Helpp!

Veronicaforsyth

Ive been trying to make bread from salt, water, yeast (ken forkish) with sourdough and have failed like 4 times.

My issue is that after bulk fermentation my dough seems like batter. I thought it was that i was letting it to ferment for too long (12 hours as the recipe indicates), and now i look at the dough and wait for it to double (which last time happened after 10 hours). There was no gluten anymore and it was impossible to shape.

my starter seems fine, doubling its size after 6-8 hours. If i make bread with dry yeast, i dint have any issues.

any advice? Thanks!

veronica

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farinam's picture
farinam 2016 July 7

Hello Veronica,

I think what you are describing is a classic case of over-proving.  This is one of the potential problems of going by the clock and following a time-line given by somebody else.  You really have to go by what works for you as temperature, in particular, has a huge influence on the time involved in developing and proving especially with sourdough.  With commercial yeast, the yeast strain has been selected to work fast and reliably so that the process can be quick and reproducible in an industrial environment.

So, I would not be worrying too much about waiting for the dough to 'double', which is a concept fraught with problems in its own right.  Learning and using the 'poke' test is one approach but it too has some problems with assessment and interpretation but is better than nothing.  Or, you can just bite the bullet and shorten the time frame that you work to until you get something that works.

As a starter, I would recommend that you read the Beginners Blogs on this site (Home Page - right hand column) which give some very good advice to all aspects of making sourdough leavened bread from making and caring for your starter through to baking and adjusting the process to suit your personal schedule.  His Pane francesa recipe (sourdough version) is a very good recipe to find your feet with.

As a guide, I would be thinking that you might need to look at, say, four hours for development and preferment after mixing your dough and four hours for proving, after shaping your loaf, before baking.  However, once again, this sort of timing is not cast in brass and you have to listen to what you dough is telling you.

Good luck with your projects.

Farinam

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