i just made my first sourdough loaf after making successful cinnamon rolls, cookies, and waffles. it turned out bad. can anyone please give me feedback?
by asscrackband1t
i just made my first sourdough loaf after making successful cinnamon rolls, cookies, and waffles. it turned out bad. can anyone please give me feedback?
by asscrackband1t
40 Comments
Get a recipe from a real source. Tiktok is not it.
Also tell us about your starter.
[https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/naturally-leavened-sourdough-bread-recipe](https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/naturally-leavened-sourdough-bread-recipe)
I agree. That is bad.
Good news it can only get better!
How old is your starter?
First off: respect on the user name. Community is the best.
Also, it is hard to know where you went wrong without your recipe and methods listed out – a lot of us on this sub are olds who aren’t on tiktok.
My first suggestion: don’t use tik tok.
My favorite resource when I was starting was The Perfect Loaf, it is a free site and the beginners loaf recipe is fool proof and he gives great detail.
I don’t have access to the video you posted but there are much better recipes.
I don’t think that’s bread
Another tip next time you bake I don’t see -too- often is preheat your oven for at least 30 minutes. My oven isn’t as hot as it says it is so I usually bumped it 20+ degrees when my oven thermometer was only reading 420 when the oven said 450
Another problem with this recipe is that it doesn’t direct that your dough needs to sit at room temperature for a while (often 6+ hours) before you put it in the fridge in order for it to rise. I suspect that’s part of your problem but it also seems like you have a weak or young starter.
Using TikTok for a recipe is like using Meow Meow Beanz to rate your friends.
It always ends in disaster.
You’ve made something, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that you’ve made a sourdough loaf.
First guess is that your starter isn’t up to snuff.
That recipe is terrible, which is not surprising when you look at their loaf. I liked the Baking with Babish recipe when I first started.
woah
Also, ChatGPT is my sourdough bestie.
Nah… not bad, just dense 😅 i still can’t figure this shit out
Yea, it did not rise at all. Either starter is dead, or you didnt let it proof
I think TikTok has some very helpful and knowledgeable content creators, but this is a garbage recipe. It literally skips the step on bulk fermentation. You have to let the dough sit on the counter for hours before you let it “take a nap” in the fridge. Also, in my opinion, weight measurements with a kitchen scale are far superior than loosey-goosey volume measurements. There’s much better sourdough creators on TikTok if you keep looking.
How old is your starter? Reading comments shows you are not feeding frequently enough regardless of its age. I’d feed and discard daily and do multiple peak-to-peak feeds the day before I plan to prep dough to ensure my starter is awake enough to rise.
If your starter is too young it may not be strong enough yet. I wouldn’t bake until your starter was at least a month old and doubling in around 4-6 hours after being fed.
Also, if it’s under two weeks old I would advise not to eat the bread or use it for anything because it may still have harmful bacteria and not a strong yeast colony to overcome other microbes yet.
The age of your starter depends on when it was first made, so if you made it from scratch a month ago it is a month old and still young but if you got it from a friend with a year old starter then it’s a year old and should be mature.
https://youtu.be/MQ-6fpuVeFA?si=ky9lcf3Q7MDmZfUr
It also looks raw. Cook it until it’s 205°F in the inside and let it cool before you cut it. Again your starter can be checked if it’s ripe and ready if a little piece of it floats in a glass of water. Also looks under developed, the gluten structure had not been developed.
1. Make sure starter is ripe. If it floats it’s ripe.
2. Make sure you developed the gluten. Do several stretch and folds letting it rest 30min between each fold. I usually just do coil folds. It’s easier on the dough so it doesn’t rear and it developed a good strong smooth dough, look it up on google to see how to do it.
3. Bake at 425°F for 25min covered to produce steam and help rise. Make sure to score the bread first to help the opening up and rise. If you don’t bake in a pot put on a sheet tray and spray with water and let it bake and rise for 25 min then open oven door to release steam then shut door and bake for another 20-25 min until a nice brown crust is formed. Put a thermometer into it and if it reads 200-205° take it out and place it on a rack and let cool for at least 1 hour.
If you hang around this sub long enough, you’ll learn to say: “at least it tastes great” and “I hate open crumb, too much butter soaks through”. But otherwise your journey has begun, you’ll eventually get to 8 out of 10 and enjoy reflecting on how much progress you’ve achieved.
When feeding sourdough starter it’s always EQUAL. 1:1:1 , 1:2:2. NEVER use cups. Always weigh. 20g started, 20g warm water, 20g flour. I do not understand how people get this so so so wrong. If your starter is on the bench, feed it every 12 hours. If it is in the fridge, every week.
Ive been making sourdough for about a year. Its been pretty good. My son sent me this recipe – https://foodbodsourdough.com/the-process/
And it turned out great!
Ive also found King Arthurs Big Book of Bread and their Baking School books quite helpful. I checked them out of the library.
Likely your starter wasnt lively and ready? How did the dough feel during shaping? How warm is your house?
It’s a very popular club! Just keep trying!
So many things I have questions about.
How long was this cooked for?
Is your starter active/alive? What was it like when you mixed it in the recipe?
Did you let it ferment/expand/start to bubble or see any signs?
Did you use salt?
this recipe set you up for failure by telling you to ferment on the counter for only 3 hours! my rule of thumb is to never trust a tiktok recipe or a recipe that uses volume measurements (cups). this recipe ticks both of those boxes lol.
watch some videos on how to tell when bulk fermentation is done. everybody’s starter and baking environment is different, so recipes that say “bulk ferment for x hours” will almost always lead to disaster. you need to be able to read your dough and decide for yourself when it is ready to bake. this can mean 8+ hours on the counter if your house is cold, but could also be much less in a warmer house.
your starter may also be weak, but at this point there are too many variables for us to determine whether that could also be a problem. how long does it take to peak when fed a 1:1:1 ratio?
overall, i’d say try again with a longer bulk ferment on the counter, use a kitchen scale for measurements, see how your next loaf turns out, then make small adjustments with each subsequent loaf to try and improve. it can often take many loaves before you figure out the process and make something yummy, stick with it!
Same thing happened to my first loaf. I figured out that the thing I did wrong was not letting it rise enough.
The next loaf i actually let rise so much it was over-proofed, and ended up doing something similar, but not precisely the same thing.
Keep at this, if you are interested in it; it does get better. I screwed up several loaves before I nailed the routine. I now make the best sourdough out of my family and friend group, and frequently teach others how to make bread.
Also, some of those screwed up loaves you can still eat, and/or use. I used my first, under-proofed loaf to make basic, biscuit-like dumplings for a chicken and dumpling dish. (I recommend you cut the crust off and crumble/tear into small chunks if you go this route). If you recognize the dough is over-proofed, you can still bake it as a flatbread/focaccia or place it into a greased loaf-pan to make a more sandwich-like bread.
It takes practice
TikTok is trash, esp for recipes. I recommend this guy who runs an amazing bakery in Ireland. I learned how to make my first loaves from him, and they always turned out bomb. He even has a multiseed sourdough that tastes amazing. Here’s a link to his recipe on yt: https://youtu.be/2FVfJTGpXnU?si=oPIj807xcxI7V8VY
Another tip I learned is that if you’re not sure if your sourdough starter is well-fed and happy enough to bake with, put a spoonful of starter into a cup/small bowl of water. If it is bubbly and happy, it will float. If it is underfed and sad, it will sink, and you know you need to feed it a bit more and give it some more time before making your bread.
Good luck!
Sour-DOH!
Just from my eye I don’t think it hit an internal temp of 200 and it also looks under proofed by the fact that there aren’t really any air bubbles within it.
I’m thinking your starter is dead. Also age of starter in months does not necessarily mean you’ve fed it enough times for a truly mature starter….
Very very underproofed.
I’m very tired and thought it was a cow hoof 😭😭😭
Thought this was a horse hoof at first glance
I did this guys recipe for my first loaf and it was perfect. Try this instead: https://youtu.be/DiI-1PF_Mr0?si=aAOhfSizWHetaAfA
Try this. I used this to make my first loaf ever a couple of weeks ago and it was great. It’s probably not considered perfect by the experts on here but it yielded a more than decent loaf. Unfortunately didn’t get an inside pic. There’s probably a couple of tweaks I would have made but I have no regrets! 🙃
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2OnzfQrTTM8&pp=0gcJCTMBo7VqN5tD](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2OnzfQrTTM8&pp=0gcJCTMBo7VqN5tD)
https://preview.redd.it/t51ng53gn7fg1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bfc64ccbaac8f6101f8dee3c986b558088935b99
On the bright side, at least you knew to use a serrated knife for bread.
^tiny ^victory
I thought this was a picture of an animal hoof at first…
This. Is how the pyramids were made.
We’ve all been there. You are a sourdough pro, just keep pitching.
Looks just like my first loaf!