Pain de Campagne FWSY no oven spring
So I made this bread yesterday following the instructions in the book. The levain was very active, about tripled. Bulk ferment about 3,5 hours. The dough had increased 2,5 the size as per the book.
When I got to the shaping the dough looked nice and airy, supple and pillowy. No signs of over fermentation. But it was real sticky and the shaping was a mess. The dough developed little tension and I only managed to shape it into a slack boule. I gave up, put it in the fridge for 12 hours and baked it the prescribed time.
This was the result. Can I assume the lack of oven spring was due to bad shaping or is it possible there was other problems that made the loaf dense and not spring?
Hope to hear from you. PS posted this on Reddit as well but I suspect this is the better place to ask for advice.
(edited name of book in title)
I’d like to add I’m new to this. Bought the book a month ago and have worked my way through it. This is the first attempt at this type of dough
Probably it's a combination of shaping, too much water, and perhaps some overproofing.
Maybe I should try to decrease the hydration just a bit to make the dough easier to shape. This dough is 78% with white flour at 11,5g protein
What book? What page?
It’s Ken Forkish Flour Water Salt Yeast. Page 140
The bread still looks good. I would eat it. And it is still good enough to serve to guests.
Like Suave said, at first glance, from the photo, it looks like too much water for your flour (some brands of flour just don't take as much water as others), and it was possibly over-fermented. But it is good to confirm how you interpreted the formula, and find out what changed, no matter how small.
I ask these things because many people come here and ask questions, but they made small changes and don't say so, because they think the changes are unimportant. So, for the sake of completeness and checking the most common possibilities of things that were changed.....
What Forkish meant was "final volume = 2.5 times initial volume".
Did you actually do: "final volume = initial volume plus 2.5 times initial volume" ?
Did you measure the increase in a straight-walled tub with liter markings? Or did you do it in a bowl and estimate?
Did you use 10% whole wheat or did you use all white flour? 40 g of whole wheat in the levain, and 60 g of whole wheat added in the final mix?
Did you knead the dough when you mixed, or just mix?
Did you knead the dough when folding, or just fold?
Thanks for your thorough response.
In Norway most stores just have one kind of white flour that has a protein content of about 11,5/100g. We dont have specific all purpose or bread flour, its just white flour.
I mixed and fermented my dough in a mixing bowl that has markings for every .5 liter. After mixing this dough (i halved it) it was at about .45 liters. Just under the .5 L mark. I let the dough rise to just over 1 L so that should be 2,5 its original volume. I’m getting that right, right? This took 3,5 hours at 23C room temp.
I used 10% whole weat. I built the levain as per Forkish instructions, just svalde it down so i had 250g total levain. I used 180g in this dough as it was halved.
I did not knead the dough when mixing, just incorporating the flour and the water until no dry bits. Took about 1min. The after mixing in levain and salt I did a very standard stretch and fold every 20-30 min. First fold was ten minutes after mixing in the levain and salt. The dough temp after mixing was 26C.
That all looks good. The only things left to tweak/adjust are hydration and fermentation, just as suave mentioned, which we all must do until we get those two things to match our local conditions: flour, water, starter, temperatures.
Thank you very much. Your advice is much appreciated! I will try to lower the hydration when I mix the dough for another try again tomorrow and be mindful about the fermentation as well.
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So to conclude this post. I made the same dough yesterday. Lowered the hydration to 72%. Everything else remained the same. I shaped the bread when the dough had increased to just over twice its initial volume. The shaping was a walk in the park this time around. I think I could have shaped it a bit tighter though.
Anyways, a remarkable result for me. My best loaf to this date. Thanks everyone for your help and advice.
Definitely much better result that you can be proud of. Nice job Terje.
Benny
Thank you very much Benny!
Hi Terje and the experts on this thread,
I have also started baking (using Tartine's basic country bread recipe), and my loaves look exactly like Terje's 1st picture. Delish, but vexingly flat. I'll try reducing water content, but there are 2 things I wanted to understand if you don't mind sharing your experiences:
Thank you :)
Hello Gwen. I would love to help you but I do not have the experience to answer your questions with confidence. I hope someone else are able to help you, or perhaps make another thread as this is possibly dormant now :)
The only thing I want to say is that my shaping was much much easier when i lowered the hydration. As you can see in the second picture the result was a lot better as well. Every thing else in the process remained the same, so I think the reason for my flat loaf in the first picture was due to terrible shaping with no structure what so ever. Hope this helps.
Terje
Thank you Terje,
I appreciate your getting back to me :) I tried a loaf at 75% hydration instead of the 80% in Tartine's recipe, and it was night and day! Shaping worked exactly like in all those YouTube videos, I was able to score the loaf, and it has good oven spring. It tasted great, though not as extraordinary as my early flat but incredibly flavored loaves. So I'll just practice patiently and slowly increase the hydration until I get the results I want!
Kind regards,
Gwen