something is very wrong - poolish high hydration
For years now I've been trying to bake a bread using a poolish pre-ferment. From what I've read, the poolish is all I need to ferment the dough, but every time I do this, the bread never properly rises and is very slack despite having excellent gluten strength (window pane test passes with flying colors), and I'm not over or under-proofing (poke test is such that the indent bounces back within a few seconds).
When I add more yeast in addition to the poolish, I get slightly better results, but the final dough still doesn't hold itself up, but due to the extra yeast, I get a bit more oven spring.
When I do a normal bake (1% yeast, 2% salt, 70% hydration with 14% protein flour, ~3hr bulk ferment with stretch-and-folds every 30mins for 3-4 times, then shaping and into a banneton for another 30-45mins proofing), I get a decent loaf, although nowhere near the oven spring that most people get (using both baking steel and steam from ice in a hot pan AND in a dutch oven), so I think there must be something fundamentally wrong with my setup or my ingredients. Can someone help me?
- 14% protein Caputo Manitoba flour (also have tried with their Cuoco "long ferment" 13%, Pizzeria and Nuvola 12.5%, as well as various flours both regular and whole wheat that are local to me, varying from 11-16% protein)
- Caputo Lieveto dry yeast (have also tried with fresh yeast, tripling the amounts)
- local tap water is rather high in calcium carbonate content (Kalk in German - for example water leaves a chalky residue in a container that has been heated up and the water evaporates)
- kitchen is ~18°C (and I've tried doing bulk-ferment and proofing in my 4°C fridge, but never both for one bake)
- plastic tupperware bowls with lids for making poolish/bulk ferment, banneton with towel over the top for proofing
- 0.1% yeast, 100g flour, 100% hydration for poolish
- poolish at ~18°C for 12-24hrs (I always make sure it hast the bubbly consistency and hasn't over-fermented and lost its bubbles)
- mix the poolish with another 100g of slightly warm water and another 200g of flour (66% hydration total) and 2% iodized sea salt (I air on the lower side, so ~1.9-2%). I have als used non-iodized sea salt AND iodized table salt, but to no effect
- add in more water as needed to hydrate the entire dough, taking me to ~70% hydration
- 3-4hr bulk ferment with 3-4 stretch-and-folds every 30mins. Lid closed and something heavy on top to prevent air from getting in
- dump dough out onto Caputo Semola semolina flour, degas any big bubbles, then I TRY to fold it into either a ball for circular banneton or log for oblong banneton (for oblong I've tried folding over itself in thirds and then rolling lengthwise as well as doing the "diaper fold" and then rolling), and here is where I notice that the dough does not hold itself up. I get it rolled up and it just "melts" back down into a pancake. I end up having to fold and tuck and roll a few times to get enough tension for me to transfer for a banneton
- covered banneton for 45-60mins while oven heats up
- then either...
- dump out onto a baking steel
- try to score it (it's flopped out into a pancake so it's rather hard to do so)
- add boiling water to a cast-iron pan in the bottom of the oven
- put at tray above the dough to help trap in steam
- then bake at 100°C for 15mins without fan (heard high-hydration doughs like lower temps with steam for oven spring)
- then remove the cast-iron pan and tray above and bake at 230°C until done (usually 25-35mins)
- OR
- dump gently with use of my hand into a dutch oven
- try to score
- lid on at 250°C for 20mins
- lid off 250°C for another 15-30mins until done
But as I said, the problem seems to be before the baking part. My thoughts are:
- kitchen too cold
- too little/too much yeast
- too little/too much poolish
- too short/too long fermentation times
- poor quality water
- plastic somehow messing up reaction
- lid not tight enough during fermentation so air gets in
- using bowl instead of square container (most videos I see have people using square glass containers for bulk ferment)
Thanks in advance
Steve said:
"When I do a normal bake (1% yeast,..."
"0.1% yeast, 100g flour, 100% hydration for poolish..."
With 300g flour, that would be either 3g of yeast, or .3g. Is the second amount a typo?
I meant a normal bake as in no poolish:
1% yeast, 70% hydration
and that works good enough, but still never get as much oven spring as desired.
When I do with a poolish, the poolish gets only 0.1% yeast and 100% hydration, so:
and then I add another 100g of water, 200g of flour and 2% salt (6g since flour is 300g total)
hope that makes sense
1% for fresh yeast and 1/3rd of that for dry yeast.
The final dough will need extra yeast or it'll take a very long time to rise.
You mention how long you'll bulk ferment for but not the state of the dough after the bulk ferment. Watch the dough and not the clock. Bulk ferment till doubled.
I've read both on this forum and in many other places that the longer the poolish ferments, the lower the yeast. So fresh yeast 1% would, according to what I've read, imply ~9hrs fermentation time. I like to go as long as possible, up to a whole day, so I go very low.
As for adding more yeast to the final dough - I've tried that as well, doing 1% dry yeast of the additional flour (so 2g for the 200g flour in my case), but the dough still is gloopy and melts and can't hold itself up. Plus all the best loaves I've seen have been done without any extra yeast into the final dough. But I have seen people do both. Is there some kind of definitive source on this?
As for "double in size" I've NEVER had this happen EVER for ANY DOUGH of mine (although it's tough to tell in opaque tupperware, so maybe it does). I don't know if it's the rather cold temperature or the hard water or because I use a plastic bowl or because European ingredients are so much different than American or maybe the fluoride in the US water makes things go different, but any kind of dough I've ever made has never doubled in size. A poolish will get these tiny bubbles on the surface and that's how I know it's done. If I wait much longer than that, the bubbles pop and I'm left with basically grain alcohol. For final doughs, I know it's done when some large bubbles form and it feels homogenous when I jiggle it, if that makes sense.
@tpassin recommended filtered water, so I'm trying that right now. If that doesn't work, then I'll try increasing yeast to 0.3% yeast for poolish but no added yeast to final dough, and if that doesn't work, then also to the final dough. I just gotta go through and isolate the factor that seems to be the problem. Thanks for you help thus far!
Why does it have to be one whole day? Why not till optimal time? Have you tried using 1% fresh yeast or equivalent dry yeast for the recommended amount of time?
as you said, the time is not really the ultimate tell. I've tried fresh yeast and two different brands of dried yeast over the past 4 years or so, and have seen what fermenting poolish for too long looks like. The thing is, I get really tasty bread when I use a poolish, but it is just so soupy and never holds itself up despite very strong gluten (as measured by window-pane test: I can stretch it very hard and very thin without tearing).
I'll post some pics of the poolish tomorrow when I consider it "ready", and you can tell me if I'm reading it wrong.
The "whole day" poolish idea came from YouTuber Brian Lagerstrom who said "175g of water, 175g of flour, and a pinch/20-30 granules of dry yeast. Let sit covered for 12-24 hours - the longer the better/tastier. But even if you can only do a few hours, it's better than nothing". I used that as my basis for experimenting with poolish, and I quickly found out what over-fermented poolish was like: no bubbles extremely soupy, smells like a distillery. From then on I was just going by look: lots of little bubbles on the surface. I'll post a pic tomorrow and we can see if maybe I'm over-fermenting my poolish. Could be!
As a point of reference I have made white breads with 1/4 - 1/2 tsp of dry yeast, to try to simulate the development times of a sourdough starter. Normally one would use a package of yeast, around 2 tsp, so these small amounts of yeast are much smaller. These doughs would ferment for 10 - 12 hours, as I recall, at kitchen temperatures around 72 deg F/22C. The dough never became slack, and acted pretty much like my normal sourdough loaves. These loaves used 100% US all-purpose flour. The flavor was better than the usual dry yeast-fermented breads.
So using a small amount of yeast can work. But if your poolish has very high hydration, it will develop more quickly.
Another thing I've done is to take half the flour and mix it into a dough with no yeast or starter, and let it rest for 12 to 24 hours. Then I combined it into the final dough with more flour, starter, and water. The long, hydrated rest of the unleavened flour also improved the flavor and did not degrade the dough.
So again, longish fermentations and rests are very feasible, but maybe not with your water and flour.
More yeast but let it develop in the fridge.
I agree with Tom... Keep it simple. Find a no fuss plain recipe, get a good loaf out of it and build on that.
If the water doesn't help, then I would try going for a shorter development time for the poolish, with more yeast. I had not really taken in how long you are keeping the poolish. Normally I like doing that myself - go for a long development - because I think it improves the flavor. But It's possible to go too long and have the dough start to degrade.
As for your doughs "never doubling", that's a surprise because I routinely get them doubling or even tripling in bulk fermentation. You speculated about European vs US flours, and that could be a factor. I live in the US and have only used US flours (except for some Italian type 00), but I know that standard US baking flours have added diastatic malt or the enzyme equivalent. I understand the European flours often don't. This subject has come up on other TFL threads, and there are many TFLers who are much more qualified to address this than I.
As I see things at this point, you have two symptoms. You get very slack dough, and you don't see nearly as much rise as many others do, whether during bulk fermentation or final proofing. You have three conditions that differ from what some others have: cooler kitchen temperatures, European flours, and the water which contains a high concentration of minerals.
Given these things, I suggest returning to as simple a bread production as possible. Leave off of very long poolish development times until you know you can produce a satisfactory bread without it. Start with plain yeasted bread with your flours and a normal amount of yeast. See if you can get good behavior in reasonable development times - knowing that the times may be longer because of your temperatures, If the dough is still slack, reduce the hydration.
If you can't get good results even with filtered water and these simpler breads, try changing flours and adding a little diastatic malt if you can get any, You want to get more yeast activity in a shorter time, and that may help.
When that is working, introduce a poolish but in a much smaller amount of inoculation and a greater amount of yeast. When that is working, you can move up to larger inoculations and then less yeast.
In other words, try to get the simplest thing working, and then modify it step by step in the direction you want to go.
Let us know how it's going, what is working and what isn't.
Thanks for all the great input thus far! I've been lurking this community for a while and finally decided I had to post and use the wisdom of the crowd.
As promised, here is my poolish after 12hrs of fermentation, which I consider "not yet ready":
And then here after 16hrs:
Then I added 100g of filtered, room-temp water:
Then I added 6g of idoized sea salt (2% baker's percentage, as total flour is 300g) and 200g of my Manitoba flour:
But to me it seemed too dry, so I added another 10g of water, bringing it up to an even 70% hydration. I hand-mixed t get every last bit of flour hydrated and make sure there are no clumps. Here is the final dough:
Now I'm on to bulk ferment with 3-4 stretch-and-folds every 30mins. Will post pics of window-pane test and final shaping and proofing later. But would you guys consider the steps I took up to now to be "normal"?
So far so good!
Wait until doubled before shaping. Take photos of when you think the bulk ferment is done too.
it already felt tighter during stretch-and-folds. Here is my window-pane test after 2hrs of bulk ferment, doing stretch-and-fold 4x, every 30mins:
and then I let it ferment for another hour. I've got some bubbling happening, the dough feels pretty firm and homogenous when I jiggle it. I might let it go for another hour. We'll see. Maybe the filtered water is doing the trick. I would love to see if it can double in size, though:
Will make it difficult to judge doubling unless it's in a clear straight sided container. Of the dough jiggles that's a good sign.
I let it ferment another hour and got a bit more bubbly?
another-hour-ferment.jpg
Then I poured it out onto a semolina-flour worksurface
see video at my personal website: https://miketheburns.com/bread/pouring.mp4
Then I put into a banneton:
shaped.jpg
and here's the jiggle: https://miketheburns.com/bread/jiggle.mp4
I covered with a cloth and let proof for an hour:
proof.jpg
after an hour of proofing, there's no real rise to speak of, and it seems real soupy: https://miketheburns.com/bread/1hr-proof.mp4
I'm afraid if I try to bake it now, I'll get another flat loaf. Should I proof it overnight in the fridge? Or let it go on the counter for another few hours? Or did I over-ferment/proof already?
It looks too soupy. Not much you can do now besides for baking it.
I'd like to see the crumb after it has been baked.
Something is not right...
I'd say go even simpler. Skip the poolish, drop the hydration to 60% and knead the dough for a good 10 minutes till full gluten formation then bulk ferment.
Your banneton can get more dough in it and it'll be better support...
as I said in my original post, normal bread seems to have no problems, apart from slightly lower oven spring. It's only when I get into long fermentation times and pre-ferment that things start to break down. I'll bake it in a bread pan to see if maybe we can get some semblance of structure out of it.
ok... I put it in a pan and attempted to score it
scored-in-pan.jpg
then baked until the top was a decent dark brown
baked.jpg
but the underside blew out and the scoring didn't help
baked-bottom.jpg
and the inside is hollow and not done.
crumb.jpg
Onto the next test, which will be adding extrea yeast to the final dough. I've done that before, but never got amazing results and still don't understand why adding more yeast is necessary if I'm using a poolish.
Question: when adding yeast to the final mixture, should I do 1% dry yeast of the added flour or of the total flour? I'm adding 200g to the 100g that's in the poolish, so should I go for 2 or 3g of dry yeast?
Very little fermentation has gone on. I think before you do anything else test your yeast.
In a small container dissolve some sugar in some warm water then mix in a teaspoon of yeast. Leave it for 10 minutes and report back with results including photos.
so I mixed 1tsp sugar and 1tsp dry yeast into 130g of water:
sugar-yeast.jpg
then stirred:
sugar-yeast-mixed.jpg
then waited 10 minutes:
sugar-yeast-10min.jpg
Then I didn't want this to go to waste, so I mixed it in with my 100% hydration 0.1% dry yeast 100g flour poolish that had been going for 14hrs at this point. I also added another 240g of flour, making my final dough:
Then after another 3hrs of bulk fermentation with 3 stretch-and-folds for the first 1.5hrs, I shaped and proofed it.
I did a poke and jiggle test and have them as video, but my webserver is down right now so I can post them later if desired. Basically the pokes came back after ~5-7 seconds and it jiggled homogenously and wasn't soupy like the last bread I made.
Seemed aduequately proofed so I put it in the dutch oven and scored it:
scored.jpg
then baked it for 20mind lid on, 10mins lid off. Here are the results:
baked.jpg
crumb.jpg
So obviously when I add yeast to the final dough in addition to the poolish, I get perfectly acceptable results (although the oven spring is better since it was in a dutch oven. Just on a baking steel with some steam would probably not have been as good). And this is EXACTLY what I mean: most sources say that you shouldn't need any extra yeast and the poolish should be fine. Namely, @tpassin said in this comment that he doesn't use any extra yeast. But some sources, like @Jimatthelake says in this comment, he always adds yeast to the final dough. So I'm just not sure what is the "right way" to do it to achieve maximum fermentation/flavor and hydration/open crumb.
PS Happy Christmas/Boxing Day, everyone!
Good, you are making progress.
So I'm just not sure what is the "right way" to do it to achieve maximum fermentation/flavor and hydration/open crumb.
There isn't one right way, not even with the same water and flour.
What you have shown is that your poolish doesn't have enough rising power, and that somehow it has a property that degrades the flour when you mix up the dough - or that your flour cannot stand up to the long fermentation times that are needed with the weak poolish.
You didn't say how long you proofed it for, but the time for the bulk ferment sounds normal for that amount of yeast and flour.
Since your poolishes with 0.1% yeast aren't active enough, you could go up to say 0.5%. See how long that takes to become nicely active, and then see if the bread dough rises well before it gets soupy. Your goal should be to get something working well, then start to adjust it for less yeast and more fermentation time.
Some ways to extend the fermentation time of the dough, with the goal of getting more flavor -
1. Degas and stretch the dough when it has fermented to the point that it is fairly gassy. If your flour is good and your poolish/starter/yeast is active enough it will be able to undergo another fermentation period after this.
2. After your poolish has fermented long enough to become fairly active, refrigerate it for a day or two before using it to make your dough.
3. Refrigerate your dough during or after bulk ferment. It doesn't make much difference when during the ferment you do this, though it's probably best to let it become active and gassy first. It you refrigerate the dough before it is done with bulk ferment, make sure to let it warm up and finish before shaping a loaf.
4. Refrigerate the shaped loaf before it has quite finished proofing.
All these variations will promote more flavor. They may bring out some more sourness, which may or may not be what you want. You just have to try and see.
Lovely crumb. Looks delicious!
Yes, one shouldn't have to add any extra yeast to a final dough with a poolish but it takes a lot longer than expected to rise. So perhaps it's just a timing issue?
If you don't wish to add any extra yeast to the final dough then why not increase the flour percentage of the poolish?
Let's say you pre-ferment 50% of the total flour...
Total Recipe:
Poolish:
Now take a look at the table from this website: https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/more-artisan-bread-baking-tips-poolish-biga/
Poolish up to 8 hours in advance – 0.23% – 0.33% = 0.58g - 0.83g for 250g flour
Poolish up to 12 hours in advance – 0.1% – 0.2% = 0.25g - 0.63g for 250g flour
Poolish up to 16 hours in advance – 0.03% – 0.08% = 0.075g - 0.2g for 250g flour
Also see what a poolish looks like when ready.
Then add the rest of the ingredients to the poolish and expect it to take a long time. If you don't wish to wait too long then perhaps add an extra half teaspoon to the final dough.
You know, your pictures almost look like glass bread dough!
So we still have several symptoms, although it seems as if the water change may have helped some but not enough.
1. The dough is strong enough after a few hours of bulk, as shown by the window pane test.
2. The dough never looks active enough, to judge by your pictures.
3. The dough seems to collapse into a soup or at least thin dough before seeming to proof enough.
The picture of the dough after mixing but before you added another 10g of water doesn't look right to me. Yes, the dough looks dry but it shouldn't. This makes me think it should have been kneaded by hand more, to get all the flour incorporated better. Possibly it would not have needed that extra 10g of water.
The amount of yeast you put into the poolish seems very small to me. I have dug out some data I measured on a 100% hydration poolish back in 2009. The temperature was probably around 75 deg F/24C. The table is for volume vs time: The amount of flour is 3 oz or about 90g, close to what you used.
Poolish 2009
3 oz flour, 3 ox water, 1/4 tsp yeast
time, min volume, ml remarks
0 130 lumpy, hard to read volume accurately.
60 160 smoother, top nearly flat, easier to read.
90 210
120 250
150 260
220 300
285 320
330 325
Notice that the poolish rose by about 2 1/2 in 5 1/2 hours. What came next will probably surprise you. I stirred the poolish, which reduced the volume nearly back to the starting point.
0 140 Hard to read accurately because of domed top and lumps
15 200
30 250
45 320
80 425
120 440
170 410 sinking
The total cumulative fermentation time has been 8+ hours
Notice that it rose much faster after the stirring and ran out of steam by the end.
I didn't use this poolish for baking anything so I can't say how well it worked. But the available nutrients seem to be mostly used up.
Oh, yes, this was using US malted all-purpose flour and fairly hard well water. The 1/4 tsp of yeast would be 3/4 = 0.75g. This is in line with Abe's practice of using 1g yeast for 100g flour. You can see why I said your 0.1g seems small. Also, your temperature was much lower, so development would have slowed down by that as well as the small amount of yeast.
Based on all of this, I would recommend the following unless you want to go all the way back to using no or a minimal poolish (and we still don't know if the flour is a factor).
1. Plan on using a shorter bulk fermentation time than you were originally planning (no more 19 hour ferments at this point);
2. Use 1g yeast with 100g flour and water for the poolish;
3. Stir the poolish after say four hours;
At this point, if it were following my data, you should see the poolish doubling in volume in less than an hour. If you can't raise the fermenting temperature, obviously it will take longer. It could be that the 100% hydration poolish, being rather thin, just can't retain the gas over a much longer time. This should not affect its performance after mixing into the final dough. We can also see that if the poolish is left *too* long, it starts to lose its rising ability.
4. Mix the final dough. Don't add water if it can be avoided. Target 65% overall hydration. Mix thoroughly by hand and don't add any more water unless absolutely necessary; Add 1% yeast during mixing.
Try to do the bulk fermentation in a bowl or container where you can see through the sides. You will be looking for bubble growth, which can often be seen through the side before it appears on the top. As bulk fermentation time goes on, even if the surface doesn't seem too active you should see cavities growing larger through the side.
5. Allow 1/2 hour rest before a hand knead/stretch session.
6. Continue with S&Fs as you did before.
7. Once you see signs of cavities growing well, shape and proof a loaf even if the dough has not doubled (although it may well do so).
8. Bake
If after this your dough still turns to soup or the loaf doesn't rise in the oven, we'll have to think about changing your flour, adding diastatic malt, getting new yeast, or some other big change. Abe's suggestion about the yeast is a good idea. Just get some new packages and use it for your next bake.
TomP
thanks for the detailed reply!
my takeaways and questions:
It was 1% fresh yeast or 1/3rd of that for dried yeast.
The thing is, you're trying to do several things but they aren't working out. Yes, you want 70% hydration, but 65% or 63% will have less of a problem with getting too thin. Yes, you want a longer fermentation time but it's not working so start with a much shorter one and work your way back to longer ones.
When I make a loaf of let's say 65% hydration sourdough bread, planning on 300g of flour, I will take 25% or 30% of my starter (which is 100% hydration), 195g of water (65% of the 300g), and the 2% salt and mix them all together. Yes, the water and flour in the starter raise the hydration by a few percent, but I don't care. I know it's going to happen and I know the dough will be fine.
A 100% poolish is no different from a 100% starter in terms of what it contributes to the flour and water. Strictly speaking, if you want to look at the total hydration, 90g of starter (a 30% inoculation) adds 45g water and 45g flour, so the total is (195 + 45)/(300 + 45) = 240/345 = 69% hydration. That's fine, I know the dough will be easy to work with and make fine bread.
Normally I wouldn't add yeast besides the poolish any more than I use yeast when I use starter. I only suggested it because you haven't been getting much rising activity. Yes, the extra yeast will speed up fermentation, and yes, longer fermentation times will promote better flavor. But they aren't working for you right now.
Maybe a new purchase of yeast will do the trick. If so, you can start moving your hydration and yeast in the direction of your goals.
That last picture looks pretty wet to me. Hard to tell with pictures, of course. It's true the previous picture before you added water looked a bit dry, but often that will change after the dough has a rest. Next time, I would not add that final water but work harder to incorporate all the flour with hand mixing, then give the dough a half hour rest. After that you will be able to assess better whether more water should be added.
Add it slowly, since I find it easy to over-do and end up with dough that is wetter than I had in mind. And you can always work in a little more during stretch-and-fold sessions.
great advice! My end goal is to get to get to "pan de cristal" levels. I love big open crumb and that's kinda the reason I got into baking my own bread, since the stuff we get here in Germany is generally spelt (Dinkel) bread and not a lot of good baguettes or ciabattas or such.
You can see by my newest photos that perhaps indeed there was something in the water that was affecting the fermentation as it's looking and feeling a lot better now. And really 66% or 70% hydration shouldn't have that much of an effect on gluten development and oven spring. Fingers crossed!
But going forward, what is a general recommendation to get up to, say, 90% hydration? Do 70% and then add the other 20% during bulk fermentation?
I have made pan de cristal several times, both yeasted and sourdough. The main trick, if you call it that, is to learn how to handle the dough and give it stretch&folds. In fact, I thought of glass bread when I read your first posts in this thread. There are some decent videos online about making glass bread.
And really 66% or 70% hydration shouldn't have that much of an effect on gluten development and oven spring.
It might make a difference in how wet and slack the dough feels, though. If you are heading towards really high hydration, once you are able to get decent handling and results - like if the water does the trick - watch some videos and try making glass bread. It will change your bread-making life, because you will no longer fear working with most any kind of dough. That's how it worked for me.
To me the poolish in this picture does not look done. I am also not certain your fermentation time is long enough. Looking at my notes 1/3 of flour in poolish translates to ~3 hour fermentation, and that's at 22 °C with 0.4% of dry yeast in the final dough. The bread in your crumb photo definitely looks underfermented.
I am not sure what your level of experience is but would consider two things. One, try a 60-70% sponge instead of poolish, they are somewhat more obvious. If you want to use poolish consider using a clear jar, so that you can better see what's going on. Don't be afraid to ferment it longer - to me the poolish is ready when it looks foamy, and the bubbles are popping. It's ok if it sags a little bit. I would probably increase yeast load a little bit too. Two, I would put some yeast in the dough. May be ~0.5 g dry for this recipe. You can always get rid of it later, once you get it working.
Well, the kitchen temperature is fairly cool for those fermentation and proofing times. But you said you got some gas bubbles. If the dough was seriously under-fermented, then it should not be slack. It might not rise much during baking, but it should hold its shape well.
None of those other possibilities you've listed would cause the dough to be so slack except perhaps for the water. It must be very full of minerals if it leaves deposits like that. I would try some water that doesn't have that degree of hardness. Not distilled water (some people seem to have had poor results with it though I've never tried it). Perhaps bottled "drinking" water. Or get a filtering pitcher and see if that cuts down the deposits. If it does, use the water from it.
I would also try cutting down on the hydration. Never mind that many people use 70% all the time (I do myself). Cut back to say 60% and see if that dough is stiff enough to hold a shape.
I also suggest baking a loaf in a loaf pan, to see if it comes out with a normal texture. If it does, that would show that the fermentation/proofing has been long enough. That would be worth knowing. If the pan loaf is dense, it's will be harder to know why, since it could be something else beside the yeast and fermentation.
TomP
I just found this passage (see https://hannainst.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/water-hardness-and-baked-goods-production/):
This seems to go in the opposite direction of your experience, but it does confirm that the calcium carbonate amount in your water could have a large effect on the dough development and handling properties.
I've ordered a comprehensive water test kit and will see what we've got gonig on here. I'm originally from rural-ish USA where well water was the norm, but have lived in a big European city now for 15 years, and it seems the norm that people in big European cities have really hard water, but I've never heard anyone speak of water issues. Will be interesting to see how good/bad my water is.
is 272ppm! And i'm not experiencing the same issue. The dough seems to build up good gluten structure and ferment well.
Try putting in a little lemon juice into the dough. Some time back the UK had a bad crop of wheat due to bad weather and breads weren't turning out. The advice was to add about a tablespoon of lemon juice to a 900g dough and helped.
So as well as my suggestion to keep it simple (see recipe above). Perhaps add in some lemon juice.
Too much water and/or weak starter. The first is the easiest to fix - the latter could take some time. Enjoy!
Exactly what kind of yeast are you using? How old is it, and how have you stored it? Knowing this might help ID the problem.
When I bake bread I usually use "Amy's Bread" recipe for Rustic Italian. I make 2 large pan loaves with a total dough weight of about 1700 g to 1750. I begin with a 100% hydtation poolish which is fermented over night in the refrigerator after an hour counter rise. When I pull the poolish from the refrigerator in the morning, I let it set and come to temp for about 3 hours in my kitchen. The poolish consists of 227g AP flour (11 % protien) and 227g H2O. and 1/4 t. instant yeast. (my scale only reads in full grams, but I guess 1t. equals 4.5g.
I do not expect the poolish to leaven my dough. It's just there to create flavor. I mix my 76% hydration dough using the poolish, bread flour (12.7-13.0% protien), and water. and 1.5 t additional instant yeast. I usually let the dough ferment for 2.5-3 hrs which about doubles the dough volume.
I'm not here to tell you what your recipe should be, but simply remind everyone that the dough is mostly levened by new yeast when it's mixed. I maintained a starter for several years, but could not get reliable bake results, and finally just gave up and went to using starters like poolish, biga, etc. for flavor, and instant yeast for reliability.
Your photos look to me like you have too little yeast working for you, and your dough looks under kneaded. I suggest you make you poolish so it represents about 1/4 of the finished dough, and that you add a good bit of yeast when you mix the finished dough. I let my mixed dough sit for about 20 min. before I add the salt inorder to help the flour hydrate.
The big holes you like in your bread come from high hydration, and minimal dough handling after it's mixed. Good luck. Jim
Is there a reason you are trying to exclude air? I realize that yeast fermentation is mostly an anaerobic process, but it seems that you are going to great lengths to keep the air out. I don't know if it would make a difference, but you could try to loosely cover the container instead of sealing it.
My water is also hard and I also don't have this issue with yeast-risen doughs. Another way to mitigate the effect of hard water is to dilute it with some distilled water. You retain some minerals that are necessary for the dough, but not so much as to have a negative effect. I do this for brewing coffee. The extraction is more efficient with the lower mineral content, but the flavor is not affected by using distilled water.
early on in my bread-baking journey I wasn't seeing proper gluten development in my doughs. At the time I was using different, weaker flour, but still everything came up super soupy (like pancake batter) and never getting and bubbles developing. Except when I made a larger batch in my larger tupperware container: then I had awesome bread. The difference between the two containers was that the smaller one didn't have as tight-fitting a lid. I read that letting in too much air killls the reaction, so since then I put something heavy on top of the lid and have had much better results.
Another factor in doing this was that 99% of all videos and recipes you find online say "cover tightly with plastic wrap..." and I'm big against creating unnecessary waste (especially plastic), so figured tupperware should suffice, and hopefully putting something heavy on top should prevent air from getting in/out better, and hopefully on the same level plastic wrap does.
However I have read one comment on here where user @mwilson said "above all else the poolish must be exposed to the air!" which is something I DID try when I read that some years ago, but I had no bubbles in my poolish and it over-fermented, so I didn't attempt it again. I do live in a rather dry climate (footsteps of the alps), and dry air is a big problem, especially in winter, so maybe that plays a role? I think this is definitely worth more investigation on my part.
I used to cover my bulk ferment container with plastic wrap laid on top. I reuse the sheet of wrap over and over. I cover my free-standing loaves with a sheet of plastic wrap during proofing, and again I use it over and over. So it's not so much of an environmental problem.
Lately I'm using a fermentation tub that has its own cover, so I use that.
You need some kind of cover so the surface of the dough doesn't dry out. My bread always seems pretty satisfactory when I cover it with plastic or use the snap-on lid, so I don't think that being airtight is important. Anyway, if the container is really airtight, the pressure increase as CO2 is released during fermentation is likely to pop the cover off and vent some of the extra CO2.
Also fermentation occurs largely in anaerobic conditions, so you don't want to allow much air in - although I don't know how much air would be able to diffuse very far into the dough if it were left completely exposed to air. Larger amounts of dough would be less subject to this effect since they have less surface relative to the volume, and the interior is mostly farther away from the surface.
I do live in a rather dry climate (footsteps of the alps), and dry air is a big problem
Do you mean alps as in the European Alps? I used to live at an altitude of 6000 ft/1800m in the US (New Mexico). My little house was very dry in the winter but I don't recall having any difficulties making sourdough bread. The kitchen was cooler than in the summer so fermentation would take longer, otherwise no differences.