40% Semolina - Weird crumb
Hello everyone,
First time using semolina rimacinata (40%): The dough was so soft and smooth, it was a real treat to handle!!! The bread was very good, very nice and subtle flavour, but the crumb was weird, dense and quite gummy, in spite of spending quite some time in the oven...Can anyone troubleshoot what I did wrong? I had never used this flour before so had no clue what to expect, though.
Here is the process I followed:
20% Levain 1:2:2 with 50% Semolina / 50% AP flour
70% hydration
40% Semolina Rimacinata / 60% Bob Red Mill Artisan Bread flour
2.2% salt
1h30 autolyse
Add levain /rest 30mn
Add salt /rest 30mn
1x Lamination + 3x Coil fold
BF 9h at 25C in proofing Box until reached around 50% rise in aliquot jar
Divide and pre-shape + Bench rest 30mn
Shape and straight into the fridge overnight
Baked in DO at 230C for 45mn with lid on + 15mn lid off at 200C + 15mn out of DO in oven turned off
Thank you!
Right off - the holes are too big and not evenly spaced. If that's the directions you got - you hit it. Really - what's the problem - those instructions will give you what you got. Enjoy!
PS - the starter is easy - it gets tough from there!
PSS - this isn't the forum to post in
Sorry English is not my first language and I have a hard time understanding what you mean..Could you rephrase in a more straightforward way, please?
This really should be in another thread - there is 1 for sour dough ... but
What I mean is the holes are big and in 1 spot instead of all over.
Instructions are a good start. You should go from there. Make adjustments - make bread. Enjoy!
Got it, thanks
The distribution of holes tells me that the bread is probably underproofed. I had a batch of underproofed bread recently and it looks similar to what you described, dense and gummy along with wild holes. You went quite far on the bulk so it's probably not under bulk fermented, but you shaped the dough and put straight into the fridge, which can cause the dough to not ferment enough is your fridge is cold. Maybe try proofing at room temp for 30 mins, 1 hour, or something like that before you put it in the fridge.
Good idea, I'll try to let it proof a bit longer at room temp; thanks a lot!
I have spent a lot of time and experienced a lot of frustration in the process of trying to get a good durum wheat loaf like the ones found in southern Italy and Greece.
Semola rimacinata (durum wheat flour) is an idiosyncratic flour, especially with sourdough starters. At the start it is very strong and lacking extensibility so gives the impression of being underhydrated but once the fermentation starts, it can loose strength relatively quickly compared to strong flours with a high W number which are especially formulated for longer fermentations. Also, I have found that semola remacinata flour can vary a lot in quality, strength and extensibility. Much more than soft wheat flours, so you have to always proceed with caution with them, unless you have used the particular brand frequently.
It also has a strange way of taking a bit of time to start fermenting but then going quite fast once it is started. Equally, it can stop fermenting quickly so can stop fermenting in the fridge.
Both these characteristics make it more difficult to judge when it is fully fermented and when it is fully proved, especially when left to prove in the fridge..
Judging both form the crumb and the extensive opening of the loaf around the scoring I would suggest it is slightly under fermented. I would also suggest that this may have happened because you judged it to be fermenting more than it was because it had started to lose strength and getting more extensible, giving the impression it is more fermented than it is.
I would suggest for the next bake to bring down the overall hydration to 65% and make sure the pre-ferment is very very lively by doing maybe some smaller more frequent feeds. The idea is to reduce the time of the BF so that the remacinata is still strong. Maybe also lower the BF temperature as that also reduces the remacinata strength. I usually have a temp of 21C. With the aliquot, start monitoring as soon as the bulk ferment is ready to start and bake the loaf a little before it doubles in volume, including the proving. Obviously put the sample in the fridge if you have put the proving basket in the fridge.
Using these approaches I am now able to make consistently good 100% semola remacinata loaves using a SD starter. Don't be put off. Once you master its quirks durum wheat bread is really lovely and very tasty.
Very interesting!! Thank you so much for sharing this, it is extremely helpful! So I guess I really need to boost my starter first..What do you mean by ''smaller feeds''? I usually feed my starter twice a day at a 1:4:4 ratio, and make an overnight levain at a 1:2:2 ratio.
thanks again for your insight!
If I was making my remacinata SD loaf, I would start with a 100% hydration liquid levaine of 100g for 400g flour.
For the levain I would start with 10g of 100% hydration SD starter (from the fridge) and feed it 4x (2x 10g flour and 10g water each feed and then 2x 15g flour and 15g water) and use when it has achieved peak liveliness at the last feed. Each small feed will take much less time to get active than one large feed.
Regular feeding should be 122 - that's per day. Do the math and you should be adding more depending on how long it will keep. You go from there. Enjoy!
Those loaves really opened up well! Very dramatic. Here's what I see in the pictures:
1. There was a huge amount of expansion during baking. This shows that the dough had a lot of life left in it by baking time. It wasn't over-fermented by any means. It obviously wasn't underfermented either, because then it would not have had the ability to rise so forcibly.
2. The large cavities combined with a mostly tight crumb are something I've gotten with semolina breads too. Large cavities (I don't mean those nice, irregular crumbs like you get with a good baguette) are often caused by some problem during shaping. In this case, I think they are telling us that some parts of the dough didn't merge well enough with adjacent parts. So they tended to pull apart a little during that vigorous expansion. That may be because the dough was a little dry - it seems to me that semolina doughs I've made don't like to stick together as well as some others even when the hydration was overall high enough.
I'm not sure how to remedy this problem, but a very light misting with water as each layer or fold is made during shaping might help. I haven't tried this myself. Or perhaps a higher hydration, but you would have to be careful because different batches or brands of semolina flours might not be able to handle extra water well.
Gumminess might come from the tightness of the crumb in between the cavities. Maybe those parts of the loaves didn't get a chance to dry out enough by the end of baking. If that is right, extending the bake time at a lower temperature should help.
TomP
In my experience, these large uneven holes come up when the gluten structure is beginning to degrade but the dough is not fully fermented and as it degrades it is not so able to retain the steam in the smaller holes from the fermentation, leading to the large holes.
I have got it with many flours that are not suited for long fermentations (rimacinata, white spelt, low gluten and absorption AP etc). Almost identical crumb and behavior.
The high hydration exacerbates the degradation and provides more steam to make the holes bigger and it is the steam being released in bulk that gives the very high oven lift. I am guessing the trapped in the loaf steam might also the reason for the gumminess.
The trick is to do everything possible to keep the gluten in tact before it goes in the oven (e.g. accelerating the BF for rimacinata with a very vigorous levain or using biga for spelt).