French T65 flour for sourdough
Hello everyone!
I'm new here and to the sourdough journey. I live in France and have been attempting to bake a sourdough with French flour. Do you guys have any advice on that? I've been trying T65 - Farine de blé Label Rouge T65, Coeur de Blé (1 kg) and can't get the hang of that. I haven't baked a well-rised sourdough bread yet.
That's the ingredients: Farine de BLÉ, GLUTEN DE BLE, farine de BLÉ malté, enzymes. It has 11% of protein.
The recipe I used for a 68% hydration bread:
Active Starter: 84.8g (at 80% hydration)
Filtered Water: 267.28g
Salt: 9.29g
Bread Flour: 400g (T65)
My bread comes back flat all the time. I feed my starter with the same flour at 80% hydration, because at 100% it gets runny.
I have a Reddit post about my last attempt with photos and all:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sourdough/comments/1exa30c/losing_hope_advice/
Thank you so much for any advice in advance!
If you want help you need to supply more information. And no, I'm not going to read your reddit post. I'm not a member, for one thing.
Runny starters suggest they have been fermented much too long. They weren't runny when they were mixed, and they shouldn't have been runny when they were ready to use.
"Comes back flat" - do the loaves hold their shape when turned out and ready to score? Or do they spread out sideways at that time? Or do they not spread out sideways but not rise in the oven either?
How long was the bulk ferment and what did the dough look look like at the end? How long did the shaped loaf proof for?
TomP
My starter is runny when I feed it at 100% hydration with bread T65 flour. It doesn't become runny a few hours later, it is from the beginning. That's why I feed it at 80%.
Here's my process: I started mixing ingredients at 13:30. I did 2 sets of stretch and folds and 3 sets of coil folds. All 30 min apart. And I put it in a container for bulk fermentation. Around 20:30-21:00, I preshaped it by slightly laminating the dough. Left it for 30 min to rest. The dough was holding its form nicely but failed the windowpane test. Then I shaped it to a final boule, put it in a bowl, waited 10 min and pinched the sides to create more pressure inside. And around 22:00 I put it to rest in a fridge for about 30 hours. Before scoring the loaf was very nice and round, holding its shape. Opened baked it at 250C with boiling water underneath and a sheet pan on top of it with some ice cubes in the breadpan, after 30 min removed it and baked for 30 more min. Let it rest on the counter for a couple of hours. Of all the breads I made, this one is the most decent but still flat and a bit gummy, especially the bottom of it.
If the starter is runny with T65 at 100%, that does seem to be a sign that the flour can't handle as much water as many US flours, as Paul suggested. I have a bag of French T65 and that's what I thought, too. It wasn't a big difference but there it was.
That picture seems to be before baking, and very fine it looks. Your whole process up to baking sounds pretty standard. I don't think the "failure" of the window pane test is the problem here because if the dough really were too weak, it should have shown signs of tearing and (I presume, not having seen the baked image) it doesn't.
So probably it's about the baking. I've never baked with a sheet pan on top or with ice cubes in the pan. I also don't know if you are using a baking steel or stone, which would probably help if you aren't already. Normally I would say that 250C would be too hot for a loaf of that size but the sheet pan on top changes things. It would also prevent most of the steam you are generating from reaching the loaf.
When you pour water into the pan at the bottom, a lot of steam is generated, and the temperature in the lower part of the oven is lowered drastically. It doesn't recover very fast. That's why a steel is helpful - it stores a lot of heat and keeps pumping that heat into the bottom of the loaf even though the temperature underneath has dropped.
With a sheet pan on top, the loaf isn't going to warm up very quickly. That's often a good thing and no doubt why the method is sometimes suggested. What we're looking for, as best I understand things, is to raise the loaf temperature enough to generate and expand gas and maybe steam while keeping the crust soft enough that it can expand. If the crust were to stay soft too long, it might sag sideways as the interior keeps expanding - the interior will be a gel that can flow or, better, ooze easily at this stage (don't ask me how I know!).
So we have to achieve a compromise between keeping the crust soft and preventing a sag if the crust doesn't set soon enough. I doubt that you have been seriously over-fermenting the loaf (so it runs out of oomph in baking) or your ready-to-be-baked loaf wouldn't look as fine as it does. So try changing something about the baking. I'd suggest putting the sheet pan under the pan the bread is in (for a little more heat capacity), and keep the steam generation underneath. Don't use ice cubes. See how these changes work out. They might not fix the problem but you should ,earn enough to move on from there.
TomP
This what I wrote in my notes after I made my first loaf from the imported French T65 flour I got a while ago:
I remember it as not wanting to absorb as much water as usual and the hydration of that bread was 65% including water and flour in the starter. That's about a few % lower than I would otherwise expect to use for that bread. There was also something different about how long it took to absorb all the water. I think I remember it took longer than my typical US flours.
This is, I think, a different miller's product from the you are using: "Le Moulin d'Auguste - ORGANIC Wheat Flour - T65". It is stated to be made from French wheat. Apparently some fours made in France are made with US (and I suppose Canadian) wheat.
Thank you so much!! I just ordered a Dutch oven. So the baking process should be fine for my next tests.
And I'll try to figure out the hydration level that this flour likes. Thank you again!
Unlike many of the Reddit commenters, I don't think that the bread was overfermented. The crust coloring and the crumb structure don't show traits that are typical of overfermentation.
What does appear to be an issue is that the flour can't handle the amount of water in the formula. While 68% isn't high hydration, it seems to be more than the flour can tolerate. You could try an experiment by making two new batches, one at 60% hydration and one at 65% hydration. Use the exact same process that you used for this batch so that hydration is the only variable. My guess is that you'll find the sweet spot for this flour is somewhere between 60% and 65% hydration.
I encountered a similar situation when I moved from the U.S. to South Africa in 2009. None of the flours were the same as U.S. flours so I tested a range of hydration levels just to see how the flour reacted to differing hydrations. That gave me a baseline for understanding how the dough would behave with different amounts of water in the dough.
Once you have a handle on the flour's tolerance for differing hydration levels, then you can decide whether or not you need to make other adjustments in your process.
Paul
Thank you so much, Paul! I'll definitely try with lower hydration.
Rather than amount of flour - look at the type of flour. Odds are it'll be weaker than US flour even though it'll have the same. Adjust for that type of flour. Enjoy!
This is from The Sourdough Framework, Hendrik Kleinwächter:
If you are just getting started with a new batch of flour, I recommend conducting the following test. This will help you to identify the sweet spot of your flour’s hydration capabilities. Make 5 bowls with each 100 g of flour. Add different slightly increasing water amounts to each of the bowls.
• 100 g of flour, 55 g of water
• 100 g of flour, 60 g of water
• 100 g of flour, 65 g of water
• 100 g of flour, 70 g of water
• 100 g of flour, 75 g of water
Proceed and mix the flour and water mixture until you see that there are no chunks of flour left. Wait 15 minutes and return to your dough. Carefully pull the dough apart with your hands. Your dough should be elastic, holding together very well. Stretch your dough until very thin. Then hold it against a light. You should be able to see through it. The flour-water mixture that breaks without seeing the windowpane is your no-go zone. Opt for a dough with less hydration than this value. You will know that your flour mix can go up to 65 % hydration, for instance. Use the leftovers of this experiment to feed your starter.
Thank you so much! I never thought of that! Will definitely try this experiment!
My first thoughts were to agree with Paul. It might be an hydration issue and the dough could be too wet.
Now I'm going to say please copy Fabrice! Here's his new pain au levain video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unuqs8MxLT4
As you can see in the video, his dough is pretty droopy. Way more sloppy than I get with South African flours. (Although, I seriously would like to get a bag of T65 to play with). Fabrice makes it look 'easy' to handle this sloppy dough and he manages to shape it just using his dough scraper. I tend to agree with the others though that 75% hydration is very high for T65, and you'll have a much easier time handling and shaping if you stick to the lower hydration you're currently using.
Personally, I wouldn't try using a mixer to mix the dough. Strictly hand mixing (petrissage a la main). In the past I've ruined some breads made with European flours in my mixer.
And, I do think the extra rye and T80 that he uses make for a more interesting bread but might also give you the extra stiffness which you can see in his video when he takes it out of the banneton for baking.
He does say to score and bake immediately. That is quite critical, so the dough doesn't get time to spread flat. And it also helps to go straight from the fridge to the dutch oven which means it will be cold and stiff.
Oh, and if you look carefully at his three breads, they do appear a little flatter than the breads you see on reddit. Not as flat as those in your post, but also not as tall and 'lofty' as you often see on reddit or instagram. A couple of things: (1) those internet show breads are made with 'strong' North American flours and (2) they're batards. I just get more loft with batards, it could be that my boule shaped bannetons are just flatter though.
Bon chance and keep us posted when you pull out those successful loaves!
-Jon
oh wow, thank you for the video, Jon!! what a find!