why is this happening and what can i do to fix it?

Hi kayemme.

With your permission, I'd like to disagree with you here just s tiny bit. I do not think that there is such a thing as one perfect dough. I think there are different doughs  with different feels and thereby different textures and different flavors. And this to me is the beauty, the wander and the blessing that is bread. So in my mind this is something to celebrate and rejoice in, rather than something to fret or be anxious about. From your description it appears as though you have made a dough with a high hydration percentage. Either by accident or on purpose. :) High hydration dough is very much an advanced baking technique, and it yields a bread with large irregular holes and moist elastic crumb, that is a badge of honor to those able to produce them. :) It's like a baking diploma that says I've graduated to the next level of baking skill. :) Now that you have this dough you have several options in how to deal with it.

1. If you'd like to develop gluten and structure in it you will only be able to fold it, as it is obviously impossible to kneed it. It sounds like you already tried the French fold, which was exponentiated by Richard Bertinet. However, if your dough has been bulk fermenting for a while, you might consider folding it on four sides as is often discussed on these forums, following Hammelman's technique. It sounds like your dough may be too wet to use Mike's kneading technique, but do check out the page he linked to above. Some great videos of a master working at his craft. Thanks Mike.

2. If you feel uncomfortable with the dough this wet, you can add more flour to it. Either a little to allow you to handle the dough more easily or a lot to convert it to lower hydration dough. :) And no it is not a sign of surrender.  :)

3. As far as baking it. You also have options. If you feel the dough is too wet to bake free form, you can bake it inside a preheated cast iron pot. Or bake it free form anyway and let it spread as far as it wants to and see what happens. Another little thing I learned over the years is that the yeast will never give us humans total control over itself. Although we are welcome to give guidence and general direction. :)

Thanks to the wonderful folks on this board, I'm slowly turning into a baker that uses scales. After several years of baking by feel and swearing by it, I finaly am starting to understand the importance of scales to me as a baker. As I experiment with a given formula more and more. Knowing the precise percentage of hydration and precise percentage of Whole Grain flour in my bread makes my experiemnts have more meaning to me. And educate me much more efficiently. Having said all of this have you any idea what hydration percentage your dough is? From your description it sounds like something between 65% and 70%.

Enjoy your experiments

Rudy

The hardes part of learning to bake is learning what dough should feel like.  It is almost impossible to communicate in printed words.  But it can be taught in a class in a very short amount of time, the teacher has you make dough, watches you, suggests you knead like this instead of that, suggests your dough is too wet or dry and you should add some water or flour, and then feels your dough and tells you the moisture is about right, but it needs more kneading.  And then the teacher tells you that you're there, and you can remember that feeling....

Some printed word guidelines.,,, you want the dough to be tacky, not sticky.  Tacky dough would rather stick to itself than to you or the work surface.  Dough is happier when it is a bit too wet than a bit too dry.  (I won't go quite as far as to say, "wetter is better" because there is a point where that is definitely ot the case.)

Many people don't knead effectively, so they spend a lot of frustrating time kneading.  I typically knead about 10 minutes, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.  I knead for 5 minutes, let the dough rest for 5 minutes, and then knead for 5 minutes.  The rest period is very important as it lets the flour absorb moisture and the dough develops on its own.  I find that if I just knead for 15 minutes the dough doesn't develop as well.

When you start mixing the ingredients, the dough is a gloppy, ragged mess.  As you stir, it comes together and becomes one unruly mass.  As you knead, it smooths out. As I said, it then starts to look like the ads in the back of ladies magazines about the evils of celluite.  Then that smooths out.  (Don't we all wish it was that easy to get rid of on our less sightly areas?)  The dough begins to become resillient.  You press on it lightly and it springs back.  As you keep kneading, it will pass the infamous windowpane test.

Still, some doughs are firmer than others, and while the dough development follows the path disciussed above, there are questions about how soft and firm doughs should feel.  The easiest test I've found is how the dough handles when you fold it over and try to join the dough.  With a soft dough, the join is easy, smooth and seamless.  You fold the dough and the dough becomes one piece.

With a somewhat firmer dough, the join takes a little more effort.

With a firm dough, the dough forms a single piece, but there is a bit of a seam visible.  You can't force the dough to become one seamless piece.  Unless you are making bagels or pizza, you don't probably want dough this firm - you've  added too much flour.

And then the final step is where the dough is difficult to fold over, and when you do, the two pieces remain two pieces.  It is way, way too dry.  This is how you make  bricks out of bread dough.

On the humidity front, I've baked on the hunid gulf coast of Texas and in the arid mountains of Colorado.  While I have found that there are differences, they tend to be in the area of how much I need to protect the dough from drying out.  On the gulf coast, I didn't really need to cover my dough.  In the mountains, I had about 5 to 15 minutes before a skin would form on the dough that would act as a girdle and keep the dough from getting a full rise.  I sprayed the doughs with oil and covered them with plastic wrap.  It was a pain.

However, there wasn't that much difference in how the dough turned out.  The multi-layer paper sacks do a very good job of keeping the flour moisture levels consistent if you fold over the top.  I was in a discussion with several millers and professional bakers about this and we played with numbers.  If the flour takes on an impossible amount of moisture, that will affect the dough by about 2%.  One baker said he could tell that little difference.  The rest of the bakers thought he was being a bit boastful.  The same thing held true with flour drying out.  In the USA, the moisture in the grain is adjusted to 12%.  And the flour stays at that level for long periods of time. 

Hope all that rambling helps,

Mike

kayemme,

You made me laugh! But your dough is a serious matter.

"then i let the dough warm up and added the rest of the ingredients and let that sit out for several hours then kneaded"

The part about sitting out hours before kneading caught my eye. I'm assuming your description is accurate, of course, and perhaps you left out a step. If you did leave something out, forget the following.

Your dough looks, pardon the expression, lumpy to me, and the process you describe might explain this. If you just put the ingredients together without mixing enough to hydrate all the flour, then clumps will form. These can be very difficult if not impossible to get out of the dough, once they're in.

It sounds like you were intending an autolyse. It's true you don't want to mix much, but you do need ALL the flour to get wet enough that it will all begin to form gluten. Without mixing, some flour is in contact with water and some isn't and the inconsistency will make for problems later on. Also, hours? If this is an autolyse, the purpose is to hydrate the flour so that gluten forms without over-mixing, but that doesn't require hours. Times I've heard for autolyse are 15 (short) to 60 minutes.

Good luck!

Soundman (David)

A man with two clocks never knows what time it is....

On the flour front, I measured the cups of flour at about 900 grams, however, I used a fair amount of bench flour which got the total flour up to around the 1,073 mark.  You may remember, I weighed the bowl of flour before I started and after I was done.

If I were making this bread again, I'd just put the whole amount of flour into a mixer or mixing bowl.

As to the water, a cup of water SHOULD weigh about 238 grams.  However, in realityville there are errors and inconsistencies.  You fill the cup a bit higher or lower one time, you spill a bit of water, one cup is a bit larger than another, and so on.   Measuring by weight makes things quick and easy!  It's much easier to have a consistent 235 grams each time than to try to get consistent cups.

Later,

Mike

If you don't find these on Youtube or anywhere else. Let me know. I have all of Baking with Julia episodes recorded on my computer in mpg format. Post your email address and I'll email them to you, or anyone else that wants it. I'd recommend that you type your email address out though like this: kay at aol dot com. This way the spam bots will not be able to pick it up. There is another episode with Steve Sullivan that I find extremely enlightning and helpful.

Rudy