If you cant shape it, the sourdough is too sticky. Bake the sourdough bread. This can result in your dough feeling wetter and stickier than normal. The solution here is to either use the exact same flour the recipe requires or adjusting hydration levels, watching the dough instead of ingredient ratios. The exterior was perfectly brown. (Rest for45 minutes @76Ffollowed by coil folds) - repeat 3x. The dough should be a little sticky before you start kneading it. Some people add too much water to compensate. More noticeable sour taste, possibly unpleasant. If your kitchen is too warm, the dough can become a sloppy, wet mess. After fermenting for too long, the gluten in the dough begins to break down, which leaves you with a thick, gloopy mass of flour and water with no way to make good sourdough. If you see anything inappropriate on the site or have any questions, contact me at floydm at thefreshloaf dot com. Flour blended and autolysed for 2 hours@85F. Sticky and wet crumb means the crumb is too wet; there is too much water in the finished product. Score the top of your loaf using a sharp knife, razor or lame. That's one of four for the set. Make sure that you do your best to avoid this mistake by learning about sourdough fermentation timing and knowing when its ready to move onto the next step. Nothing smells better than the wheaty aroma of freshly baked goods; I enjoy it so much that I decided to quit my day job as a management consultant to teach others about the delicate art of baking! Salt is called for in every bread formulation, but it is the one ingredient that we most commonly tend to forget to include into our mix. When the oven floor is clean, but before the equalizing soak, the temperature is ideal for pita bread, which cook in a minute or two. Your dough can become sticky when you add too much water or the flour isn't suitable for the type of dough you are making. Often the bottom of your sourdough is burning. Copyright 2021 The Pantry Mama 2021 - All Rights Reserved, 5 Ways To Strengthen A Sourdough Starter: Give Your Starter A Boost, Sourdough Discard Crackers Recipe with Parmesan + Rosemary, Easy Sourdough Discard Sandwich Bread Recipe, Sourdough English Muffins {with a discard version too}. Add of the water and dissolve or break up the sourdough with your hands. Mix everything together. It's when this doesn't happen that problems start to occur. Score the bread on top with any design you like. As the flour is better hydrated, more water is absorbed by the dough, and less water is coating the doughs surface which makes the dough feels less wet and sticky. If you are working with regular dough, ready How to Fix Super Sticky Dough. When it comes to transferring your dough, kneading it, or shaping it, youll have a much easier time with the assistance of some additional water. Levain hand-mixed, Rubaud style, for 5 minutes. I hope this guide helps you to troubleshoot your sourdough bread problems and ultimately bake a better loaf! Make the Dough: Meanwhile, in a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the boiling water, pumpernickel, oil, salt, molasses, instant coffee, and chocolate. If your dough is too dry, add a little moisture and mix it, adding just a little more water if necessary. You can get the tool under the dough so you can pick it up or manipulate it. Flour issues. You need to make sure that you keep your kitchen at a temperature between 24C - 28C (75F-82F). The bassinage technique is used to help build the dough up to the desired high level of hydration in stages. Add the all purpose/bread flour and whole wheat/spelt flour. Required fields are marked *. SOLUTION - The solution to this problem is to ensure that your dough is fermented correctly. I'll come back with the results in a week! Work on your shaping techniques. . If you're using all purpose flour, it can be a good idea to add some vital wheat gluten to the mix. Final internal temp 211F Sliced after cooling for 4 hours. When it comes to building the gluten, everyone has a different preference in how to do it. If you want to you can spritz your dough with extra water before you put the lid on. SOLUTION - Allow your bread to cool for AT LEAST 90 minutes (much longer for rye bread). This method works better with slack dough anyway. You'll know you have sufficient gluten development by performing the window pane test on your dough. I love adding cornmeal, both for flavor and texture, into my bread doughs: Switch to a wood spoon. Final internal temp 211FSliced after cooling for 4 hours. Extend your bulk fermentation time. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The trick is to pinpoint which one is affecting your dough so you can fix it or change your formula for next time. Yeast and bacteria prefer warmer temperatures. The majority of the time, I see this because the dough needed less water or more kneading upfront (or stretch and folds during bulk fermentation ). Make sure that you do your best to avoid this mistake by learning about sourdough fermentation timing and knowing when it's ready to move onto the next step. In this article we will look at all the factors that makes your sourdough excessively wet and sticky, as well as various ways we can reduce the wetness and stickiness of sourdough without changing its hydration level. Your dough might be too sticky because you added too much water when making the initial mix, too. You can then start to increase the hydration if you wish. We can use the mixing time below as a sanity check to determine if we have indeed under mixed or over mixed our dough; if you fall way out from the range in the table, increase or decrease mixing time to stay within these guidelines. You can use wet hands during the stretch and fold stage or even when you need to gently handle the dough in almost any situation. A strong, mature sourdough starter will reward you with amazing sourdough at your next bake. Avoid using cake or pastry flour for dusting as it contains a higher starch content and tends to lump up more than bread, rice or semolina flour. Wet and sticky dough is caused by a few different issues. If your bread contains rye, it can take up to 24 hours! It can be leathery rather than crispy. CAUSE - There are a few reasons your crust is too pale. Or you need to give the sourdough starter more salt.Another root cause may be the recipe relative to your environment. Over time, youll become more confident and comfortable working with dough, so you can gradually increase the hydration and get better at handling it. Mix by hand until all the dry flour is incorporated. A starter is a collection of yeast and bacteria that feed on flour. MAKE THE DOUGH Mix the sourdough starter and water together in a large mixing bowl - I use my dough whisk for this. All original site content copyright 2023 The Fresh Loaf unless stated otherwise. Mix together the flour, sourdough starter and 250ml/9fl oz water in a bowl. Soft water has <50ppm, medium 50-100ppm (best for bread baking), hard >200ppm. Send your . Whenever you handle your sourdough, you want to avoid pulling and stretching the dough too much or using sharp materials around it. If all has gone well, the dough will be in a tight ball and ready for proofing. It is normal when working with dough of very high hydration for it to feel quite wet and sticky after it has finished mixing. Maybe try leaving it a bit longer? The two main bread baking systems commonly used today are the sponge/pre-ferment system and the straight dough system. All flour has a certain percentage of damaged starch particles, but when the amount of damaged starch particles exceed 10%, dough becomes wet and sticky. 1. Boil the kettle too. Many people use food thermometer to measure the internal temperature of their bread. CAUSE - cutting into your bread too soon! A tough crust can also be caused by a lower hydration recipe. Excess flour at shaping can mean that your dough does not seal back onto itself, causing tunnels of air to form when baking. Generally, a good hydration starting point is 75% or so when working with bread flour, 80% or so with whole wheat. The Fresh Loaf is not responsible for community member content. Overproofed bread will also have a pale crust because the yeast has used all the sugars and therefore there are none left to caramelise the crust. This happens because it is more difficult for gluten network to be developed in a wetter dough, which makes it more difficult for water to be retained into the dough, and the dough tends to stay wet and sticky throughout mixing. We retarded the dough for 16 hours. If baking in a pre-heated oven, turn on the oven to at least 200C/392F, once heated, add two big glasses of water to a dish on the bottom shelf . Alternatively, you could add a little oil to the work surface and your hands. A tell tale sign that you haven't let your bread cool properly is having a "sticky" knife when you remove it from your bread. Rest for 30 minutes @76F. The gluten structure has become weak and is unable to hold up. And sometimes the issue is the recipe. *This article may contain affiliate links. More often than not a thick crust developing on the base is caused by cooking your bread in a Dutch Oven. SOLUTION - reduce proofing time. 4.Under-baked bread 5. Dont try traditional kneading techniques like punch and turn with moist sourdough. Makes 1 x 800-g/1-lbs. To calculate, add up all the flour, including the flour in the starter, then add up all the water, including the water in the starter, and divide the water by the starter. We will be trying out as what you have suggested for a 75% hydration for the next one, will be back to post our results! For example a gummy crumb can be caused by a starter that's too young and or under fermented dough. Some recipes are simply wetter and stickier than others. We preheated the oven (which was constrained at 480F) for an hour, and baked Charlie for 40 mins (tried 25 mins for Betty) in the cast iron, and 20 mins on the rack. Once one side is stretched and dusted, you should shape the dough and put it into your banneton. How Long Does Cookie Dough Last in the Fridge. First, in a large mixing bowl, whisk the starter, water, orange zest and juice, and maple syrup or honey. Rice flour to stop it sticking to the counter. Youll find that the dough sticks much less and youll have a better time shaping it. Required fields are marked *. The usual choice of flour for dusting includes bread flour, rice flour, semolina; all these flour works just as well for preventing sourdough from sticking. The water almost wholly stops the sticking, so you dont have to worry about messing up your dough. Add 850g water to your mixing bowl and mix with your hand until the levain is wholly dissolved. Then, introduce the remaining water in stages and mix only until the water is incorporated into the dough. The side thats dusted with flour is the only side that you or anything else touches. A large mixing bowl A round cane banneton 2 clean tea towels A Dutch oven, La Cloche or bread pan A large heatproof pan, a sharp knife or 'lame' to slash the dough with. Thanks!! Turn out to lightly floured counter, divide into 2, preshape. What is a Pate Fermentee? Be careful to use the right type of flour for your recipe and play around with the hydration level if you need to. Over proofing or fermenting the dough can also result in the gluten structure weakening causing sticky dough. High temperatures can cause premature over fermentation, which will result in wet, sticky sourdough. If your kitchen is too warm, the dough can become a sloppy, wet mess. Then, I use my wet hands to pick up a side of the dough, stretch it up, and fold it over. You might get a drier dough, but you wont get the same rise in the dough and a solid crust that you were expecting. On the other hand, rye sourdough is a bread that starts with sourdough starter instead of yeast but has at least some rye flour. Remove the potion from the refrigerator before chopping and boiling it. The loaf will also feel light in your hand, rather than heavy. Large mixing bowl Measuring cups and spoons Bread thermometer ( fancy or a budget one) Scoring lame Extra (nice to have): Kitchen scale Dough scraper and bowl scraper (yes, they are different) Cooling rack Baking stone (you don't need a dutch oven if you use this) Learn how to make bread and pizza with this awesome book. 25 minute proof at room temperature. Place the sourdough into the pot using the silicone sling or parchment paper as a handle. Remove the pot from the oven using pot holders (please be very careful ). Shape into batards. This helps keep the dough from sticking. Even with parchment paper, the base of your bread is sitting on the hot base of the Dutch Oven causing it to cook more quickly. Add the sourdough starter to a large mixing bowl. When using the autolyse method which call for the initial incorporation of only flour and water without salt, we may sometimes forget to include salt in the final mixing phase. But as it cooled, the crust wrinkled and collapsed what happened? Wet and sticky dough not only sticks to the work surfaces but also to our hands, increasing the risk of tearing and making it very difficult to work with. if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'crustylabs_com-leader-4','ezslot_20',129,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-crustylabs_com-leader-4-0');If you are proofing your dough in a non porous material such as a metal or glass container, then oiling is preferred over dusting with flour. You want to be quick when moving or shaping the dough to prevent sticking. Take the bowl off the scales and mix well, it will look rough and lumpy, but never fear it will soon start to look like bread dough! PROBLEM - My sourdough never puffs up in the oven. This blog contains scientific explanation on all matters related to baking written in simple words; I hope you will find something useful here and leave as a better baker. Here are some options for working with wet, sticky over fermented sourdough. Factors like temperature, humidity, air pressure and elevation play a role here. If the recipe is overly generous with the sourdough starter fermentation time, you end up adding too much-trapped air to the recipe and get a sticker dough. In this case, extra flour wont save it. Rest for 30 minutes @76F. Cover and let the dough double in size, about 12 to 16 hours. How Do You Know When Your Sourdough Starter Is Ready To Bake With?. This is when you let the dough rest after it is mixed but before you start to knead it. Always shape your loaf on a piece of non-stick, silicone paper, then when it's proved, stick it straight onto the hot stone and reduce the temperature of the oven down to around 180-200C. If those figures do not include your levain, then you have at least 77% final hydration assuming a levain of 100% hydration. You just need to reduce the heat on the base of your Dutch Oven or baking tray. 150g bread flour, 150g all-purpose, 90g whole wheat flour with 350g water (slightly warmer than room temperature by the touch), with 90g of starter and 9g of salt. It can also be called Fool's Crumb where the bread appears to have an "open crumb" however the holes are large and surrounded by an uneven, tight crumb that is not desirable. For the most recent of these, I used the following recipe/process:66.67% 600g King Arthur Bread Flour33.33% 300g Whole-Grain Einkorn (locally grown and milled by River Valley Community Grains, in NJ)20% 180g Liquid levain (King Arthur AP Flour)2.1% 19g Kosher Salt75% 675g Water, Levain built and matured for 3 hours @85F . How to handle sticky, wet . 2. These need to be done without hesitation. Place in bannetons. - longer waiting period before cutting --> this to me seems where you should start. CAUSE - Your sourdough is lacking oven spring, which means your dough is not growing in the oven as it should. Damaged starch absorbs water during mixing as opposed to undamaged starch where the water merely coats the outer surface. Mix dry ingredients together. Then the dough cannot stick to the surface. You see, when your hands are wet, the dough cannot stick to them easily, so it just slips right through them. Under fermentation causes a pale crust because it doesn't enable caramelisation of the sugars in the dough. Bread (well anything really) continues to cook for some time after it comes out of the oven and, although it is hard to resist, if you cut the bread while it is still hot, the starches will not have completed setting and the crumb will be soft and seem a little 'doughy'. However, the dough may be too hydrated for your location. Sourdough made with bread flour can take up to 6 hours to cool properly. You'll find a full guide to all purpose flour vs bread flour here. It's a good thing for bread dough, but it also means that it makes the mess you're attempting to clean up extra sticky and impossible to clean up . PROBLEM - Gummy sourdough (dense, moist crumb) is the most common sourdough bread problems facing home bakers. If you find your dough to be relatively dry after mixing, but gets wetter and stickier over time, it means that the flour you are using contains a very high percentage of damaged starch particles; try changing to a different flour brand and use European flour instead of American flour. Instructions. This increases the chances of tearing, which can make your life more difficult when shaping or kneading it. First, in the evening, prepare the soaker by pouring hot water over the mixture of seeds and grains. It may just be that you need to leave it in the oven longer with the lid off your. Step 3 - Total amount of flour is 80 grams + 600 grams = 680 grams. The bacteria on the other hand create a sour taste and ferment the bread. Even then the hydration would be on the very high side. side question: Does the 675 g of water, and 75% hydration include what's in the levain? I've written about 6 things you can do to ensure you get good sourdough oven spring (and leave the hockey pucks behind) here. The chains of gluten give your dough strength and structure. Once you get comfortable, you can gradually increase the water content of your dough and see how you manage it. Water was 350 plus 45 in the starter for 395.