Did not work out! (detective with thriller elements)
Author Elena Zheleznyak,
🔗When you start baking with freshly brewed sourdough, especially if these are your first attempts at baking sourdough bread, you fail. It happens, of course, that it turns out right away, but more often than not there are punctures, and there is nothing terrible in this, except, of course, disappointment. At the same time, this is an invaluable experience, which is a difficult son of mistakes, thanks to which we learn to feel the dough with our hands and eyes, to feel by touch whether it has come up, distance or a little more, what depth to make an incision and whether to make at all, and, most importantly why suddenly it did not work. I noticed that most often I write about how to make it work and at the same time I hardly write about why it might not work out. This "didn't work" usually arises simply as a question that you urgently want to get an answer to, but in order to answer it, or at least start to speculate and speculate, you need to know what happened before you got the failed bread out of the oven.
Therefore, today we will try to touch upon the topic of our bread failures and especially what should be paid attention to while working with the dough, in order to then answer ourselves - "why?" Let's start by defining the conditions of the problem - analyzing the result and what preceded it.
(pictured is dense unbaked wasp bread on a rye toast)
All imperfections, cracks in the crust, depressions and caves in the crumb, and in general, everything that falls under the category "did not work out" can be designated by the capacious phrase - "baking defects." These defects can be minor, slightly or strongly affect the taste of the bread, or they can be such that a freshly baked loaf is sent to feed pigeons. Problems can arise due to low-quality raw materials, that is, flour, water (in general, liquid) and sourdough (yeast) and due to a violation of the technological process, that is, if we ourselves did something wrong, we were mistaken. Often, having looked or tasted bread, one can already assume what the problem is, but sometimes it is not easy to independently determine the reasons, especially for beginners. At the same time, unsuccessful bread is usually a combination of various reasons, each of which somehow affected the result. To understand the problem, it is important to consider, whenever possible, everything that could affect.
If you ask someone for help in debriefing, or ask here, then it is important that you be sure to talk about the following:·
Outlined the recipe... If there is an original, then a link is desirable, if you redid it, then tell us how.
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Leaven... Tell us about your sourdough, what kind of starter you baked, how long have you been in contact with it, how it was taken out and in what conditions do you keep it (in what proportions do you feed, how often, where does it live, and does it rise to the peak and for how long)?
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Kneading... How it was kneaded, to what extent, what was the dough in the process and at the end of kneading, how was water added, etc.
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Fermentation... At what temperature and for how long did the dough ferment, in what container, what it was covered with, what it looked like at the end of fermentation, when you decided to knead it and form a blank. It is important that you know at least some approximate data regarding this stage.
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Molding... How was it molded, was there a preliminary proofing (this is when the dough is cut into pieces, rolled into balls and allowed to rest for 10 minutes, and then it is molded).
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Proofing... At what temperature were the parcels for proofing, in what or on what, what were they covered with, what they looked like at the end of the proofing, how did you understand that it was time to put the bread in the oven?
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Incisions... Did you, no? What and when, deep, not deep?
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Bakery products... In what oven did they bake, on a stone or a baking sheet, or maybe under a hood or in a cast-iron cauldron? How long did you heat it up, with or without a stone / baking tray / hood? How was the steam organized, was there any moisture at all at the beginning of baking? How long was it baked and at what temperature?
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Were there any surprises? Maybe you accidentally knocked or shook the workpiece before putting it into the oven? Did you accidentally add too cold or hot water?
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Are you confident in the quality of the raw materials used? Is the oil rancid? Has the flour spoiled, have you baked something else with yeast or sourdough from this flour, and for how long?
Finally,
how did you cool the finished bread, on a wire rack, a board, under a towel, in a bag, separately or tightly packed in a row with freshly baked loaves and loaves?
In the comments to this recipe, we discussed why the bread didn't work out. To be honest, I didn't immediately imagine what exactly happened to the bread until I saw the photo.
With Anastasia's permission, I am posting it, because this is a very vivid example. The crumb has a strong donkey inside, but there is a crust, there is a strong temper at the bottom, the crumb is poorly loosened.
From the baking conditions, I only had the fact that the dough was made with rye sourdough and, it seemed, went well in the process of fernation and proofing. And this, in general, is all the data, which means there is a place for fantasies to roam. At first, I assumed that the problem was in flour or sourdough, but then, after reading about defects of this kind, I decided that, nevertheless, this was most likely a consequence of certain errors in working with the dough. At first it seemed to me that it did not fit well, but in the oven it swelled sharply, forming such a dome and quenching from below (the crust in the oven quickly became coarse, there was nowhere to go and he blew up the roof of the bread, about the same happens in pits, but this is a completely different bread ). Then she looked again: from the outside of the bread, there were no noticeable strong crust explosions (the hole in the middle of the crust does not count, it did not appear at the beginning of baking), it is clear that the crumb really has settled - that is, before that it rose, and then it was already a donkey ... This usually happens if the dough is too old, the gluten weakens by this moment, and the yeast has already done all its work and cannot support the growth of the bread with a shock dose of carbon dioxide, and the crumb settles. Usually, together with the crumb, the crust falls off, but here it remained in place and even turned brown. This is rare, but it usually happens if the workpiece has time to dry out a little during proofing. And the hardening was formed as a result of poor looseness of the dough due to falling off.
Already in the course of the conversation, I learned that the working leaven is not very active, it grows for a long time to the peak, it raises the dough weakly and it was not worth starting to bake on it at all, but it was worth working directly with the leaven, so to speak, to bring its feelings and achieve normal lifting force.
And I would also like to add.
Take pictures of your failures... Today they upset you, and tomorrow they will tell you how much you already know and know. In addition, having a picture in front of your eyes makes it much easier to understand something about the problem.
Even more,
shoot the process if possible, so it will be easier to track down the error and find the reason why the bread is sour, why the pores are not the same, the crust is rough, not fluffy, not beautiful.
Remove ripe dough (whether it rose or even managed to fall), the dough after kneading (it will show what consistency it is and how it was kneaded),
shoot like fermented, it will be possible to determine whether it has approached or even passed,
remove at the end of the proofing... This does not need to be done constantly, the need for such careful observation will disappear by itself, but when there were attempts and questions remained, this is the best way to clarify the situation.
Good luck!
More on the topic: Author ROMA-TATIANA
WORKING ON ERRORS
