Hi all! I’m super new to sourdough, made my starter around a month ago & have made 1 loaf already , making second today ☺️
For some reason my dough is EXTREMELY sticky when shaping the loaf.. this happened with both my first and now the second tries. First time I thought maybe it was under fermented but now I think it’s over fermented?
I let it bulk ferment for 3.5 hours first time (just didn’t have more time) & almost for 5 hours this time. In the picture you can see what it looked like today when taking it out of the bowl. It’s super hard to shape as it just keeps sticking to my hands and the surface.. it feels veeeeeery soft and thin but when I do stretch and folds it feels strong
Really not sure what I’m doing wrong here so I would really appreciate any advice 🥹
Recipe I use:
100g starter
360g water
500g bread flour
10g salt
Mix & rested for 45mins, 4 rounds of stretch and fold with 30minutes in between. 1st shaping, rest for another 30 minutes and do 2nd shaping. Then I let it proof in the fridge overnight and bake in the morning
by Few_Fall1761
30 Comments
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I think you’re forgetting the bulk fermentation at room temperature that should double the size of the dough. Usually 6-9 hours depending on temperature of the kitchen. And when you cold proof, you should try use a cloth dusted with flour (rice flour is best) to prevent it from sticking.
It’s looks overproofed.
Try reducing the amount of water in your recipe and add the water more slowly during mixing instead of all at once. An autolyse would also help increase the amount the flour can hold
You might have to experiment with adding less water. My recepie is absolutely the same as yours with the exception that it calls for 350g of water. I have been making my bread with about 320g of water lately as my dough was super sticky when following the exact recepie.
Definately over proofed
I had this problem! My dough was always sticky. Two things I did: 1) reduce the water! I see the typical recipe being 100g starter, 500g flour and 350g water. I cut my water to 300g and it works much better. 2) I got stronger bread flour. Legend says that US flour is stronger than what we have in Europe, so I make sure my flour says sourdough/artisan/canadian strong bread flour or along those lines.
I’m in the UK, my kitchen is between 17-20C. I make my dough to be ready to fold at 7pm and by 6am I’m ready to shape.
This looks like a starter issue. I’d work on strengthening it before trying again.
Find a recipe that includes any kind of oil and see if you have better results.
my dough is usually pretty sticky — not quite this sticky — and it still turns out into a pretty delicious loaf, so i don’t think you’re CRAZY far off from fixing it!
Did you put the dough in a clean oiled bowl before putting it in the fridge? Sometimes this happens to me when I just do all the mixing, stretching and rising in the same bowl because I’m lazy. When I dump it out a fair amount ends up sticking to the sides. I just scoop it up and shape it and the bread ends up totally fine. So it may just be a lack of a pristine bowl during the long ferment stage.
is your “5 hours bulk fermentation” including the 45 minutes rest, 3×30 minute rests between stretch n folds, plus 30 minutes between preshape and shape?
because fermentation begins when flour and starter meet, so all that time counts, which would bring you up to 7 hours 45 minutes, which seems more like the kind of time in which a warmer dough may overferment.
Wet your hands and use them to kinda peel it away from the bowl as you get it out. Or lightly oil the bowl.
Looks like an AI nightmare
Did you add salt? I forgot once and it looked like that.
That looks like some sort of alien world.
Vegetable oil on the container may avoid it to be sticky (for salty recipes). Butter also helps (either salty or sweet).
lol I call this “spider webbing” when my dough looks like this 😅I would def recommend adding more flour to your proofing bowl, the counter surface, and your hands to reduce sticking though!
I usually want a little bit of spider webbing when pulling it out of the bowl for shaping. In my head that means that the gluten structures are there and enough to spring my loaf. I would say that it does help to kinda scoop your dough out of the bowl instead of plopping it upside down and letting it droop out. It usually seems less sticky to me, but who knows. Nonetheless, get some flour!
Maybe someone knows the science to the spider web looking things 👀🕸️🕷️
Cut way back on your hydration until you get more used to high hydration
This has nothing to do with oiling a bowl. That’s overfermented dough, that’s why it’s spiderwebbing and sticky asf. Just need to bulk ferment less time next time around. Much less, cut a few hours off probably. Throw this one in a loaf pan, it’s gonna be a puddle mess otherwise probably
I hate this 😭 I’m sry I’m sure it still tastes delicious but visually ….
Your temp is too low, starter and your bulk ferment do best between 75-80°. Do the aliquot method when you bulk ferment. I don’t do the whole temp chart stuff, I just put 40g of my dough into a 2oz condiment cup after the first set of stretch and folds. Make sure to press it down to the bottom of the cup (wet hands help), once it touches the lid you can shape it and cold proof. Your starter could be less strong than you think. I started making loaves once my starter doubled regularly, and they all came out bad. I started increasing my feeding ratio for daily maintenance, and I keep my starter small and very stiff, usually opting for 1 part starter-10 parts flour-8 parts water ratio. My starter quadruples in size now, it’s webbed and smells wonderful, and my loaves have been SO good and so soft. Also, make sure your starter is hungry when you make your loaf, I like to use mine after it has peaked and is starting to fall.
Over proofed.
Reduce the amount of starter you use in your recipe
Was it your starter wet that added more hydration? I watched a YouTube video that suggested that could be a cause. I wonder too.
It’s at this point I usually give up on shaping a loaf and make focaccia or pizza.
You can get away with pizza if you oil a bit of parchment paper and let it goop out into a base and cook it real high. I do mine on a 14″ cast iron.
That honestly looks like a screen grab from Stranger Things.
You’ll do better next time
Sitting here.. 12am doom scrolling, saw this post and realized I didn’t feed my starter today. Thank you for the reminder! 😂
I had the same problem. After mixing, the dough never really came together regardless of stretch and folds or whatever, just a sticky mess. What really helped me was to clean the bowl after mixing (transfer dough to another bowl) and oil it ever so slightly. Then, with wet hands, transfer it back in the bowl. I generally make a ball out of it by punching the sides and pulling it over a few times, then flip it and rest till the next stretch and fold. Not sure where the magic is, although I have theories, but cleaning the bowl solved everything!
Edit: should be noted that I do use a string flour and a little bit less water. If those aren’t optimal a clean bowl ain’t gonna help either
Fair warning: long story ahead.
TL;DR you’re better off practicing your dough timing by carefully observing how long it takes your starter to reach peak dough strength. That point should be the time you either shape it or bake it. I had misjudged how fast my starter really was—if I had put it in the fridge later or let it proof for longer, it would have over-proofed.
~~~~
In case it helps, I also made bread today which I started prepping yesterday at 5pm UTC+8—right now it’s 4:30pm.
> 300g whole wheat flour
100g cheap bread flour
> 8g salt
40g starter (actually I mixed two starters, 20g 100% hydration and 20g 80% hydration)
320g water
Added 30g of WW flour because apparently that was way too much water even after bassinage from 240g-280g-320g of water
Thanks to the ridiculously high hydration I had to do several rounds of kneading and stretch&folds based on visual observation: it wouldn’t hold its shape as a ball, and it took me almost 2 hours until it did. All that time I was annoyed because of how sticky it was when kneading—my fault for adding too much water, really. Anyway, I kept it in an insulated bag with a heating pad set to maintain 27°C–32.5°C. I set the temperature that high because I also wanted to speed up a starter I had kept inside that bag 😅
By about 9 pm I prepped it for bulk fermentation, still inside that insulated bag. Got back to it around 3 am a couple hours later to see it has almost tripled in size, so I proceeded to shape it then plopped it in the fridge so it wouldn’t overproof because I wanted to cook it in the afternoon.
[11 am today](https://imgur.com/a/jsylRyO) I took it out of the fridge and put it out in the sun with a lid on it just to speed things up. 1 pm I had prepped it in my cooking contraption (which I will explain later). Cooked it with a lid for 30 minutes, then without a lid for 30 more minutes. Other than the burnt base and the mildly gummy texture (because I was impatient and cut into it too soon), [it was fine](https://imgur.com/a/oqm8t5l). But as you can see it did fall flatter than I expected once baked.
As for my cooking contraption:
No power today so no electric oven. The dough was already close to over-proofing(it could still hold its shape, but when I poked it a few times some of the dents wouldn’t bounce back). Had to improvise.
I used a large pressure cooker then placed inside a thick-bottomed metal pot. Then I poured in a few tablespoons of water for steam (and so I don’t melt the pressure cooker gaskets), placed an oven thermometer inside, then let it preheat to 150°C for 10 minutes.
To make sure it actually goes past the max 121°C that a pressure cooker normally works in, there needs to be no liquid water—only steam. This improvised oven was so finicky I had difficulty controlling the temperature, but I did make sure I didn’t go past 200°C. Though I suspect it was thanks to this that my resulting bread had a slightly gummy texture