If you follow baking blogs or participate in online baking forums, you’ve probably heard this: The stiffer – lower hydration – the starter the sourer the taste. The thinking is that a stiffer starter promotes aerobic metabolism, thus creating more acetic acid, while a more liquid starter promotes anerobic metabolism which favors the creation of lactic acid. The difference is that acetic acid tastes more sour than lactic acid.
That’s all well and good. But as with so many things in making sourdough, there are several variables that can affect the sourness of your bread. For instance, with the loaf at the top, I used a 500% hydration starter to ferment the bread. It was 20% inoculation relative to the flour (BTW, I hate using that word with respect to bread because it has a specific scientific meaning). But at that hydration level, the yeast density was low, and it took 24 hours for final fermentation in my fridge. That loaf was nice and tart!
On the other hand, with the loaves immediately above, I used a 60% hydration starter, with the same inoculation level of 20%. But the yeast density was so much greater than the liquid starter, that final fermentation was barely 10 hours and I was pushing it, which accounts for the less open crumb. It hardly has any sour taste.
Myself, I’ve never bought into that rule of thumb that a stiffer starter will make a more a sour tasting loaf of bread. I’m quite familiar with the food science behind that and agree that aerobic metabolism promotes the production of acetic acid. But baking as long and as much I have, the best way I know to make a sour loaf is to have a long, cold final fermentation that favors bacterial over fungal activity, but also, making sure that my inoculation level is only about 12 to 13% to ensure I’m creating a less competitive environment that favors the bacteria in my dough.
You see, while yeast metabolizes, it creates inhibitors that block bacterial activity, effectively mitigating or eliminating competition. So, using a lower inoculation level will ensure a lower relative yeast density and will help mitigate fungal activity, and in turn, allow the bacteria to flourish during bulk fermentation. Then when bulk fermentation is complete, doing a cold fermentation of around 38℉ (and no higher than 40℉) will slow down yeast activity even further and let the bacteria continue do their thing. These principles apply to using all sorts of starters, from pure liquid fruit-based starters to high hydration starters, to super-stiff starters. So, at least for me, the type of starter isn’t as relevant as the dough fermentation techniques I employ.
That said, I could be completely full of it, and there are folks who will disagree with me vehemently. I get that. But for me, it’s time and technique that will dictate how sour my bread is, not my starter.
The other day, I got a shipment of my favorite flour, Azure Market Organics Unbleached Bread Flour. I’ve written about it several times, so I won’t go into detail about it. But if you’ve read this blog, you know I love this flour! It’s so flavorful and wonderful to work with, but until recently, it was out of stock at Azure. They finally got it back in stock and I immediately ordered it. I feel like a kid in a candy store!
I’m excited because this flour has been integral to my flour blends, and with it unavailable, I’ve had to use alternatives. That hasn’t been too much of an issue, but any time you change things up, you need to adjust to the change, and sometimes it takes a few times to get comparable results to what you’re used to, as you tweak hydration, preferment amount, fermentation times, etc. But baking with this flour? It’s like putting on a pair of broken-in shoes. It’s just comfortable, which in turn makes my dough development process comfortable and familiar.
And I’ve realized that a very large part of my progression as a baker has been getting familiar with my ingredients. When you’re used to working with different ingredients, you just know how they’ll react and you can execute your process without having to apply too much conscious thought. Things just become automatic.
I once got in a great conversation with a professional chef. He said that the fundamental difference between him and a home chef is that he knows his ingredients so well that he doesn’t have to think about what he’s cooking. He can just focus entirely on creating his dishes. But more importantly, he said he gets the reps in that build that familiarity. It’s the same way with baking. When you’ve put in the reps, you just know, and as they say, when you know, you know.
As soon as I got my flour, I made the dough for the loaf above. With that loaf, I used a 500% hydration starter (yes you read that right) to ferment a 75-25 Bread/AP flour blend. Final hydration was around 75%. That’s just a basic loaf. But this was a bit of a challenge because I couldn’t do as long a bulk fermentation as I normally do because of time constraints. But knowing this blend and recipe so well, I knew that I could make up for it by doing an extra-long final fermentation. So, this loaf spent about 18 hours in my fridge.
When I checked it baking through my oven’s window, I just smiled and gave a sigh of pure satisfaction. I just nodded and said, “Mm-mm-mm, how sweet it is!” Then when I removed it from the oven, I was giddy. I saw how much the loaf had expanded, and I knew it was going to turn out great. Yes, it has a nice, open crumb, but more importantly, the dough was fully fermented and in no place was dense. So satisfying…
Like many other bloggers, I often talk about experimenting with different ingredients. I think that’s part of the process of developing skill. And while experimentation is great, getting reps in and learning what ingredients work best for you is just as important.
My daughter asked me if I could make her a garlic-parmesan-rosemary loaf for her birthday, as that is her favorite bread of mine. I normally make this as a sourdough, but because of time constraints, building a levain wasn’t an option. But I didn’t want to make just a straight dough. Not that it would be bland, but for me at least, it would just be a bit boring. Plus, a straight dough just doesn’t keep fresh for long.
But then it occurred to me that I could still use a preferment and make a poolish. While it wouldn’t have the sourness of a levain, it would contain at least some organic acids that would not only add to the flavor profile, but also add some natural preservative. Then it further occurred to me that if I made the poolish from rye flour, I’d add yet another dimension to both the flavor and textural profiles! The result was magnificent, as you can see in the picture above. Here are numbers…
Overall Formula
Flour
100.00%
Water
76.00%
Salt
1.50%
Yeast
1.00%
Roasted Garlic
6.00%
Poolish
Preferment % of total flour
50%
Preferment Hydration
100%
Flour
301g
Water
301g
Yeast @ 0.33%
1g
Final Dough
Bread Flour
821g
Water (90-100°F)
558g
Salt
16g
Yeast
11g
Roasted Garlic
66g
Preferment
547g
Total Yield
2020g 2 X 1000 loaves
Extra Ingredients
Normally, I’d include the whole garlic cloves, cheese, and rosemary in the overall formula and the final dough. But I’ve found that developing the dough first, then including the cheese and garlic when I’m shaping gives me much better results.
Raw, Whole Garlic Cloves
200-250g
Parmesan Grana Padano Cheese
400g
Fresh Rosemary (finely chopped)
10-15g
Make the poolish. The night before you bake, make the poolish. Since it’s going to ferment overnight, there’s no need to use warm water. Just use regular tap water or room temp water. Because you’re using rye flour, you won’t get many surface bubbles, if any at all. But you will get lots of expansion by morning. And don’t worry if the poolish has peaked and subsided a bit.
Roast the garlic. Place the garlic in either an oven-safe container or some foil. Drizzle with a little olive oil to coat the cloves, then wrap them so all cloves are covered. Roast for 30-45 minutes at 375℉/250℃ until the cloves are mashable with a fork. Mash the cloves well, then set aside and allow to cool.
Mix.
In a separate bowl, combine all the wet ingredients together, along with the yeast and poolish. Mix well to break up and dissolve the poolish and set aside.
Thoroughly combine the flour and salt in your main mixing bowl.
Pour the liquid mixture into the dry mix, then start to slowly combine. As the dough starts forming, add the mashed garlic.
Mix the dough until smooth and no dry ingredients remain.
While you can certainly hand-mix the ingredients, I like to use a mixer for this dough. It’s more efficient.
Bulk Fermentation. You want this dough to double in volume. This could take anywhere from 1 1/2 – 2 hours.
Folding. Fold the dough once within the first 45 minutes. But make sure you fold it to the point where the dough no longer wants to be folded. Once you’ve finished folding, turn the dough over onto the seams.
Divide and preshape. Once the dough has fully fermented, turn it out onto a clean work surface. Divide into two 1000g pieces (yes, I scale out the portions), then form the pieces into nice rounds. Bench rest the rounds for at least 15 minutes to allow the dough to relax.
Shape.
Work a round into a rough rectangle as shown below.
Next, spread half the garlic cloves, parmesan cheese, and rosemary evenly over the surface of the dough.
Next, fold over the ends of the rectangle.
Starting at the “top” of the rectangle, start rolling the dough into a cylinder. Try to make the rolls as tight as possible without tearing the dough.
Once you’ve finished rolling up the cylinder, pinch the cylinder closed, then roll cylinder onto the seam.
Now, with a sharp knife, cut the cylinder in half length-wise, and form a “V” with the two halves.
Carefully, twist the two halves together.
Pick up the twisted mass from the ends, then place it into a well-oiled 9″ X 5″ X 3″ pan.
Bake. Drizzle olive oil over the top of each loaf, and bake at 375℉/250℃ for 45-50 minutes. It may seem that this is a low temp to bake at, but you want to roast the garlic slowly, plus you don’t want to completely liquify the cheese, which will happen at a higher temp. Bake the loaves until the internal temperature reaches 205-210℉.
Remove from the oven, turn the oven off, then separate the loaves from the pans. Put the loaves onto a baking sheet, then return them to the oven and let them cure for 15-20 minutes to help solidify the crust.
I recently had a conversation at a party with a friend and fellow home baker who started our conversation by saying, “Oh, I never make yeasted bread. It’s just too simple and it tastes so bland.” Then after wolfing down several pieces of baguette that I had brought to the party she remarked, “This bread has a slightly sour tang to it. What kind of sourdough starter did you use?”
Willing myself to not roll my eyes, I smiled and said, “That’s a yeasted loaf. No sourdough. In fact, I didn’t even use a poolish.” I SO wanted to be snarky. But I behaved myself, and instead took a more conciliatory stance: “On the surface, sure, a straight dough is very simple to make. But there are lots of things you can do to completely transform it.”
Of course, she asked, “How?” So I spent the next several minutes – actually, it was more like an hour in total – discussing different ways I’ve learned to affect the flavor of my bread. But while some things I’ll share below are specific to yeasted bread, there are a couple of nuggets that could be used for any bread that you make. Note that though they’re numbered, the tips aren’t in any particular order.
1. Move beyond white flour
Like many, my first real bread book was “Flour Water Salt Yeast” by Ken Forkish. There was a section in the book where he talked about finding a flour to call your own. I was just starting out making no-knead bread at the time, so I didn’t pay too much attention to that section. I just wanted to learn the technique. But literally within a month, I was starting to get bored of making white bread. So I started experimenting with different blends of flour. Here are a few blends that I use:
This has the sourest flavor as I make my levain using whole wheat flour that has lots of bacteria in it.
Sourdough 2
60% Kamut 40% High-Protein Bread Flour
This is a difficult one to make as Kamut has a different kind of gluten. But the flavor it produces is nutty and the crumb texture is super-soft.
Sourdough 3
60% High-Extraction Bread Flour 40% White Whole Wheat
The crumb structure on this one is not very open, though the crumb is super-soft due to the white whole wheat flour that also imparts a subtle sweetness to the flavor.
Baguette 1
50% AP Flour 25% Bread Flour 25% Kamut or Rye
Kamut and Rye both add nuttiness to the flavor and the bread flour provides chew.
Baguette 2, Ciabatta
75% AP Flour 25% Kamut or Rye
This is actually the blend I use the most for baguettes and ciabatta.
I use this for my sourdough baguettes. As with Sourdough #1, the levain is made from whole wheat.
NOTE: All flour I use is certified organic
While fermentation will certainly drive flavor, I’ve found that the most significant impact on bread flavor comes from the flour blend that’s used. If you do create a blend, keep in mind that your processing technique may change as different flour has different protein content or, in the case of Kamut or rye, will not create gluten, or at least a protein that contributes to the dough structure. It may take you a couple or a few times baking with the blend before you get it down.
Note above that I list 25% Kamut or Rye. This is because both of these flours behave similarly in that they contribute very little if any to the dough structure. But they dd some incredible taste to the bread! Kamut adds a
2. Play With Hydration
Hydration affects the texture and density of the bread. And while texture and density aren’t flavors, they can affect our perception of flavors. For instance, a heavy, dense bread concentrates flavors, while an airy, light crumb tends to have much subtler, more delicate flavors. With the bread I make, I try to strike a balance between flavor concentration and texture. The crumb of my boules and batards isn’t super-open, but it’s still light and airy – it just doesn’t have a lot of big holes. To achieve consistent results, I’ve had to play with the hydration. But as a rule of thumb, the more whole-grain flour I use, the more water I’ll add. For instance, the hydration for Baguette 1 is 76%, while the hydration for Baguette 3 is about 80% (these are a challenge to shape).
3. Retard Bulk Fermentation
People who make sourdough are well-versed in long, slow fermentation and the flavors it can impart as the bacteria in the flour (and in the air) get a chance to release organic acids into the dough, and the enzymes have time to break down starches and convert them to sugar. We can do the same with yeasted dough. For instance, with my Pointage en Bac baguettes, I start bulk fermentation at room temp, then slow it down in a fridge that’s set to about 39℉ – 42℉. This doesn’t completely stop yeast fermentation, but it significantly slows it down to allow the enzymes and bacteria to better compete for resources.
Lately, I’ve been really getting into the Pain a l’Ancienne technique of delaying fermentation from the get-go for my baguettes. This involves using ice water at mixing to prevent the yeast from metabolizing. I then further retard in the fridge set at 36℉ for up to 48 hours. Yeast fermentation is allowed to occur only after this long rest in the fridge. This makes for an absolutely complex-tasting bread!
4. Retard Final Fermentation
While retarding final fermentation follows the same basic principles as retarding bulk fermentation, it’s a little trickier because we’re using commercial yeast. Commercial yeast has been literally bred to be fast-acting and resilient, even in harsh environments.1 So timing when you place your dough into your fridge is critical. I’ve found that as a rule of thumb to always place my loaves in the fridge once the dough has expanded about 50%. It takes a while for the dough to equalize to the cold environment, so you have to have enough runway to account for the yeast activity while the dough cools. I’ve found that if I let it get past that point, my dough will be overproofed when it comes out of the fridge. So now, if by chance I let it get past that point, I just let it finish and bake the bread.
That caveat aside, once the dough equalizes, you mitigate the competition from the yeast and the bacteria and enzymes can do their thing. Pizzaiolo’s know this technique very well, with some letting their pizza dough undergo cold fermentation for up to five days!
5. Salt Stress Yeast
When yeast is placed into a saline environment, it undergoes what is called osmotic shock. During this period, the fungus ceases fermentation while it builds up protection against water from being leached from its cells. Once that protection has been built, the yeast then can go about its business converting sugars into gas and it also becomes impervious to later osmotic events.
I now only use salt-stressed yeast when I’m making dough for Baguettes a l’Ancienne or other bread where I want to delay bulk fermentation simply because once I remove the dough from the fridge, I don’t want the yeast to undergo osmotic shock. I want it to start producing gas bubbles ASAP. The thing about pre-stressing the yeast is that it produces glycerol. An increased presence of glycerol has been shown to increase fermentation activity and also increase the gas-retention abilities in the dough.2 Gas is flavor!
6. Be Gentle With Your Dough
As of late, I’ve been doing my best to handle my dough in a much more gentle fashion. After a couple of batches where the bread turned out a little dense, I realized that the loaves were turning out that way because of how I handled the dough. I was degassing it by being too rough. So I made a conscious decision to handle the dough in a much gentler fashion. For instance, look at the ciabatta in the picture above. With that batch, I did my best to be gentle with the dough and the results, as you can see above, pretty much speak for themselves.
When you see a professional baker manipulating dough, it looks as if they’re throwing it around. But I realized that they’re just going fast because they’ve done it thousands of times. I started picking up speed myself as I got used to the particular tasks, but I realized that I also increased the physical pressure I was placing on the dough. By being aware of how I was manipulating the dough, I’ve greatly improved the texture and density of my crumb. And as with hydration, texture, and density affect flavor.
7. Experiment with Different Sourdough Cultures
A sourdough culture has the potential to affect the flavor of the bread in a variety of ways. The more starter you use, the more the grain of the culture affects the flavor. The less you use, the rising will be slower and flavor development will come predominantly from the bacteria in the final dough. But where the culture originates from can also play a factor as the combination of yeast and bacteria differs from region to region.
For instance, when I cultivate a culture from my immediate vicinity, the resultant bread isn’t very sour and the rising action is moderate. On the other hand, when I’ve made cultures from longan fruit, those microbes go crazy. The rising action is much higher and the microbes impart both sweet and sour flavors, though the sweetness could very well be coming from the fruit juice itself. If I make a starter from an original San Francisco sourdough culture, the bread has the distinctive San Francisco sourdough tang. Contrast that with a starter from Eastern Europe that has a very sour flavor.
By the way, if you’re interested in cultivating international cultures, look no further than Sourdoughs International. They have a collection of dry starters from all over the world and even have an Egyptian culture from antiquity that was captured from an unearthed ancient bakery at the foot of the Giza pyramids. It’s on the way to me as I write this!
But even if you don’t experiment with different starters, varying the amount of starter you use will affect the flavor of your bread. Note, that your rising times may vary wildly if you do this, so you’ll have to eyeball how your dough rises. And also note that the more starter you use will not necessarily make your rising go faster. In fact, the higher acidity may very well slow down fermentation. As always, use your senses – especially your sight and touch – to monitor your dough’s progress.
The one thing that really excites me about using different starters is that all of them vary in their microbe density. Some starters, such as the Giza starter I mentioned, seem to have a high density of bacteria, so the bread comes out particularly sour. On the other hand, one of my Italian starters is much more balanced and I’ve trained it to favor the yeast and other microbes in the starter that release esters, giving it a slight banana-like aroma (that’s actually frickin’ amazing, btw).
8. Use a Levain AND a Poolish
In my ever-popular Tartine Bread Baguettes post, I shared how Chad Robertson uses both a poolish and a levain to ferment his baguettes. I’ve used this technique for different kinds of loaves other than baguettes, and I love it! The levain adds the sour component to the flavor profile, while the poolish provides a nuttiness, plus a much more powerful rising action than the levain due to the commercial yeast. I’ve found this technique to be ideal for lower-hydration dough. It can get a little crazy with high-hydration dough as things will happen a lot faster, but it’s still manageable.
At least for me, using this technique almost invariably produces a chewy crumb. And that is an awesome thing because the chewiness gives you time to savor all the toothsome goodness that the preferments bring to the bread. Combining this technique with different blends of flour makes for an incredibly complex flavor profile. In the picture immediately above, I used a blend of 10% Rye, 40% High-extraction, and 50% Organic, Unbleached AP Flour. It was a powerful combination!
9. Vary Your Bake Times
Out of all the different techniques, this has the potential of really messing up your bread if you’re not attentive. If you read or participate in bread-baking forums, you’ll occasionally see references to the Maillard Reaction. Put simply, this is the browning process when heat is applied to food and how it affects taste. With respect to bread, as the crust browns, it opens up a whole new world of flavor. The nuttiness you get from a baguette or other crusty bread is due to the Maillard reaction.
There is a thing in artisan bread circles to bake the crust to a really deep color – or at least part of it. For instance, take a look at the loaves below:
Some folks might look at these loaves and say I burned them, but they tasted anything but burnt. In fact, those loaves were absolutely packed with flavor! There is a real depth and complexity in the flavor of bread when it is baked long enough to get this dark. I’ve literally baked hundreds of loaves, so I know just how long to bake them to achieve this effect. But I will admit that it took several burnt loaves before I got my own technique down. Even if you lengthen your bake time, there’s no guarantee you will actually like it. But give it a try.
To achieve this, bake at your normal temp. For most folks, this is going to be at 250ºC/475ºF. Lengthen your initial time at that temperature by 5-10 minutes to start with. Then once you get to the desired darkness, immediately reduce the heat in your oven so cooking continues, but browning doesn’t. For me, that’s 425ºF.
10. Vary Your Salt
Salt is one of those universal flavor components used in pretty much every food. And varying it can sometimes have dramatic effects on your bread. I typically use 1.5% or 2% salt in my bread, and never go beyond 2% with sourdough as salt attenuates the yeast action and really slows things down with natural yeast.
And no, contrary to popular belief, salt does NOT kill yeast. In order for it to kill yeast, it has to be in a super-high concentration. I don’t know how this myth originated, but it’s wrong. Do a search on “salt stressed yeast” and you will find peer-reviewed research papers on the subject and yeast’s tolerance to salt. Sorry, but science rules here…
With yeasted bread, it is possible to up your salt to 3-5%. If you salt-stress the yeast before mixing, you can go up to some crazy saltiness. But I’ve found that beyond 3%, the bread is too salty. See the section above “Salt Stress Yeast.”
On the other extreme is using no salt. Tuscan bread is saltless and it is insipid. The popular story behind this is that apparently, back in the Middle Ages, salt was heavily taxed, so the Tuscans chose to use it sparingly and stopped putting it in their bread (by the way, no one really knows the true story). To this day, bread in Tuscany is saltless. But they make up for it by making rich and flavorful sauces meant for dipping bread into.
Personally, I’ve made Tuscan bread and sorry, I’ll be sticking with adding a bit of salt to my dough…
On Additives
All the techniques I shared above focused entirely on producing flavor in the dough naturally. But you can use additives such as roasted garlic, herbs, nuts, dried fruit, etc. I don’t consider doing that cheating, but additives could hide what could be rather insipid bread without it. So my advice with using additives is to not start using them until you can produce great-tasting bread that can stand on its own.
The low-hanging fruit to produce more flavorful bread is to experiment with different flour blends. For me, once I started doing that, it changed the game entirely for me. Using whole grain pretty much forced me to up my hydration. But then that got me thinking about modifications to the fermentation process. What a rabbit hole! But stuff like this gets me out of bed every morning. There’s always something to tweak!
1Money, Nicholas P., The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization Oxford University Press, 2018
2Elham Aslankoohi, Mohammad Naser Rezaei, Yannick Vervoort, Christophe M. Courtin, Kevin J. Verstrepen, Glycerol Production by Fermenting Yeast Cells Is Essential for Optimal Bread Dough Fermentation, Plos One March 2015
The very first bread recipe I ever learned was a whole-wheat sourdough recipe made from an offshoot of an original San Francisco sourdough starter that I got from the TA of my freshman Microbiology class in college over 40 years ago. Along with the starter, he included a recipe. And while the recipe had times listed, he stressed to all of us who got the starter that the times he listed were only approximate and he gave us telltales as to when to move on to the next phase. That was the only bread recipe I used for many years and I got pretty good at recognizing and feeling what was happening with the dough.
You see – and I know this sounds a little strange – the dough will speak to you if you’ll only listen. Unfortunately, so many folks, especially newbies to baking bread, follow recipes literally. If a recipe says to fold the dough 6 times over three hours, they’ll do it. If it says bulk fermentation will two hours, they’ll start pre-shaping it at two hours. In either of these cases, under the right circumstances, they’ll produce nice loaves. But then they’ll scratch their heads wondering why their next batches didn’t turn out the same.
As Jonathan of Proof Bread said in one of his videos, “…the dough will let you know what’s going on with it.” And it’s true. The dough will indeed let you know, but in a way, you kind of have to know its language. Luckily, its language is limited to a few words. I’m going to put a humorous spin on it.
“Look, I’m strong enough already…”
Of course, we’re talking about dough strength and gluten development here. When you’re folding your dough, or even using a mixer, your dough will tell you when it has had enough. Even with high-hydration dough, you’ll start feeling a bit of resistance from the dough; where you no longer can stretch it to the extent that you were able to a couple of sessions ago. A good telltale is how long the dough takes to relax and hit the sides of your container. If it’s a fairly slow rate and the mass generally holds its shape – like minutes – chances are it’s strong enough. You’ve built enough strength into the dough so now let bulk fermentation finish.
But what about all those recipes like the Tartine Country Loaf and its various spin-offs that say to fold the dough six times over three hours? Well, just as with rising times, how much or how little you fold your dough to build strength is dependent on a lot of different factors. That said, probably the most important factor is the flour or flour blend you use as water absorption properties vary from flour to flour, which in turn affect both the rate and the quality of gluten formation. For instance, with the flour blends I use, I’ve never done the full six folds when following the Tartine process – even if I take hydration over 80%! My flour forms gluten pretty quickly and my folding builds strength quickly.
As I write this, I’m baking two 1-kilo loaves of 75% Bob’s Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour / 25% Azure Standard Dark Rye Flour hydrated at about 81%. The bread flour forms up gluten so efficiently that even at this high hydration, I only had to fold the dough twice last night! If I used my normal Azure Standard High Extraction flour, I’d have to fold it at least 4 times as it is not nearly as good at forming gluten due to the bran particulates in the flour even though it has almost 15% protein content. See what I’m getting at?
“Feed me! Feed me!”
Let’s make one thing really clear: Your starter is part of your dough. In fact, it’s the first part of your dough. Lots of books and articles have been written about feeding your sourdough starter, but I thought I’d take a different tack on the subject and demystify it a bit. No, I’m not going to suggest a different feeding method or schedule, but bear in mind that your starter will speak to you as well and if you’re listening, you may very well change your schedule.
One of the things I often hear people talk about is the lack of activity in their starter, and I see many comments similar to this: “I’m not sure what’s happening with my starter. It’s not very active and I’ve been feeding it every 12 hours!”
There are three main factors that affect activity in a starter (not in any particular order): 1) The density of the yeast in the starter matrix, 2) The amount of acidity in your starter, and 3) the ambient temperature. You can directly affect temperature. but you have to do a bit of finagling of the starter to affect items 1) and 2), and that is through feeding.
Generally, what you hear with regards to feeding your starter is you do it to get it active enough to use for baking. But as with dough strength, you can’t be a fundamentalist about the schedule. For instance, many starter instructions say to feed your starter every twelve hours, and people will do it religiously and then wonder why their starter never bubbles up much. The probable cause for this is that the starter’s not ready to be fed and instead of increasing the density of the yeast in the starter, they’re actually decreasing it.
The starter will tell you when it’s ready to be fed. Look for telltales such as doubling in volume (usually the peak), or if there is a noticeable “ring” around the top of the starter where the starter has peaked and then receded. Or if you’re using a fairly liquid starter, look for a proliferation of bubbles on the top surface. This is the starter telling you it’s ready to be fed.
On Discarding… A question that often gets asked is why we discard half the starter when feeding. Most people answer that we do this because if we kept on adding more and more flour and water, the sheer amount of starter we’d produce would be unmanageable. That is true, but there’s a bit more going on than just that simple explanation. In fact, two very important things are accomplished with feeding: 1) We reduce the acidity in the starter, as acid is a yeast inhibitor, and 2) We reduce competition from other microbes to allow the yeast to flourish.
Yeast exists to eat sugar and multiply. And its ability to do that requires fairly ideal conditions. Its environment can’t be too acidic, which is the other microbes’ way of keeping the yeast from taking over. And it has to have reliable and abundant access to fuel. By discarding, then adding fresh flour and water, we are providing fresh food, but also reducing the acidity in the starter and we’re creating a more favorable environment for the yeast to flourish. When yeast is able to operate optimally, it releases inhibitors of its own, thus becoming the dominant organism in the starter.
We want yeast to be the dominant organism for bulk fermentation. But for final fermentation, we want the other organisms, specifically the lactobacillus bacteria to be dominant. That is why pop our shaped loaves into the fridge to attenuate the yeast activity and allow the bacteria to hold sway. Cool stuff!
Activity 24 hours after activation of the Giza starter from Sourdoughs International.
Yeast: “You’re on MY time…”
I recently ordered a couple of different starters from Sourdoughs International and yesterday (9/17/2022), I finally got the time to activate their Giza starter that was propagated from yeast captured from an ancient bakery unearthed at the foot of the Great Pyramid. This was part of a National Geographic project. Check out the link to find out more about the starter.
Anyway, I activated it yesterday and went to feed it this morning after letting it sit in a warm environment for 24 hours. To my utter amazement, the starter was not just bubbly, but even a bit frothy! That was totally unexpected. Before I activated the starter, I made sure to completely sterilize my container to ensure that the microbes in the starter were the predominant organisms. Well apparently, they’re not only the dominant organisms, they’re incredibly active! Then about an hour after discarding and feeding the starter, I noticed how much it was expanding. At this rate, I think it will peak after just four hours!
The activation instructions mentioned that I shouldn’t expect much activity after 24 hours and the starter shouldn’t be ready for baking for 4 to 5 days. But at this rate, I’ll probably be ready to make some dough tomorrow!
The point of this is that yeast operates on its own schedule. We can read and follow instructions all we want. But if the yeast is ready, it’s ready. On the flip side, some yeast is slower on the uptake and takes longer to get going. For instance, my original starter that I have been nurturing for the last couple of years has always been a little lazy at the start of fermentation. I’ve tried rebuilding it and refreshing it, but it still just operates on its own schedule. It has actually been ideal for long fermentation periods, and as it is pretty sensitive to a cold environment when I retard the final fermentation, there’s lots of flavor development.
With this new Giza starter, I’m going to have to work out a new baking schedule since it is so active. I reached out to Sourdoughs International to inquire about the incredible activity of the culture, and they confirmed that it is very active. This is just SO cool!
Surprisingly enough, I’m not going to provide a recipe here but talk purely about a technique I’ve been using to bake the last few batches of my baguettes. The technique has totally changed my approach to baking baguettes, let alone baking straight dough with yeast. Based on the Pain a l’Ancienne technique of using ice water at mixing time to inhibit yeast activity, the technique employs temperature to affect the dough, providing yet another means to develop flavor.
Those who bake sourdough are familiar with retarding fermentation for flavor development. But that typically occurs during final fermentation after the yeast has mostly finished its job of expanding the dough. Contrast this with the Pain a l’Ancienne technique where the yeast doesn’t get a chance to metabolize all that much from the get-go, allowing the amylase enzymes to break down the starches into sugars and letting the bacteria do their thing in producing organic acids and other by-products.
With the delayed fermentation technique, we mix with ice water; that’s right. Ice water.
The end result is that lots of sugars are released into the dough – more than the yeast can metabolize – and the result is a relatively darker crust due to the sugars caramelizing and a much more rich flavor from the organic acids released by the bacteria! So here’s the technique…
I highly recommend using a mixer for this technique. This will serve two purposes:
It will take a lot less time than mixing by hand and doesn’t give the dough a chance to warm up significantly.
It allows you to get some good gluten development before you put the dough into the fridge.
First off, mix all the dry ingredients together with the paddle attachment.
Make ice water and make sure you make enough that will meet your recipe’s requirements.
Attach the dough hook, then add all the ice water needed for your recipe to the bowl.
Starting with the slowest speed, start bringing all the ingredients together. Once the dough starts to come together, stop the mixer, then scrape down the sides of the bowl. Continue mixing until there are no dry ingredients. In some cases, you may have to scrape the bottom of the bowl and flip the dough to make sure you get everything.
Turn the mixer up another notch to work the dough. Let it run for at least two minutes or until the dough starts climbing up the hook. That should give you plenty of gluten development to start with.
Transfer the dough to a sealable container. I put my dough in a glass mixing bowl that I then place in a jumbo Ziploc bag.
Put the dough in the fridge for 8 to 24 hours. It will probably rise just a tiny bit, but nothing significant.
Remove the dough from the fridge and allow it to almost double. This can take anywhere from 2 to 4 hours.
Divide and preshape. Bench rest for 20-30 minutes until the dough has relaxed enough to be shaped.
Shape the dough into your desired shape and final ferment. This can take anywhere from 1 to 3 hours depending on the hydration and your ambient temp. My baguettes this morning took only 45 minutes for final fermentation. Poke test the dough for readiness.
Bake as normal.
Though I listed a bunch of steps, the process isn’t all that complicated. But the results are astonishing. This process is a keeper!
Baguettes a l’AnciennePoolish Baguettes w/100% Kamut PoolishSourdough BaguettesPointage en Bac BaguettesTartine-Style Double-Preferment BaguettesTraditional Poolish BaguettesBaguettes de Tradition
Click on a picture to see its recipe. The baking method described in the recipes may differ from what I discuss here. That’s because those were the ways I baked them initially. But in the last 6 months, I’ve taken to standardizing my flour blend(s) and formulas. I vary the technique to achieve different results.
I’ve been very open that my favorite bread to make is the baguette. But as you can see, I bake several different types. But with just a few minor exceptions, I bake all my baguettes pretty much the same way: 12 minutes with steam @ 475°F, 15 minutes @ 425°F. The only difference is with sourdough baguettes that go both longer on steam (20 minutes) and a little longer – 25 minutes – at 400°F for curing. As for the other types, as you can see from the pictures of some of the batches I’ve baked just in the past few months, they show different crust colors, almost as if they were baked differently. I can guarantee you that they weren’t.
And to drive the point home further, except for the Tartine baguettes, the rest of them obeyed the same, basic formula:
Flour
100.00%
Water
76.00%
Salt
2.00%
So what differs between all the different types of baguettes are the dough development and fermentation techniques employed for each different type. The most significant effect on crust color comes from fermentation. The darker crust baguettes are not the result of longer bake times, but rather the amount of sugar released into the dough due to the longer fermentation times of either the whole dough or preferment.
For instance, the Baguettes a l’Ancienne, Sourdough, Pointage en Bac baguettes all undergo very long and cold bulk fermentation times. This allows more sugar to be released into the dough than can be metabolized by the yeast. Those crusts caramelize nicely and hence have the darkest crusts. The Tartine-Style baguettes are a little lighter as less sugar is released as the combined preferments only account for 28% of the total flour. The Poolish baguettes are fairly close in color to the Tartine-style, but they’re just a bit lighter as the preferment accounts for only 25% of the total flour. And finally, the Baguettes de Tradition are the lightest as very little sugar is released into the dough. This stuff is SO very cool!
To be honest, seeing how dough can be affected by so many different variables never ceases to amaze me and keeps me completely obsessed with dough; pushing me to try different things to see their effect on the finished bread.
As far as baguettes are concerned, I used to think that a baguette was a baguette. And though intuitively and intellectually I knew there were differences, it wasn’t until I started baking different kinds that I really knew just how different they could be – even from the same formula! It’s stuff like this that keeps me baking!
In “Tartine-Style 50% Whole Grain Sourdough: Experimenting with Extreme Hydration, First Stop 85%,” my goal was to push the limit of the flour I use to see just how far I could take it. I postulated that 85% hydration was the outer limit for my flour, but to be completely honest, I was wrong. The loaf shown in the pictures above was hydrated to just over 90% hydration. The flour blend I used was 10% Whole Wheat (from the starter), 54% Bread Flour (Bob’s Red Mill), 36% Whole-grain Kamut Flour.
I was amazed at how the loaf maintained its structure enough to get a really great oven spring! I was a little unsure when I poured the dough out onto my loading board. It really spread out. But the important thing I noted was that despite the dough spreading out, it was still domed which meant that there was a structure to the dough. And rise up it did!
I’m going to keep pushing to find the outer limit of the hydration my flour can take, but one thing that has occurred to me in my high-hydration experiments is that the success I’ve been experiencing with the loaves I’m producing probably has a lot more to do with my technique than the flour itself. And that brings me to the crux of this post.
An important thing I’ve learned working with super-high hydration dough is to only manipulate it to accomplish what I need for a particular step and after that, leave it alone! When I’m stretching and folding the dough, I only do it enough to where I can feel the tension in the dough. And I also have learned to stretch the dough a lot slower than I normally stretch a less hydrated dough lest I degas it too much. Oh I stretch it as far it will stretch, but I don’t tug on it hard – just a slow and smooth motion.
With this batch of bread (I actually baked a few loaves with this batch of dough), I didn’t stretch and fold the Tartine method of six folds over three hours. I felt enough strength had built up after three folds. So I let the dough sit for 3 hours until it was almost doubled (my starter was a little sluggish that day).
When preshaping, I only preshape until the skin has been pulled a little taut and smooth. I don’t try to develop tight skin on the ball. And then I let it rest until it has relaxed. Depending on the weather, this could be 30 minutes or it could take an hour for the dough to relax.
With shaping, I use a stitching technique I learned from watching several videos of Chad Robertson shaping his bread at Tartine. Though it isn’t Chad Robertson, this video demonstrates the technique really well. It’s a gentle technique that creates structure but doesn’t degas the dough much and uses gravity and the natural tackiness of the dough to seal the bottom seam. Another way to get a great look at the technique is to watch John Favreau’s “The Chef Show” when he visits Chad Robertson’s Manufactory in Los Angeles.
Then finally, a long, 12-24 hour rest in the fridge for final fermentation will allow the flavors to develop and dough to perform its expanse.
Again, I want to stress that I only touched the dough when I absolutely needed to. The dough is so wet and delicate that I didn’t want to pop too many bubbles. Messing with the dough too much would undo all the hard work the yeast had done to create those wonderful gas-filled pockets!
I’ve touched upon this before that I’ve always had issues with recipes because they always list out the ingredients like 1000g of flour, then say, “Divide the dough into two equal pieces.” I suppose that’s fine if you’re just baking for your family and you don’t really care about things being truly equal. But when I started baking a lot and especially when I started Dawg House Bakery, dough yields and loaf weights became VERY important to me.
With regular recipes, even though they might include the baker’s formula, oftentimes they simply say, “Use this much of this and this much of that, etc.” It makes it incredibly difficult to calculate yields based on that approach, especially if you’re baking a dozen or more loaves. So I’ve taken to working backward. And by that I mean I figure out what I want to bake first, like 8 loaves @ 800 grams apiece, then work backward from there. And THAT is where the baker’s formula comes into play.
Now, most people look at a formula and only look at it from the perspective of calculating the non-flour ingredients, for instance, salt is 2% of the total flour. But the real secret of a formula lies in the sum of all the percentages. Let’s look at a basic sourdough baguette formula that I use:
Flour
100.00%
Water
80.00%
Salt
2.00%
Total %
182.00%
When I first started using formulas, I didn’t understand that Total % figure. Like most, I just looked at the non-flour ingredients. But once I learned that if you divide the total dough weight by that Total %, you get the flour amount that you need, it was a total game-changer!
For instance, let’s say I want to make 4 baguettes at 335g apiece before baking. The total dough weight would be 1340g. Now, if divide that by the 182% total percentage, the total flour in my recipe would be:
1340 / 182% = 736g
From there, it’s easy to calculate the rest of the ingredients!
If we were doing a straight dough, the numbers would look like this:
Flour
736g
Water
589g
Salt
15g
For this amount, I just know from experience to use about 6-7 grams of yeast, so I don’t really factor that into my calculations, but typically it’s around 1% or less depending on the weather (the warmer it is, the less yeast I use).
But What About Using a Preferment or Sourdough Starter?
This is where it gets a little tricky because the preferment is technically part of the total flour and water, not a separate component. You will hear some bakers say that a preferment is the early stage of the dough. You still calculate the total amount of the preferment based on the total flour, but you have to subtract the flour and water of the preferment from the total flour and water when figuring out what you’ll need in the final dough. Otherwise, you’ll throw off your total dough weight.
For my sourdough baguettes, I want my starter to be 25% of the total flour. As my starter is 100% hydration, here are the calculations:
Preferment % of Total Flour
25%
Preferment Total Weight
184g
Preferment Hydration
100%
Preferment Flour
92g
Preferment Water
92g
Based on that, here’s what the final dough ingredients will look like:
Flour
736g – 92g = 644g
Water
589g – 92g = 497g
Salt
736g * 2% = 15g
Preferment
736g * 25% = 184g
Total Yield
1340g
For your convenience, I’ve created a Google Spreadsheet that you can use to calculate your ingredients. You won’t be able to edit the document, but you can copy it to your own spreadsheet, then edit it as you see fit. BTW, the calculations in the spreadsheet that you will first see are for creating 2 X 1000g Tartine-style 40% Kamut loaves. If you’re new to baking, I don’t recommend this recipe! At 90% hydration, the dough is VERY tricky!
To be honest, I have about 30 different sheets for the different kinds of bread that I bake. When I’m developing a new recipe, I always use a spreadsheet like this. It takes the guesswork out
A little disappointed with the bottom of the loaf. Not sure if my stone was hot enough, so that could be my bad there for not letting the stone fully come to temp.
After re-reading Tartine No. 3 recently, I got inspired to start experimenting again with super-high hydration sourdough production. My typical hydration for sourdough is 75%, but Tartine goes even past 90% hydration! My earlier forays into 90%+ hydration were a little discouraging. I produced pretty flat loaves that, though possessed of a really open crumb, didn’t have much vertical rise. Then I saw some pictures of full loaves of Tartine and realized they had similar results!
But for me, I wanted to find a balance between extreme hydration and maintaining some oven rise. So I decided to do some tests, of which this is the first. The loaves in the pictures above were made with 85% hydration dough. I have a feeling that that is probably the limit of the type of flour I’m using, but the next bake, I’m going to push it to 90%.
These turned out a lot better than my previous forays. And part of that – I think – is due to the baskets I used. I watched some videos of both Tartine and several other bakers that were making high-hydration oval loaves and they all used what appeared to be 14″ baskets. So I got a couple. I think it makes a difference as it allows the dough to expand. But I won’t be absolutely sure until I make loaves using a standard oval basket and a long basket at the same time.
Baker’s Formula
Flour
100.00%
Water
85.00%
Salt
2.00%
Diastatic Malt Powder (optional)**
2.00%
Total Percentage
189%
*Levain percentage factors the flour from the levain into the total flour **Depending on the flour bread flour I use, I’ll add malt if there’s none added by the miller.
*Levain is calculated as 25% of the total flour which can be arrived at by taking the target dough weight and dividing it by the total percentage, so 2020 / 189%.
The Process
Make the Levain. Like Tartine, I prefer to use a young levain because I like the nutty flavor characteristics of a young levain and prefer to develop sourness during final fermenation. Even if I end up fermenting the dough enough to make it sour, it won’t be overpowering. For this particular recipe, I take about 50g of mature starter (I maintain a separate mother) and combine it with 150g flour and 150g water (warm enough to get my dough to about 80°F). Levain is ready when it passes the float test (anywhere from 2 – 5 hours depending on weather).
Initial Mix/Autolyse. Reserve about 50g of water, then mix the rest with all of the flour (if you’re using diastatic malt powder, add it now so the enzymes have a chance to break down the starches in the flour). When I use whole grain flour, I will typically autolyse for 2-4 hours, in parallel with my levain maturing.
Final Mix. Add all the levain, salt, and reserved water to the dough. Mix thoroughly until all ingredients are fully incorporated.
Bulk Fermentation. 4-6 hours depending on ambient temp or rate of fermentation or until the dough has expanded about 30-35% of its original size. There are a lot of variances in the timing. With the loaves shown above, they took a long time to bulk ferment, even at 80°F.
Divide and Pre-Shape. Divide the loaves into 1-kilo pieces, then work into rounds, developing a little surface tension. Bench rest uncovered for 20-30 minutes until the balls have relaxed.
Shape. Shape into rounds or ovals, then place into baskets.
Final Fermentation. 12-24 hours at 39°-42°F. The longer you go, the sourer the bread. I’ve taken loaves out to 36 hours but by that time, the acids started breaking down the gluten and I didn’t get much oven spring.
Bake. Bake at 475°F for 20 minutes with steam (if using a Dutch oven, then 20 minutes with the lid on). Remove the steaming container, then bake for 25-35 minutes dry at 425°F or until the crust has baked to a deep, golden brown.
The Dawg House! 