Help Please with Not Fully Successful Sourdough Whole Wheat Bread
I am new to baking with sourdough and whole grains. This is my latest attempt, which is Michael Pollan's interpretation of the whole wheat Tartine loaf from "Cooked", with the addition of about 2 cups of toasted walnuts and 1.5 cups of soaked raisins. I didn't get the oven spring I would like and my scores didn't open very well. Also the crumb is not as open as I would like. The bread is delicious though. The recipe calls for 200g of leaven (50% stoneground wheat, 50% bread flour, 16% starter - mine is half rye & half whole wheat at 100% hydration), 600g whole wheat, 250g bread flour, 150g rye, 900g water, and 25g salt. The flour is soaked overnight then the soaker is mixed with the leaven the next morning, autolysed, bulk fermented, divided and bench rested, then proofed. My kitchen is about 70F during the day and 65F at night. I did the bulk fermentation at room temperature for about 5 hours, as recommended in the recipe. A poke test suggested I should move to division. When I went to shape the loaves the dough was a bit slack, but a second shaping had them shaping up nicely with good tension. I was expecting to need to proof them for 2 to 3 hours, if not longer given that the dough temperature was about 70F, but after 2 hours the poke test was hardly springing back at all so I moved to baking them sooner than I had expected. The loaves were baked (450F) Tartine fashion in a combo cooker removed half way through the bake period. So, what is going on here? Is this underproofed? Also, during the bulk fermentation at one point (about half way through) the dough became very stringy when stretched. This also happened with the previous loaf of bread I had baked. Is this normal? Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks in advance.
Firstly, don't rely too much on following the recipe to the letter, especially when it comes to proving times. Check regularly and judge by eye. You may have proved it a little too long
No biggie though, your bread looks beautiful. I'd have been delighted if that had been MY first sourdough bread.
Why not start with a few more basic loaves until you become more used to sourdough and how it behaves?
Well, this is more like my fourth sourdough. The first time I tried that recipe (without the nuts and raisins) it came out more like a thick pancake. This time certainly went much better. Perhaps I did let it proof too long. I was expecting longer because my kitchen isn't very warm and the whole process started with cooler dough than is recommended.
I've spoke on this formula on a different thread recently. This is a very high % wholegrain bread with a good portion of whole rye. You will not achieve an open lacey crumb like "tartine" breads from this formula. Then you added raisins and walnuts. I bet it's amazing. I think maybe your scoring was a bit too much and you were looking for grigne when with these loaves we score a bit more gently and in an effort to coax more rise. Honestly I think it looks pretty darn good otherwise Crumb looks aerated and pretty open for this particular formula.
Josh
I've had trouble with scoring in the past. So perhaps I was too emphatic this time. The bread is really delicious. : )
sift out the hard bits of the WW and rye and feed then to the starter to make the levain. Then you could cut down the autolyse, just flour and water - no salt and no levain, to 1-2 hours instead of overnight. This will get the hard bits wettest the longest plus the starter loves these bits more than life itself. The shorter autolyse may help the dough hold it shape better too with the enzymes at work for less time. Other than that, I'm with Josh. This bread isn't a SFSD but you might coax a little more spring and bloom out of it. It does have to taste way better than it looks and that is what counts.
Happy baking
I like the idea of putting the coarse bits in the levain. On the autolyse, the idea of soaking overnight is to break down the phytic acid. But presumably with a number of hours of fermentation and proofing this shouldn't be necessary. Doing it your way would certainly facilitate temperature control. I'll give these a try. Thanks.
I agree with Josh and DBM, and, really, go by what your dough or loaf looks and feels like, and not by the letter of the recipe!
Karin
Of course the problem with going by look and feel is learning how it should look and feel, but I think I'm making some progress on this. : )