I was gifted a wonderful sourdough starter (Jane dough) that has been thriving and strong and growing and beautiful since I brought her home. My last loaf (which was also my first) was so gummy you literally couldn’t eat it so I changed my hydration (used a different recipe) and tried again. This loaf is SIGNIFICANTLY better. Much softer, lighter, fantastic taste. But there’s still not a lot of holes???? It looks dense but it’s not gummy at all. Why am I not getting the airy holey look? This is only my second attempt ever so I’m sure I’m just missing something. I’ll add the recipe below.
65% hydration recipe:
300g water
150g starter
500g flour
10g salt
Mix and rest for 30 mins
4 sets of stretch and folds at 30min intervals, then proof on counter (74°f give or take) until doubled in size
Shape and add to basket
Cold ferment in fridge overnight OR at least 2 hours
Preheat to 450°, bring down to 400, bake 20min lid on, 20 more lid off.
I didn’t know the overnight cold ferment was optional so I decided to skip that part this time and see what happened- so the dough was in the fridge for about 4.5hr this time before baking. I also baked it for an additional 8 minutes bc it was noooot looking done after the second 20 minutes.
I’m still extremely new to this and I’m trying not to get discouraged but my god it takes 75 years to prep this bread all for it to turn out like 💩
Yeast bread has never done me dirty like this 😭
Anyways, any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all 🫶🫶🫶
by formerflamingo9
10 Comments
This looks great to me… Am I missing something? Personally I don’t like a lot of holes in my bread. I think you did great, please. Don’t be so hard on yourself ☺️!
If you wanted to skip cold fermenting overnight, letting it sit on the counter for a few hours instead of the fridge may have been a better option. But it looks really good.
65% hydration is bottom amount for sourdough, if you’re looking for more open crumb definitely start liking to slowly bump that up. 100% at about 74 degrees May have also been a bit too long on the ferment. I usually go for like 65-75% rise at that temp
I don’t see much wrong, but it could be the temperature that you could use some monitoring and tweaking bulk ferment time as a result.
Usually doubling size for BF is for room temperature – is 68-70F – depending on your source. Also, dough temperature alters bulk fermentation time. I’ve found that once I began paying attention to those items that I began to get much more consistent results.
Sourdough Journey has a very thorough blog post about this topic that helped me out to get consistency down.
https://preview.redd.it/gxrrse3xs7bd1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cf3ec0ced499f8f68fd46476ed1d03744613bd5c
It looks like my idea of perfect.
Im using the same recipe basically. after my 4-6 stretch and folds every hour… I pull the whole ball of dough out
I use the baguette method i learned and press it down like focaccia then fold it towards me like a letter in 3rds…
then left side right side into a “square” then i push away and pull towards me multiple times to form the “boule” once done i put it seam side down in the bowl for the night (my house is COLD) on the counter. I get bigger bubbles but similar crumb.
This looks great though!
Love to see what youre doing with the outside though!
Basically you are asking for more rise. To get that, after you put the shaped dough in the cloth lined/rice floured banneton, leave it covered on the counter one hour, then put banneton w/dough in a big plastic bag and move it to the fridge. If you go for 10 hours in the fridge you get the max cold rise and a nice cold dough that will give you a few minutes to decorative marks (1/4”deep), then do the expansion score (1/2“ deep).
And I take issue with the DO preheat and bake temp. For cold dough the DO should be preheated to 475-490F (you need good quality parchment paper or a silicone dough sling). Lower the dough into DO that has preheated for at least 30 minutes beyond the oven reaching preheat temp. Bake 20 mins covered then drop temp to 450, uncover, and bake 20-30 for the color you like. Remove from DO and promptly check loaf temp with a digital temp probe for 200F in the center (I check from the bottom and you have to stab it in to get through the bottom crust.
Scoring might help you to get a bit more oven spring out of it, but otherwise it looks great to me.
Honestly it looks good to me!
Show the crust. Seems fine, little tight.