Bread Making

[Anonymous No.17595341]

How can I get a better crumb on my sourdough?
It comes out tasting great but the bread is always a bit tough and chewy and more dense than i'd like.
I'm making a 75% hydration dough.

My current recipe/process:

Night before i mix my levain
20g 100% hydration starter
45g White Bread Flour
45g Wheat Flour
90g Water
Let it ferment for 12 hours.

Morning of I mix
650g White Bread Flour
250g Wheat Flour
650g Water
Let Autolyse for 2 hours.
Then i work in the levain, 35g olive oil, and 16g salt, and kneed/stretch and fold the dough for about 5-7 minutes until the dough comes together and has some decent gluten development.
I put it into a bowl to bulk ferment for 5 hours at 70-75 degrees fahrenheit.
About every hour and a half i'll come along and do a handful of coil folds
After the bulk i'll divide my dough in 2 and pre-shape into balls, then rest for another hour.
Then i'll final shape and pop the dough into the basket and put it straight into the fridge.

The next day i take it out of the fridge and let it sit out at room temperature for about 2 hours.
I put a tray of boiling water in the oven and bake on a pizza stone at 460 degrees fahrenheit for 20 minutes, then turn the temp down to 375 until the bread is done.

I know i'm not over proofing because the dough passes the poke test, and i'm able to make a nice windowpane before i shape so i think i have decent gluten development, so i'm just not sure why my bread always comes out chewy, dense and tough.
Any advice would be appreciated, i really don't want to go on websites that aren't /ck/.

[Anonymous No.17595370]

Toast it.

[Anonymous No.17595514]

The recipe and technique seem reasonable. Excess toughness makes me think it's a flour issue. Some flours make harder bread. Usually it correlates with gluten content, but it's possible that two flours at 12% gluten produce breads of different hardness. You could test different flours. Also reducing the proportion of wholegrain wheat flour can help, since it always adds toughness compared to white flour. You have 30%/70% wheat/white. I'd drop it to 10-20% and see if that improves the texture.

Your bread volume is also likely limited by your baking setup. A pizza stone and a water tray is better than nothing, but it doesn't give as good results as baking inside of a cast iron pot. I recommend switching to the pot method as it's likely to lead to immediate improvement.

It's hard to say anything conclusive based on the picture. It's flat, but it could be due to many reasons: poor oven spring, gluten too weak, poor quality flour, etc. At least to my eye it's not obviously under- or overfermented.

[Anonymous No.17595537]

>>17595341
I make sourdough in one of swedens biggest bakery. For volume and bigger/more holes i knead it longer(in a kneading machine) and ass domething like 15-20% extra water till it looks like its will never come together. But it will with a strong industrial machine. It will have to rest a bit after kneading for it to absorb a lot of water. Den you tripple fold it after its fermented/risen and you let it rest again. And when you shape it you have to be careful. Treat it like a baby chicken or womens breasts. Be sure not to squeeze the air out. Idk even what the question was. Its 2 am and i just woke up. Sry for bad English

[Anonymous No.17595586]

>>17595514
Thanks for the advice. I'll switch to my cast iron pot from now on. I just recently got a stone so i wanted to try it for bread. I'm also dogshit at slashing my bread but i don't really care too much about that.
I don't remember what % protein my flours are, but i usually try and pick up the highest ones i can find at the store.
That said despite my issues the bread still tastes great toasted with butter. It has a nice strong sour flavor like i want.

[Anonymous No.17595865]

>>17595537
What do baby chickens feel like?

[Anonymous No.17595868]

>>17595865
Like warm apple pie

[Anonymous No.17596118]

>>17595341
cut your salt to 2%
don't need or fold to often. 3 or 4 times is the most during the whole process.
don't use wheat flour at all.

bake in a dutch oven.

[Anonymous No.17596133]

>>17596118
The salt is at 1.6%, why increase it to 2%?
(16 grams of salt and 1000 grams of flour)

[Anonymous No.17596183]

help me breadlords

i wanna just do a bulk dough, like 550grams at 75% hydro, and leave it for about 24 hours

i wanna let sit after mixing for 15 min and then stretch/fold, wait 30 stretch/fold wait 30, preshape wait 15, final shape flour and banneton, fridge done

i wanna know how much active dry yeast to use to get this dough to be optimally risen and fermented in 24 hours without overproofing, please bread sorcerers help me

[Anonymous No.17596298]

please help me you fucking niggers

[Anonymous No.17596303]

>>17595341
blend it up, bake it and coat your next loaf with it

[Anonymous No.17596325]

>>17595341
Too much gluten is pretty much always the reason bread is too chewy

[Anonymous No.17596345]

>>17595341
Any variation you can feel from the core and skin?
dense: too much water for too little initial heat, when they are done knock to make sure they are, for me the center will always have a little damp, ideally should sound hollow. initial temp too low for oven spring and shell formed, flat bottom has no browness yet top skins have some, pizza stone aren't that good of a heat transfer after pre heat temp is done, maybe a lid and steel pan instead of all that stone and steam at the start?
Tough: low temp finish for too long drying the exterior? Salt may have been too much? Flour too strong with protein?
Chewy: Undercooked core? Too much moisture? Any final proofing after the shaping is done?
Sound like you are using sourdough starter, maybe just leave the thing outside for the night, instead of heat manipulation. Hollowness of the dough act as insulator which takes way too much time to resume temp as a whole. If you worry about overproof when room temp all night, it can be fixed by punching down, and they can quickly restart like in 1h or 45 min, and they can have many chances like that for the first 24 hr, but not 48 hour long outside.
How did you cool it out of the oven? Don't dig in right away.
Recently I made a bread with partially scorched bottom due to only bottom element heats up during baking, and I crank the heat to 475 with a large thin baking tray thus top skin is relatively pale, but it is light and soft.

[Anonymous No.17596741]

>>17596183
>>17596298
standard bread recipes use around 1.5-2% yeast.
Since you're not doing a preferment and you want to proof in the fridge instead of on the counter you can keep that ~2% yeast and be fine.
So if you meant 550g flour
then 412.5g water
11g yeast
9g salt.

If you meants 550g total dough weight then
308g flour
231g water
6g yeast
4.5g salt.

Again this is assuming you're doing this all in the fridge. Why not make a biga or a poolish preferment, and then the next day mix it with the rest of the ingredients and bake?

[Anonymous No.17596897]

>>17595341
>How can I get a better crumb on my sourdough?
Bread is like pizza, needs really hot temperatures. So buy a pizza oven I guess.

[Anonymous No.17597124]

>>17596741
thank bruv, i don't know why the tranny janny deleted my posts, i've done poolish but i want the entire dough to ferment and maximize the K2 and maybe have more sour flavor, yea i know sourdough i ain't doin all that

[Anonymous No.17597824]

>>17597124
you can also do a preferment with 100% of your flour, almost all of your water (save like a tablespoon) and just a tiny pinch of yeast.
Then let it preferment on the counter overnight, the next day dissolve the rest of your yeast in the bit of water you saved, pour that onto your dough and squeeze it in, then add in your salt and do the same. Then just give it a quick kneading to get the salt and yeast incorporated, and proceed as normal bulk ferment\fold\bake. This is a little tricker tho cause its easier to over ferment

[Anonymous No.17599574]

>>17597124
Probably because this is a civilized board and you were acting like an asshole

[Anonymous No.17600820]

>>17596133
oops I didn't account for the whole wheat I was only going off the white flour.

[Anonymous No.17600824]

>>17596741
I only use about .5% yeast in most of my recipes.

[Anonymous No.17601162]

here's your bread, bro

[Anonymous No.17601332]

>>17599574
I'll fucking kill you in real life you nigger animal