Sourdough crust

[splatgirl]

Re: Sourdough crust

Hi there
IMO you have a few things you could try.

1. Start with a larger initial expansion of your starter. For 60g. of starter I'd go with 240g. flour/240 water. Feeding your starter with one flour and building your dough with another might be throwing those yeasties off, too. Choose one flour and stick to it until you have more predictable, satisfactory results. My personal opinion is that the 00 flours are not worth it for the newb because they're extremely sensitive to handling issues and even in the best of circumstances, there's not a hugely evident difference in the end product.
2. if your "preferment/starter" doesn't double in 12 hours at room temp, repeat the feedings until it does. Mine doubles and then some in 8 hours in warm weather.
3. Once you've built your final dough, you want to see evidence of real growth before you refrigerate. Let it really get going. Three hours for a dough that might be sluggish to begin with isn't long enough, IME. When you portion and ball the dough, you are likely degassing quite a bit and the dough never really has time to get going good again because it gets refrigerated right away. Let those dough balls show you some good evidence of activity--ie almost double-- before you refrigerate. My dough does very little in the fridge and cannot always be relied upon to get going again in a reasonable amount of time post-fridge, so I like it to look close to where it should be before I refrigerate. I've learned to be pretty good at guessing when to put it in the fridge by trial and error. To be safe, err on the side of leaving it out at room temp longer for now. I use my dough cold, but YMMV, especially with your lower hydration.

The lack of browning and oven spring also point to an immature dough.

You don't say how you're working the dough--kneading, etc. That is a factor in both chew and oven spring.
What is the history of your starter? If it's new from scratch, mine took at least a few months to get it's business figured out.

any pictures?

[lloydl2]

Re: Sourdough crust

Hey thanks for the prompt reply and input. Next time I think I'm going to skip the preferment and do the following:

start with 120 g of 50/50 starter - the starter was started from scratch and almost quadruples in a 12 hour period feeding it KA all purpose, it is going on 3 weeks old now with twice daily feedings, after another week or so I will probably refrigerate it since I don't bake or make pizza that often.

add the starter to 731 grams of molina tipo 00 pizza flour and 487 grams of water mix and autolyse for 30 mins then add salt knead for about 3 mins till smooth. Let rest for about an hour doing stretch and folds every ten mins then let rise for 2 hours do a final stretch and fol, d ball and let rise at least 1/3 before putting in frig. I'd go to higher hydration but the tipo 00 flour doesn't absorb as much water as KA. at 70% it is really sticky. I also read somewhere else that lack of charring and browning might also be from the long rise which depletes the sugars out of the flour and then you don't get the carmelization. The suggestion was to add some liquid malt to the dough to add back in the sugars before balling. Don't want to do that just yet though.

Thanks again..

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough crust

Hi Lloyd...

Splatgirl's knowledge of sourdough is superb but I have a slightly different interpretation, partially because I don't think you told us enough to make a really good analysis.

Even robust new starters often lack any real rising power for a while. At 3 weeks and quadrupling your starter may only now be approaching usable. And quadrupling is a bit weirdly robust which suggests you may not have a very robust bacteria population yet and therefore good sourdough flavor. In addition it may mean your yeast reproduction rate is really high and - here is where I depart from Splat - after that period of wet time the enzymes should have created plenty of sugar so for it to NOT brown suggests to me it is WAY OVERPROOFED. (Though way under is certainly a possibility.) VERY STRANGE that your starter quadruples when you feed it and barely rises when you begin to make dough! Splat is right that your flour could be throwing them off but I am more likely to believe your starter simply isn't ready!

More comments:
- 70% hydration is WAY wet for 00
- Saying you add 128 grams of flour and water is ambiguous. 128 of each (256 total) or 64 each or????
- Sourdough really benefits from staged expansions. How much dough do you really want to make. Divide by four or five and that is about the size you want for the FIRST EXPANSION TOTAL (say you want 1000 grams of dough - the first expansion should total about 200 to 250 grams - I prefer 200, especially in the summer). Then divide by 4 or 5 again and that is the amount of starter you want to begin with. So... start with 50 (using 5 as the divisor) grams of starter. Add 100 of flour and 100 of water - no salt! Let that ferment until it is doubled (should be about 8 to 12 hours - if it isn't your starter is NOT READY for primetime). Then mix the final dough. At that point you have 125 grams of water and 125 of flour. IF you want 66.667% hydration (chosen because it is a reasonable hydration and makes calculations easy) you need 600 grams of flour (1000 divided by 1.66667) and 400 of water (600 times .6667). And 10 to 12 grams of salt (standard is 2% of flour weight). That dough should need about six to eight hours at room temp to be fully ready to go. Depending on your specific yeast it may or may not do much in the fridge. Mine does not! So I use about two hours out of the fridge, retard overnight (which I figure is worth about two hours) and then two to three hours at room temp to finish the dough.
- Doing it is one step will be troublesome. If you really want to do that I think you are better off simply making a conventional dough and adding starter for flavor.
- Your time was 9 hours plus the retard. Given it is summer you should have been overproofed. However, at that point even if it was overproofed and wouldn't brown it should have risen some, so... It could have been underdeveloped (poor gluten so poor gas holding), poorly shaped and handled (which could be exacerbated by having it so wet), or by excess salt (for you are over 2% salt by my calculations and wild yeast activity can be pretty sensitive to salt).

WRT your final comment about "long rise depleting sugars..." The retard creates a lot of sugar because the enzymes in the flour break starch into sugar and that reaction is less temperature sensitive than either the bacteria or yeast (which are more affected by temp than he bacteria). Gray dough is almost always a clear sign of overproofing.

Sourdough is not nearly as predictable as instant yeast and takes a lot more experimentation to find the "right" combination of factors.

I would suggest using KA AP for pizza (and bread) while you are learning your starter. And, as a general practice, only change one thing at a time...

And the dough has to feel light and bubbly if it is to give a light, bubbly pie! A heavy, wet/cold feeling dough (at baking) will never yield a light bread or pie.

Good luck!
Jay

[lloydl2]

Re: Sourdough crust

Jay, thanks for taking the time to include such a detailed reply. My IDY pizza using Paul Reinhart's bread makers apprentice recipe comes out quite excellent. Always looking to go the next step I decided to try wild yeast to see if it improves the crust flavor, texture airiness.

My starter, started from scratch now about 4 weeks ago seems to be doing very well, I started it with whole wheat and after the first week switched to KAAP, I remove 100g and then add 50 g each of water and flour and within a few hours it is doubled and bubbly and by the time 12 hours comes around it is between 3 and 4 times its size and starting to recede. I have not refrigerated it yet and feed it every 12 hours. It smells like sourdough bread and raw it does have a light sourdough taste to it.

My Pizza recipe for 4 12 oz balls is:
791 g flour (I've recently switched to Molina di pordenone tipo 00 pizza flour) from KAAP
547 g water
4 g of idy (which I am now trying to eliminate and use sourdough starter)
20 g salt
the hydration is 69.1 and with the tipo 00 flour the dough is sticky but workable. I like high hydration because it makes for a more open crumb and light and airy crust.

My first attempt at sourdough crust:

60 g of the starter which is at 100% hydration (50/50 flour/water)
128 grams of tipo00 flour and 128 grams of water a good mix including autolyse resting and some mixing until nice and smooth
room temperature rise for about 14 - 15 hours. Didn't see much rise but some and definitely had bubbling
Final dough addedd 633 grams of flour, 389 grams of water and 20 grams of salt autolyse 30 mins kneed stretch and fold and ball.
I then let it sit out a couple of hours and refrigerated over night
I took the dough out of fridge 7 hours before I actually cooked it and do suspect that it was over. The dough was extremely extensible and stretched out very easy supporting your analysis.... not much elasticity it did get some oven pop but the crumb was more dense than the idy it had onlysmall holes. The outer edge typically browns and chars quickly and my pies with idy cook in 90 to 120 secs. These didn't brown and char so I left them in longer and they came out crispier, good tasting but not the crumb that I was aiming for.

I tried an experiment this week when feeding the starter. After removing 100 grams of starter to discard, I instead feed it with 50g tipo00 and 50g of water to see it's rise as compared to my base starter feed with kaap.. they were pretty much equal a double to triple of the tipo00 and triple+ for the KA.

Next time: I am going to try the 1 4.4 method you prescribe
total dough including 20 grams of salt =1358 g
divide by 5 = 272 divide by 5 = 54
so 54 grams of 50/50 starter added to 109 g each of flour and water
final dough 655g flour 411 gr water and 20 g salt
Will need to reconfigure some for a slightly lower salt and hydration...

Now, someone else suggested limiting starter to 1.7% of total flour so this comes out to about 14 g of starter and a really long first rise of 24 hours at about 65% (he uses a cooler with some ice in it to get the temp to 65). What are your thoughts about going so low on starter? Other things I've read say to substitute 240 g of starter for a packet of active dry yeast. According to my calcs that equates to about 120 g of starter for the amount of idy I use

As I'm sure you know, there are a lot of conflicting/different ways of using sourdough. My goal is to find one that works great and provides the most flexibility (ie cold retard) so I can make the dough on my schedule and not have to worry too much about it being ready or over proofed when I want to cook it, given a few hour window..

thanks again for your response and suggestions. I am anxious to try again and may make a batch of dough today to use on Sunday....

Lloyd

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough crust

limiting starter to 1.7% of total flour so this comes out to about 14 g of starter and a really long first rise of 24 hours at about 65

Hi Lloyd!

That is a really strange formulation to me. There is a lot more going on in SD that straight dough. A major reason for staging the expansion is to give the dough some body. With enzymes and bacteria and yeast the structure of the dough degrades pretty fast. (Which is why starter gets so runny after being in the fridge for a week - a nice dough when you start and goop a week later - does not make particularly good bread by the way!) The "fresh" flour in the final dough gives it some fresh "body". Remember too that you are injecting degraded flour into the dough when you use starter!

Your first batch problems don't totally add up to me. Salt is high (which slows the yeast), hydration is high (which speeds the yeast), temperature is probably high (which speeds the yeast).

I am also a bit intrigued that you find 70% hydration 00 manageable and desirable. The norm for 00 is far closer to 60% (and even lower) and adding degraded flour in the starter should push the preferred hydration lower. Many seem to find that really wet 00 doesn't hold together like KA BF in particular.

What kind of water are you using???? Is it hard?

Making dough for Sunday I would start with the first expansion overnight. Then the second expansion, ball it immediately, give it say an hour and put it in the fridge. Be sure to check the temp! (Also a good idea to check the temp of the balls when you take them out since we are trying to solve problems.) Take the dough out about two hours before you want to bake. The first balls should be a bit underproofed but the mid and later ones should be about right.

Good Luck!
Jay

[lloydl2]

Re: Sourdough crust

Your first batch problems don't totally add up to me. Salt is high (which slows the yeast), hydration is high (which speeds the yeast), temperature is probably high (which speeds the yeast).

My first batch (first rise) did not include any salt it was 100% hydration consisting of 60 grams of starter and 128 g each of flour and water, salt was added for the final dough and then rested and balled left out a couple of hours and then refrigerated.

I am also a bit intrigued that you find 70% hydration 00 manageable and desirable. The norm for 00 is far closer to 60% (and even lower) and adding degraded flour in the starter should push the preferred hydration lower. Many seem to find that really wet 00 doesn't hold together like KA BF in particular.

i was using this hydration level with about 80% KAAP and about 20% KABF. Then I switched to the molina 00 first batch with idy at that hydration came out really good. so I kept it when switching to the starter version. I will recalculate down to at least 65 or lower for the next batch.. just don't want to change too many things at once makes it harder to know which effected it the most... guess it doesn't matter if it works.

What kind of water are you using???? Is it hard?

Water is softened and then filtered through a 5 stage reverse osmosis under sink water filter so pretty pure

Making dough for Sunday I would start with the first expansion overnight. Then the second expansion, ball it immediately, give it say an hour and put it in the fridge. Be sure to check the temp! (Also a good idea to check the temp of the balls when you take them out since we are trying to solve problems.) Take the dough out about two hours before you want to bake. The first balls should be a bit underproofed but the mid and later ones should be about right.

Will only being doing a small amount 2 - 4 dough balls so will take out about 3 hours before planned cook time...

thanks again!

Lloyd

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough crust

Ahhh...if you have been doing 80% the 00 would be reasonably manageable. A lot of peopls seem to feel that it has no backbone at 70 percent though - it sort of oozes around more like a batter. That is overstated but...to give the idea. Others find it tears at high hydration (this is weird also IMO). I think you will find you are happier with lower hydration. It should be still be silky smooth and soft but the lower hydration will give it more "touch"

WRT changes - I think I said earlier, single changes are best (though two can be okay if they don't have strong dependencies). WRT water I use RO also but there are those who say RO is not as good as tap - particularly for sourdough.

You did right leaving the salt out of the first expansion. NEVER put salt in the first expansion of SD. One thing you might try (especially appropriate for bread) is mix the final dough without salt and let it autolyze for 20 minutes. Then, mixing by hand, add the salt (hold about 50 ml/50 gm water out to add with the salt. You will FEEL the gluten tighten as the salt is mixed into the dough. A very interesting feel!

Let us know how it goes! Something is screwy and it will be interesting to see what it is!
Jay

[lloydl2]

Re: Sourdough crust

I really think that I over proofed the dough leaving it for 15 hours (first rise) then proofing for a couple of hours, retarding and then final proofing continued for 7 more hours.. Anyway I've just reformulated my dough formula for 65% 340 g dough balls for 14 inch pizzas and using the 1.4.4 method. I've developed a spreadsheet calculator for this. I've attached a copy if you want to use it, play with it, or just check it out..
thanks..

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough crust

While 15 hours need not be a disasterous first expansion (even though it proabaly peaked at 8) with a young starter you are probably right that it was overproofed. In my experience lack of browning/i.e.gray crust is a key indicator of overproofed. To be candid it is more complex than that but...that is the logic that drivesa lto of m interpretation.

Good Luck!
Jay

[lloydl2]

Re: Sourdough crust

Well, it's Monday and yesterday my wife and I enjoyed some very fine sourdough pizza. Thanks for your help.

In summary after a 12 hour initial ferment, my preferment was bubbling nicely and about double in volume. I created the final dough kneeded it briefly mostly stretch and fold. passed the windowpane test and let it rest for about 30 mins before balling it and letting it rise about 3 hours and then refrigerating it. It went into the fridge at about 77 degrees came out Sunday about 11 am at 35 proofed for 3 hours and cooked. In a word delicious.. good char and oven pop and tasting mighty fine. See pictures attached

Lloyd

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough crust

Hi Lloyd!

Toppings look good and your oven temp looks good. However, I would suggest trying a much shorter total proof - only 15 to 30 minutes before refrigerating. And only 2 hours on removal. The reason I suggest that is the whitish color of the dough suggests to me you that you are overproofed. It is not a big deal with pizza dough but the pies will be more golden due to the higher sugar content. (One of the key characteristics of overproofed is that the yeast population depletes the available sugar which leads to slower gas production. In pizza overproofed is not a big deal because you can still get decent oven spring in the cornicione but in loaves is a problem if you go that far over.

NOTE: the schedule I suggest may be underproofed a bit but if you feel it is, then you have two data points to extrapolate between. (Realistically three hours is probably about right but trying two hours is more guaranteed to be under...)

Good luck and let us know if you try the shorter time!
Jay

[lloydl2]

Re: Sourdough crust

hmm, interesting, didn't think the dough was overproofed, although it could be a bit less proofed and compared to my first attempt where the crust was white/grey and didn't even char, this charred nicely. I think gray crust is also a sign of severe underproofing too. Thanks again, will try less time out before refrigerating next time..

Lloyd

[texassourdough]

Re: Sourdough crust

Hi Lloyd!

It could also simply be the photography... Yes, underproofing can yield gray but the reason is lack of sugar, and the retard allows the enzymes to accumulate sugar in the dough so it goes fast when it warms up. You should definitely be able to shorten the preretard proof with minimal impact.

Good luck!
Jay