May 22, 2021 - 11:13pm
Sourdough Help
Hello people of the fresh loaf, I am in need of help! As you can see the image attached, my sourdough is alright but nowhere near perfect. I cant seem to be getting the "ears", and if it is possible I would like for the dough to rise higher and not wider! Any advices?
- Recipe used
400g HP flour - 100g whole wheat flour
- 350g of water
- 100g starter
- 10 grams salt
- Bulk fermented for 6 hours till doubled in size
- Proofed in banneton for 1 hour and 30 minutes
- cold proofed for 10 hours
- baked in a gas deck oven 250 C for 20 minutes covered and 230 C for 15 minutes
Slap and fold after mixing ingredients and 4 times of stretch and fold every 1 hour
Starter feeding schedule is every 12 hours , ratio is 1:5:5, 50percent AP flour and 50 percent wholewheat. Temperature is around 30 C. Starter doubled in 4 hours used at 6th hour
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Hi,
your bread crumb looks very nice! Very nice.
I haven't tried your recipe, so I can't judge it, but if your loaf flows and spreads in the oven, then you proofed it for too long.
If I had to bake such a loaf, I would place it in the oven after 1.5 hr proof at 30C. Your dough doubled during bulk fermentation and probably doubled again after shaping it and resting at 30C, 4x increase in volume...that is enough. I never refrigerate my loaves after proofing, so I suspect this might be the reason of its spread in the oven. It got tired, reached its limit of fermentation tolerance within the first hour or two of refrigeration.
Of course, additional time while refrigerated adds acidity, so if you like its taste, then refrigerate after bulk and shape and proof at 30C afterwards.
For the ear to appear two things are necessary
1) proper shaping, coiling dough as you shape it, so that it uncoils in the oven along the scores. Proper shaping will give you a tight, tense coil of dough that will open up widely in the oven.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBIKVGtpy4U/
2) dry dough surface and slanted cut. When you proof, make sure, that the surface of your loaf dries significantly, don't cover it with plastic, so that there is a difference between softness of moist dough inside and its firm dried surface. Moist dough inside will expand as it bakes and push dry and inflexible crust out, forming ears along slashes.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CPGVy39Jm93/