Hey 🙂 it’s been a while since I am baking sourdough bread, but I started a few months ago to try to do 100% whole wheat bread or with various types of ancient wheat varities. The taste of the bread is amazing, but I struggle with the shape. Indeed, most of the time it ends very flat.. I tried many different parameters such as kneading time, hydration, folding and so on, but I can’t find a good way to have a loaf of bread which holds its shape.
- I am using an ankarsrum (which is amazing by the way), so do i need to knead the dough for a long time at low speed or a shorter time is required?
- is it better to go for low or high hydration?
- is the shapping different than with a "normal" white bread ?
For those who are used to these types of flour, do you have advices to help me?
Thank you in advance for your answers
by MSED14
3 Comments
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It’s hard to tell what’s going on with this bread without looking at the crumb. My guess here is either it’s overfermented or just lacks gluten development.
Ancient wheat varieties tend to contain less gluten, which produce smaller breads (though this bread seems suspiciously flat). Breads with more whole wheat content will be denser.
The fermentation time should be unique to your starter and flours used. Kneading and shaping shouldn’t be different. Hydration also depends on the quality of the flour used. Though whole wheat breads require more hydration.
Your bread is either underproofed/unproofed or it is extremely overproofed. Click my profile name and see my posts on whole wheat bread. Google “sourdough overproofed underproofed” on google and diagnose your loaf and adjust from there.
Tartine Bread has a whole wheat section and they have more recently published a whole wheat/whole grain book.
If your starter can’t double at room temp in less than 5 hours after a 1:1:1 feed, that’s a huge problem.