Poolish sourdough tight dough structure?
Sourdough has always intimidated me, so I'm finally starting to tackle my fear and attempt it. I am attempting a much easier/cheater/fake sourdough for now, to work on my skills with high hydration doughs (looking at you ciabatta) and I always struggle making and maintaining a good healthy sourdough starter/culture. My first attempt was over kneaded/over proofed, so now I'm paranoid I'll do it again.
Temperature in my house is 68 F.
Recipe I'm using:
Poolish:
150 gram bread flour (12.5 percent protein)
150 gram water
.3 gram instant yeast (heaping 1/8 teaspoon)
Final dough
285 gram bread flour
190 gram water (66 percent hydration)
9 gram salt (1.5 teaspoon)
11-19-24 (yesterday) made poolish at 5 PM, let sit out 4 hours, then put into fridge overnight.
11-20-24 (today) mixed water and bread flour and let sit 60 minutes, covered, to autolyze. Came back and found good gluten development.
Here's where the issue starts! Took poolish out of fridge (nice, bubbly, strong) and added it directly to autolyze. Bread seemed to seize up a bit (temperature shock/difference?) and I couldn't mix the poolish into the dough well. Fearing I had overmixed it, I left it for 30 minutes to sit before it seemed to relax. I formed about 5 minutes of very bad/sloppy stretch/slap folds, and the dough seemed to go from nice stretchy to weak and wet to tight and very rubber band like.
So I threw it back into the bowl and am doing 4 sets of stretch folds about 15 minutes apart, and it seems to be going, but I don't know if 15 minutes isn't enough time as on the second set of stretch folds, the dough seems to be very tight and rubber band against me. Have I over kneaded it, or do I need to just let it rest longer before doing the stretch folds again?
I have no idea what I'm doing or doing wrong. Help would be appreciated. Was I overworking the dough when I stretch/slap folded it? Or was the gluten just too tight?
(In the picture, after I stretch fold the dough, it immediately starts to shrink back away from the stretch. Is this over kneaded, under kneaded, or just needs a bit of relaxation time? Is 15 minutes not enough resting time for a set of 4 stretch folds?)
1. The poolish has a lot of the water in the total formula. For autolyze, most every bread book including Hamelman/Suas etc recommend adding the poolish into the dough before the autolyze. My own experience confirms this - otherwise mixing the poolish in is a royal pain.
2. Once the yeast is in the dough (from the poolish) you might want to cut autolyze to 30 min. It should be ok in my experience.
3. Don't add all the water to the dough in one go! Double hydration is the way to go. You are at 78% hydration total. I would reserve 8% of the water, develop gluten with 70% of the water with a mixer (or slap-and-fold a bunch), and then add the remaining water. This will make a huge difference (but incorporating that 8% of water is far easier with a mixer than by hand).
4. You can S&F every 30 min for 3 hours. You are using very little yeast (just the 0.3% in the poolish). This can easily bulk for 4 hours in my experience. Laminated fold (there are YouTube videos) also help a lot.
Hope this helps!
--Fellow traveler still struggling for the perfect loaf. I am happy now though, in my realization that there is no perfect loaf, it's a quest:)
Okay, I now understand that adding poolish before the autolyze would make it much easier to combine the two. Also on hydration. . .is hydration content include the 100 percent hydration in the poolish?
I forgot/didn't think to include that in my calculations. So should I back down on the percent of water I use in the dough, since the poolish has so much water in it? (you mentioned it was 78 percent. . .should I back off the water so it's final hydration is 66 percent)?
I've never heard of double hydration! Fascinating!!
You mentioned it was "very little yeast.". Should I increase my yeast?
Sorry for all the questions. But I know lots of you know more than me on this, so I wanna pick your smart bread brains!
Total water = 340g
Total flour = 435
340 / 435 = 0.78610
0.78610 x 100 = 78.6% hydration
Very high for bread flour.
Second point would be most poolish breads have a pinch of yeast in the poolish and then an added teaspoon to the final dough otherwise it takes a long time to ferment.
I suggest you bring down the hydration to maximum 70% and add a teaspoon of yeast to the final dough.
As Abe said, hydration percentage is is simply (total water / total flour) * 100. I agree with Abe that 78% is high - it is possible to do but requires a lot of experience IMO. If you are new to ciabatta, keeping it around 70-72% is much easier to work with. Once you get the hang of it, increase water by using the double hydration technique.
You are basically using 0.3% yeast, for (approx) 1/3rd of the total flour. That is very little. As Abe said, it's better to add a bit more yeast to the final dough.
I'd do this:
0.1% yeast to the 150g poolish, let it ferment till Poolish is ripe (12 hours or so at 70 F - but the best sign is a "flat bubbly top" for the Poolish. You can google for "ripe Poolish" to see pics of how a ripe Poolish looks like).
Add the Poolish to final dough. Add another 0.3% * 285g = about 1g yeast to final dough.
Bulk for 3 hours with folds every 30 mins.
Don't degas dough too much, final proof should be 1-1.5 hours at 78-80F.
It's always hard to combine two doughs, especially after gluten development is well under way. It's best to give the two time to blend rather than force it all at once. Or, as Peter Reinhart used to do, cut both into pieces and work the pieces together.
With sourdough, I add most or all the water to the sourdough and roughly dissolve and mix the sourdough into the water before adding the rest of the flour. This ought to work just as well for your case.
S&Fs don't need to go by a fixed schedule. Recipe writers want to write something definite but you don't have to follow what they say in this regard. S&Fs build up elasticity, which relaxes away between sessions. If the dough is already stiff or elastic, the only thing that another S&F session will accomplish is making the dough even stiffer and more elastic. It might even want to tear. Instead, leave the dough alone until it relaxes. The another S&F might be in order. Leaving the dough longer before another S&F is not a bad thing, and you can do a S&F session even after you see some rising action. I tend to use 30 - 45 minutes between but if I have to be busy for a few hours I don't worry about it,
At some point the dough will perk right up after just a little stretching. That's it, you don't need to do any more. That might be after four sessions, but it might be after two like the bread I made a few days ago.
IMHO, the only time one would want to do S&Fs 15 minutes apart is if the process time was going to short, such as putting the dough into the fridge in an hour. Otherwise, don't fight with the dough, let time do the work.
BTW, there is essentially no difference between using a biga with a tiny bit of yeast, as you have done here, and making sourdough bread. The only difference is the starter maintenance and the final flavor. Otherwise the process steps are essentially the same.
TomP
To answer the question - it isn't enough. I would give it a full hour (if yeast is used that is) between before moving on. Enjoy!