Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Food & Drink => Topic started by: Tim Hall on 04 June, 2019, 11:29:00 pm
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I'm having a go at sourdough bread baking. I've got the starter and feeding thereof sorted. Kneading the dough I can do too. The recipe I'm using, from my grate frend Nic, has a first proving of 2 to 3 hours, knock back then prove for 7 hours or so.
So far so good. However, the dough sticks like shit to a blanket. I did the proving in a large mixing bowl, lightly coated with oil and when I came to turn the nicely risen mass out, the amount of pulling and unsticking meant the dough collapsed somewhat.
Is this because it was over proved, or should I be using a floured tea towel to line the bowl? Or both? Or something else?
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Collapsing after the first proving is not an issue, Shirley? And, do say hi to Nic from me.
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I wouldn't worry too much; as Ham says, you're going to knock it back later anyway. IME floured cloths will lead to even more stickage, though they can work well for the final proof. Sourdough doughs are usually fairly wet, so will be sticky until you've got gluten formation going. I personally like Dan Lepard's approach, which is to use a high-hydration dough and give it minimal working at ever-longer intervals; from memory it's eight stretch-and-fold moves on an oiled board at 15min, 30min, 1h, 2h, and 4h before the final shape and prove. Wet doughs form gluten without working over time, so over the period the dough will become less sticky; they're also less susceptible to over-proofing, so the timings can be much more flexible. I tend to make the sponge the night before, add the remaining flour and the salt in the morning, then work during the course of the day; depending on how much time I've got, the bread can go in the oven any time from lunch onwards, though it's usually late afternoon/early evening.
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It's the collapsing/sticking after the second proving that's the issue. Having said that, after baking it had regained most of its volume, but it's still a little dense.
Tastes wonderful though.
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I had similar problems at first but then started using a Banneton with a liner heavily dredged with Rye flour and never looked back. Rye flour seems to prevent sticking much better than bread flour.
It also helps to stretch the outer surface when forming the loaf as this is said by bakers to prevent the loaf collapsing.
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Is this with strong white flour, or a mix? I find the latter can be a bit slack sometimes. Agree that rye flour works well for dusting a banneton, though mine is now old and saturated enough that regular flour works well.
I'm a big fan of baking in a preheated cast-iron casserole; dumping dough out of the bowl into the dish any which way still gets more than acceptable results.
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I had similar problems at first but then started using a Banneton with a liner heavily dredged with Rye flour and never looked back. Rye flour seems to prevent sticking much better than bread flour.
It also helps to stretch the outer surface when forming the loaf as this is said by bakers to prevent the loaf collapsing.
This.
I also use the Lepard technique of many folds (both me and the worktop being covered in oil for the first couple, bowl covered in oil in between). Then into the rye floured liner in a banneton for the final proof.
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I also use a banneton, but with no liner, and had issues with sticking to start with. Then I read that you were meant to season it (mist with water, dredge with flour and leave for 24hr) and since doing that I’ve been fine. I also lightly dust the dough with rice flour, which I don’t think is strictly necessary but since it work I don’t want to stop doing it...
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Thanks for the answers. FWIW I'm using strong white flour. Having looked up what a banneton is, I'll give one of them a go.
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With sourdough I do tend to constrain it in some way whilst proving. Sometimes I use a tin, sometimes the outer ring of a cake tin, and I've even used a plant pot!
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It sounds to me like as if you have two, separate, issues. At the heart of it, you shouldn't be having to move the loaf after the second proving. However if you want a non-tin shaped loaf, and your dough is too sloppy, you are in danger of ending up with sour dough pizza base.
My solution for bread of any type is to use a heavy weight silicone sheet, such as is used in bakery production lines. Mine were a gift from an American cookery enthusiast who visited me more than 25 years ago, and they have seen constant use since. Nothing baked on them sticks, ever. I'm contemplating replacing them and, if I can and do I will share where to get them from, it must be possible in the internet world.
Full declaration: while I have been baking all my bread since forever, I've not had sourdough on the go for more years than I care to remember, for reasons of faffage vs yeast baking. I have recently been considering revising this position.
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I turn my dough out of the banneton onto a silicone sheet as well. This goes onto the baking stone for about 10-15mins and then I whip the silicone sheet out so that the bottom of the bread gets to dry out a bit for the rest of the baking time, getting the benefit of the stone.
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Oh my. Look what I've found (https://www.bakerybits.co.uk/bakery-equipment.html). This isn't going to end well.
Haven't found my silicone sheet stuff yet, although some of the others will doubtless perform as well.
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That Super Peel looks interesting. Not convinced though.
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Oh my. Look what I've found (https://www.bakerybits.co.uk/bakery-equipment.html). This isn't going to end well.
Ah yes, can be an expensive place. I get the flours I use for our C17 re-enactment cooking from them. And I have one of their 'La Cloche' things although I've only used it once and wasn't that wowed.
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Bought a banneton/proving basket from Lakeland*. First proving was in my mixing bowl, knocked it back, transferred to the floured proving basket and covered it with cling film. Five hours later it was bulging nicely out of the basket and springing back when pushed lightly with a finger.
Slight bit of sticking to the cling film, so next time I'll oil it but it turned out of the basket onto the baking stone no problem. 30 minutes at 200°C then 15 minutes on the rack to cool. Tasty, consistent loaf with a nice crust. I'll take that as a win.
* Go into Lakeland. Spy display marked "Baking". Look through the selection of cake tins and rolling pins at least twice without seeing a proving basket. Finally ask one of staff, who directs me to a completely different part of the shop. So it seems in Lakeland making bread isn't baking.
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Slight topic deviation.
I've made a few sourdough loaves with varying results - the last one was definitely not wet enough. Rather than making a starter every week which is proving (bread pun) expensive in flour and time consuming, I'm sure it's possible to take a piece of the loaf before proving it and saving that for next weeks loaf. I can't find any recipe online which mentions this. Is this right? How much do I take? Do I keep it in the fridge or at room temperature all week?
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My starter is now 4 years old. I only use it every couple of weeks and keep it in the fridge. I bring it out half a day before starting a sponge , tip off the alcohol, feed and water it and after a few hours at ambient temp its good to go. My sponge calls for just 100 ml so the rest goes back in the fridge and will be happy for 3 weeks before feeding again, so I can even go on holiday.
Have a look at HFW river cottage metod.
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Same here, use the sponge method and stick 100gms of the sponge in a jam jar that goes in the fridge. Has to be before the salt is added.
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Unless you're baking every day or every other day, it's best to keep the starter in the fridge IMO; yes, it's at its most active if it's been refreshed and fed for a couple of days in a row, but my (decade-old) starter's happy enough to be fed in the afternoon or early evening prior to making an overnight sponge. If you can be bothered to work it out, it's quite possible to have a process in which you keep back starter for the next batch from the sponge, but it's best to be reasonably accurate with this; at the moment my baking's irregular enough that I prefer to have the backup of excess starter in the fridge; the surplus gets used for pancakes and the like.
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A small update. The proving basket I bought from Lakeland proved (reddit?) to be designed for 500g of dough, whereas I'm generally using 1kg. I did try with 500g of dough, which gave ok results but I thought I could do better.
I tried oiling and rye flouring my Big Mixing bowl and managed to get one loaf out without sticking but the next couple weren't so good.
I bit the bullet and got an oval proving 1kg basket from Bakery Bits. Good op, as my Australian niece would say. Flour it with rye flour, go for a nice long prove and tap it out onto the baking sheet. Loaf shaped loaves, so constant slice size, good flavour.
From two data points I got better results doing the second proving overnight in the fridge.
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I decided recently to have a go at making sourdough, following Paul Hollywood's method, here: http://paulhollywood.com/recipes/sourdough-starter/
Made my starter on Saturday. By Monday it was growing nicely. On Tuesday morning, I went on to the next stage of the method, discarding half of it and feeding it with fresh flour and water. By Tuesday evening it had grown a bit more, but by Wednesday morning it had sunk back down to the original level and hasn't grown any more since.
Have I killed it? Or do I just need to be patient and give it a chance to get going again?
I'm keeping the jar on a shelf in the kitchen, so it shouldn't be too cold.
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Having just read this today https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/oct/10/flour-power-meet-the-bread-heads-baking-a-better-loaf I'd wonder if there's not enough nutriition in white flour.
It does sound like yours got active a lot quicker than his though, you probably could have just used it when it was all excited.
My sourdough starter uses rye flour and water, with the natural yeasts just coming from the flour. (My dough is then made with wholegrain flour). It took me many attempts to get a decent sourdough.
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I wonder if that early burst of activity might have been due to the sugar in the apple?
Looked at it again this morning and there are lots of bubbles on the surface but no growth in volume. Hmmm.
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When I've made a starter I've not usually seen much change in volume until I've got to the next part and made the sponge.
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Revisiting this. My last couple of loaves have been of the collapsy spready out sort. Am I right in assuming there's too much water in the dough?
My recipe calls for 500g flour, 350g starter, 225ml water, bit of salt.
Mix then knead for 10-15 minutes.
Prove for 2-3 hours
Knock back, put in banneton.
Prove for 7 hours.
Tip onto hot baking sheet, bake for 30 minutes.
When I tip it out it (a) sticks in the (floured) banneton then (b) spreads out on the baking sheet. The sticking means it doesn't flop out if the banneton quickly but rather oozes. This doesn't help with the shape. The amount of water in the starter is a bit variable, due to inaccurate feeding. I've tinkered with the amount of water used adding only 190ml last time. Comments?
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utes.
When I tip it out it (a) sticks in the (floured) banneton then (b) spreads out on the baking sheet.
The sticking is an issue - I fixed this with my banneton by gently misting the banneton with water, covering in rice flour and leaving for 24hr. This forms a nice layer of flour and reduces sticking, altho I still flour each time I want to use it. I've had best success with rice flour, wheat flour absorbs moisture and gets sticky. Some people also say you can use corn flour (polenta?) but I've not tried that.
Secondly, I've found it's important to get the shaping right before putting it in the baneton. This forms a nice surface tension on the dough which helps hold it together. Over-prooving can also mean that the dough looses some structure and is more likely to spread out, so make sure your long prove is somewhere cool.
Finally, I've found I get best success using an old cast-iron casserole dish as a dutch oven. This helps stop it spreading out so much, and means it bakes in a moist environment. Failing that, a stone will probably give better results than a baking sheet.
The amount of water looks OK to me.
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Reporting back. Made sure the banneton had no remnants of the previous loaf. Gave it a good dusting with rye flour. Proved the dough for 2.5 hours, knocked it back then proved for 5.5 hours. It rose nicely ( my kitchen is fairly warm about 20C) but wasn't over proved - it was above the top of the banneton in the centre but had a bit of space at the edges. Nice spring back when poked with a finger. In the words of George Formby, it turned out nice. No sticking, no spreading out on the baking sheet. Held shape in the oven and rose a it. Probably my best loaf yet.
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I decided recently to have a go at making sourdough...
Well, since I posted this, I've got quite into the whole sourdough thing. In fact, around the time I posted this was the last time I bought a loaf of bread from a shop. The starter I made back in October is thriving - to the point that I have to just keep making more bread to avoid having to throw the excess away... (it lives in the fridge during the week and only comes out to play at weekends, but it's still pretty active even at fridge temperatures)
I've expanded my repertoire from yer basic loaves to include sourdough crumpets, sourdough Yorkshire teacakes, sourdough hot cross buns, and even sourdough croissants - which are seriously bloody amazing, even if I say so myself.
I think I've spoiled myself - I just couldn't go back to ordinary bread now even if I wanted to. :thumbsup:
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Am I right in assuming there's too much water in the dough?
No - but with caveats...
If you do a bit of digging around on the internet, you'll see a lot of stuff about hydration and baker's percentages (in fact, many recipes are expressed only as percentages, rather than weights, to make them easily scalable). By my reckoning, your dough is at 59% hydration*, which isn't high at all - you'll typically see people recommend the 1:2:3 ratio of starter:water:flour, which works out at something like 70% hydration, and some hardcore sourdough bakers will aim for seriously high hydration, like 80% or more. (Baguettes are typically made with very high hydration dough, which is what gives them their light, airy texture.)
However, a lot seems to depend on your flour - if you're using only white flour, a lower hydration dough is easier to work with. Wholemeal flour absorbs more water, so gives a stiffer dough for the same hydration level. Stoneground flour has a higher bran content than roller milled flour, so that will also take higher hydration. If I'm making an all-white loaf using bog standard Allinson's bread flour from Tesco, I'll reduce the hydration to around 55%.
My current go-to recipe is 60% white wheat flour, 20% wholemeal and 20% white rye (ie the wholemeal and rye are 20% each of the total weight of flour, including the flour in the starter). And I'll make that at about 60% hydration.
Your dough not being able to hold its shape could be down to over-proving. Or it could be down to under-proving. Or it could be insufficient kneading...
Nice spring back when poked with a finger.
Based on what I've read, this is actually a sign of under-proving. If your loaf is fully proved, the finger poke test should leave a dent - it shouldn't spring back.
Although given the high proportion of starter used in the dough, over-proving sounds very plausible too - bear in mind that a higher proportion of starter means a higher proportion of already-fermented flour in your dough.
*Hydration is the total liquid content expressed as a percentage of the total flour content, remembering to include the flour and water in the starter in your calculation. So for your recipe, assuming your starter is hydrated at 100% (ie equal quantities by weight of flour and water), the sums are:
500g + 175g = 675g flour
225g + 175g = 400g water
Which works out at about 59% hydration.
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Secondly, I've found it's important to get the shaping right before putting it in the baneton. This forms a nice surface tension on the dough
I endorse this. I've watched a few youtube videos about shaping dough and there's more to it than you might imagine.
I've tried the Dutch oven method too and it gives fantastic results, but unfortunately I don't have a pot big enough to make decent sized loaves. (That said, smaller loaves are also better at holding their shape anyway, because gravity.)
I've had best success with rice flour, wheat flour absorbs moisture and gets sticky. Some people also say you can use corn flour (polenta?) but I've not tried that.
It's specifically the fact that rice flour doesn't have any gluten that makes it good for flouring bannetons, so corn flour would be good for the same reason. I use rye flour, which is relatively low in gluten compared to wheat flour, and I find it gives a nice flavour to the crust.
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I know I'm late, soooo 2020 not 2021, but Sandy Toksvig aka the sourdough starter got started today.
50g rye flour
50g strong white flour
50g homebrew (saison) with the dregs
70g water (cause the rye was thirsty)
From now on I will just use white flour and water to feed it, cause I drank the rest of the beer :)
if it fails, oh well, if it works \o/
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I know I'm late, soooo 2020 not 2021, but Sandy Toksvig aka the sourdough starter got started today.
50g rye flour
50g strong white flour
50g homebrew (saison) with the dregs
70g water (cause the rye was thirsty)
From now on I will just use white flour and water to feed it, cause I drank the rest of the beer :)
if it fails, oh well, if it works \o/
During the great "no bread yeast available" period of a year ago (nothing in Lidl, Aldi nor any of the local shops) I learned to make sourdough bread using this gentleman's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FVfJTGpXnU
Turned out quite nice...
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Sandy is ... is alive \o/
Grown past the elastic band by half its starting size. I was sure it would take longer cause our kitchen is running on the colder side.
Thanks for the link.
I'm trying to follow Pro Home Cook and his .pdf (link in following link) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhd1eeoM2Vg
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During the great "no bread yeast available" period of a year ago (nothing in Lidl, Aldi nor any of the local shops) I learned to make sourdough bread using this gentleman's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FVfJTGpXnU
Turned out quite nice...
Big fan of Paddy. Love his no-nonsense style.
I use his sourdough pizza recipe often.
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MrsT has a starter slowly churning in the kitchen at this moment. No idea what for kind of bread.
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Two lot baked aka 4 loafs.
First lot just plain mix of white and wholemeal flour and second one is a seeded mixed one with a spot of beer.
There is lift from the starter, so that is clearly working.
The first go I didn't knead it long enough I'm sure. I also think I left it a spot too long for the last proving, 12 hours in fridge and 2 hours outside before baking, as it was coming down in size. When tipped out to be baked the dough just became a pancake. 35-40cm in dia and when out of the oven about 3cm high.
Second lot I gave a good old beating erm kneading with the machine. Easy 20min, but I couldn't get that perfect windowpane effect. I even gave it time to autolyse before mixing starter and seeds. As above there was plenty of lift in the bowls, but when out it just spread.
I think it is because our kitchen isn't running at what they call room temp, what ever that temp is.
The dough did rise when set aside to prove, but it took 4-5 hours before volume happened, not the 3 hours they say in the videos from Ireland.
The first lot tasted like sourdough bread, since the starter is only 7 days old, I didn't expect the big flavours. The second one is also flat, though a bit higher at 4/5cm, it taste, smell and feel like a sourdough.
So next step is to get lift in the dough and get the starter to be more mature.
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Today's effort, a bit of WfH distraction...
2 loaves, 100% Levain-based, no yeast involved.
Ken Forkish recipe from his book Flour Water Salt Yeast.
It takes 2 days to waken the levain starter from the fridge. The dough is then mixed late afternoon, with a 30 min autolyse period before the salt and levain are added. Then it's stretchy-foldy for four folds over an hour or two. No traditional kneading. Overnight bulk ferment at room temperature. 8am and I divide the very soft dough into the 2 loaves, shape them and place them in the bannetons for a 3.5 hour proof at room temperature.
Tipping the dough out of the banneton for transfer into the pre-heated Dutch Oven is tricky, because even with the most thorough flouring, the dough is quite prone to sticking.
The first one ( the one which is half-eaten ) became a bit de-gassed due to me manhandling it out of the banneton, and is a little flatter than ideal. The second one on the rack is better, the banneton rings still visible and the height of the loaf is correct.
It's a 'blonde' bread, the flour mix in the main dough mix is 800g Strong White, 26g Wholemeal, 50g Rye Flour.
The levain starter is being fed at 100g Wholemeal / 400g White.
The flavour is excellent, and tends to strengthen slightly over time, working in from the crust into the crumb.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51584232261_3ca905f4e5_z.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2mAjF5R)
Sourdough (https://flic.kr/p/2mAjF5R) by Ron Lowe (https://www.flickr.com/photos/62966413@N04/), on Flickr