont think that high hydration equals oven spring. I ve done recipes at 54% hydration that gave very good spring. The secret to oven spring is judging the correct amount of proofing before you bake. When to bake is the single biggest thing to master when baking sourdough bread, and thats a statement from a 25 year veteran.

[glennbech]

Glennbech, dont think that high hydration equals oven spring. I ve done recipes at 54% hydration that gave very good spring. The secret to oven spring is judging the correct amount of proofing before you bake. When to bake is the single biggest thing to master when baking sourdough bread, and thats a statement from a 25 year veteran.

←

What you are saying kind of verifies my limited experience so far. Good to hear that from a veteran .-)

It almost semems that there is a constant amount of rise that can be expected, and that it will either come from oven spring or proofing. if you proof more, less oven spring, proof less means more spring.

I might be a bit off here, but to me, it seems that Rising as a result of oven spring create more rough looking loaves as the loaf opens up the "gringe". I've also noticed a more uneven crumb, more holes, and larger holes at the bottom, near the heat source.

Longer Proofing seems to produce a more even crumb, and less markant gringe on the bread. However for beginners like me, longer proofing is kind of an "assurance" that the loaf will get at least some level of rise.

This is a loaf that I retarded in the fridge for about 10 hours before baking. It rised a lot, even when it came into the cold refrigerator.

http://www.glennbech.com/uploaded_images/whiteleaven.jpg

For the sake of the argument, and for educational purposes; How would you guys judge this loaf? Overproofed, underproofed or well proofed ? Or is this just a matter of taste/prefernce ?

Edited May 19, 2006 by glennbech (log)