Dough losing strength during bulk fermentation
Just when i think i'm slowly understanding and hoping to improve......
Wednesday 3pm. Took starter out of fridge, fed 75% Bread Flour, 25% filtered water
Wednesday 9pm. removed all but 60g of starter ~50%, fed 55g flour, 110g water.
Thursday morning, it quadrupled.
mixed starter with some of the water from recipe about 60g with 160g of starter
mixed flour with water thoroughly. added starter, mixed thoroughly
added salt, mixed thoroughly.
probably 80% hydration.
let sit for 30min, slap and fold for about 8 min
let sit for 30 min, stretch and fold Good gluten, good window pane
let sit for 60 min, dough flattened out, so stretch and fold
let sit for 60 min, dough flattened out, stretch and fold . now dough seems very week, cannot window pane??
it has not risen yet, not sure what is happening
If, and it's a big if, the starter is ok, then it's gone to far. Any time you lose structure it's over. That is if it doesn't come back in a couple hours max. Lower time and/or levain. I should note it will change on ya for a couple months. Enjoy!
First off, not quite sure what you are baking, but 80% hydration seems fairly high to me for most sourdough breads. Maybe your dough is just too runny, not weak.
Also, looking at your starter routine, it goes pretty much against all that I do, perhaps you are using some technique I am not familiar with. But, from my experience, activating and feeding your starter should be done at the same flour to water percentages as the starter already is. You also want to "refresh" the starter, i.e., use little "old" starter to create a lot of "new" starter. I typically feed my starters about four to seven (sometimes even higher) times more flour (and the corresponding amount of water) than the weight of the starter. I would take, say, 10 g of starter and feed it with 50-70 g of flour plus as much water as the hydration of my starter.
Now, many recipes call for changing this initial hydration in consecutive preferments, but this applies to the preferments, not your "mother" starter. If you have a starter that sat a long time in the fridge, or one that has't been fed for a while, acid forming bacteria (there are two chief strains as far as I remember) start dominating the yeasts in the starter. One of these bacteria strains is responsible for creating (I think they do it as they die) an acid that breaks down gluten networks, so your gluten develops initially, but then disintegrates as those acids chew through the network strands. Drier wheat starters tend to have less of this problem, anyway, for a wheat starter I keep a 50% hydration starter and I typically feed/activate it at the ratio of "old" starter to flour (50/50 bread and whole wheat flour mix) to water of 1 : 5 : 2.5. This has worked fine for me for quite some time. My rye starter I keep at 100% hydration.
Now, if you use a dry or stiff levain the same as your starter, which is what I do for wheat breads, you have to remember to compensate for the amount of water most recipes assume you will have in a 100% hydration starter/levain. For example, if a recipe calls for 200 g of 100% hydration levain, and yours is only 50% hydration, you should use 150 g of your still levain and increase the amount of water in the recipe by 50 g. Stiff levain is hard to mix into the dough, so I usually add the 50 g of water directly to the stiff levain and blend them together using a small handheld blender.
One more note, this is perhaps unlikely, but if you overheat your wheat dough or starter (e.g., by adding water that is too hot) above 87℉ / 31℃ another gluten eating protein develops in the wheat dough or starter that can "eat up" your gluten network in a matter of minutes. This doesn't mean, don't add water over 87℉, it means, don't add water so hot that the resultant temperature of your dough or starter will reach 87℉ even for a short time.
Hope this helps.
87 degrees destroying gluten formation. I've never heard that before. Do you have a reference source? Are you talking about the dough getting too acidic?
I have never really questioned this idea, I got it from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDOfIAgyCy8 at 50 minutes 40 seconds (50:40) and just took it for granted. It made enough of an impression on me that I cared to paste it onto my Excel desired dough temperature template I have created for myself. Maybe some more research would be warranted, maybe I should experiment myself. In retrospect, because I have personally and thoroughly tested the validity of the stuff this guy, Tom Cucuzza, proposes in this video, I just assumed that he knows what he is talking about.
The 87 F thing is interesting. I only use 104 F water and haven’t seen any issues with the gluten structure of either my starter or doughs.
It’s a long video, but the OP source video for his temperature claim discounted the starting temperature of the initial water source. It was the resultant dough temperature that mattered.
But this is exactly what I meant! I see where the confusion came from, it was the unfortunate placement of the digression sentence in parenthesis: (...) if you overheat your wheat dough or starter (e.g., by adding water that is too hot) above 87℉ / 31℃ (...), the qualifier "above 87℉" is a continuation of the sentence before the parenthesis and not the continuation of the digression within the parenthesis. Perhaps a more fortunate wording would be: (...) if you overheat (e.g., by adding water that is too hot) your wheat dough or starter above 87℉ / 31℃ (...)
I often use water that is near, or above, 100℉, but not hot enough to bring the entire mixture above 87℉.
Right. That’s what I find interesting. For example, I made a 72% hydration dough last night. I used 40 C water and the temperature of the dough after mixing was 31 C, dropping down to 25 C ish an hour or so later. Maybe I’ll see if using cooler water makes a difference? Unfortunately my kettle only goes as low as 40 C.
If everything was working previously (which it sounds like it was working in your previous bakes), then you are looking for something that has changed.
I would start with the simplest--your water. Use a different source (bottle or other) for a bake and see what happens. If that is not the issue, then work on the other components one by one in a process of elimination.
Every time something happens in our catchment, my dough looses all strength.
Here is a way to solve your problem Heh Heh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QVy647FLFE
Salt is supposed to slow it down as well as cool autolyse temperatures of 67-72 degrees or lower.
Im following instructions to the letter
All white BF
Mix with water for couple min. Add starter mix for a couple min. Ad salt mix 5 min rest 10 continue till gluten develop
Then transfer to bulk container. P8nch off piece put in small glass container mark and use to track rise
30 to 40 min stretch and fold rest 30 to 40 continue till dough does not go flat. Continue bulk fermentation until piece in separate container doubles bubbles on top of bulk giggly and perform window pain
Preshape rest for 15 to 20 shape nice an taught. Transfer to ballonton put in fridge overnight for 13 hours or more.
Preheat oven to 500. Though internally thermometer reads 450 which is closer to what I wanted.
Lava rocks preheating. Pans on top rack to capture steam
Add rolled up dish towels soaked tlwith boiling water take Loaf out of fridge score spray a bit 9f water put in oven add ice to lava rocks. Bke 20 to 25 min uncover bake an additional 25 or so till goog colour.
Not getting rise or ear like I would expect.
20240203_112543.jpg
It's hard to sure, of course, but your loaf looks over-fermented to me. I say that partly based on the color, if the colors in the picture are close to that way they really look. There might not be enough sugars left to brown up well. Also, the way the slash opened looks to me like the dough just ran out of push during the first stage of baking. Still, not a bad-looking loaf.
Depending on how well your oven holds steam, you may never be able to get the dramatic slash and ear that some people do. I would suggest tossing a cup or 12oz of water on the lava rocks instead of tossing in ice cubes - it will generate a larger burst of steam. Just be careful doing it to avoid steam burns! Use a big oven mitten and keep your face back away from the oven opening.
I don't think you mentioned what kind of flour you are using. If it doesn't include diastatic malt or equivalent enzymes that might account for the apparent lack of sugars on the surface.
TomP
Poor oven spring would usually be an indication of overfermented (overproofed) dough. I used to get breads like yours until I figured out how the dough behaves at various stages of fermentation. How is your crumb? A picture might help pinpoint the issue.
Personally, I don't go off volume change of window pane, but off dough feel, but I guess that's hard to explain. Anyway, when I do S&F or coil folds, when my dough tenses up after the second stretch or fold out of four, I feel I am done working it. Then BF time will greatly depend on the temperature of the dough, but when it's all puffed up and feels kind of like a huge, springy marshmallow, tacky but not sticky, I divide and shape and proof. You can do the finger indent test to see if it's done proofing. I prefer to err on the under proofed side.
You might also want to try baking in a Dutch Oven, then you don't need so much steaming apparatus whose effectiveness is hard to assess. Inside a Dutch Oven, even if your oven uses a fan, the conditions are pretty good for a good oven spring.