Thank you in advance! As the gluten develops, the dough becomes less sticky and more manageable. The strength of your dough should build as you perform stretches and folds. You want to be quick when moving or shaping the dough to prevent sticking. I went here and checked the recipe -https://www.abeautifulplate.com/artisan-sourdough-bread-recipe/ it called for 350 BF and 90 WW, for a total of 440, plus 45 from the starter ( which was 100% hydration) for a total of 485. Wetting your hands before handling your sticky dough is a game-changer. As you knead any bread dough, you should notice that it goes from a shaggy mess to more of a smooth mass of dough thats become less sticky. To achieve a 75% hydration I will attempt again with the following: 390g of flour mix to 282g of water, adding on 90g of starter (at 100% hydration as I always to a 1:1 flour water ratio feed). Or you need to give the sourdough starter more salt.Another root cause may be the recipe relative to your environment. Sticky and unmanagable sourdough. Turn out the loaf out onto a floured peel, make a cut in the top with a grignette and slide it onto the baking stone. . Place on a peel, slip into the oven, and watch. 16 hour cold (38F) retard, in closed plastic bags. The bacteria produce both lactic acid and acetic acid. If you've just completed autolyse and you feel that your dough is too wet, it is possible to add some more flour at that that stage. Many people use food thermometer to measure the internal temperature of their bread. MAKE THE DOUGH Mix the sourdough starter and water together in a large mixing bowl - I use my dough whisk for this. Score the top of your loaf using a sharp knife, razor or lame. This is done in intervals over the course of a few hours, so the dough has plenty of time to become more elastic and less sticky. This also provides its sour flavour and. 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. Step 1: feed the sourdough starter About 12 hours before you plan to mix the dough, to a clean jar add; 10 grams unfed starter 25 grams water 25 grams flour Cover the jar loosely and allow it to rest and room temperature. 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. Make sure that you're not using too much flour when shaping your dough. No matter how long you leave it to ferment, the yeast and bacteria won't actually grow or change. 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. CAUSE - This most likely caused by under fermentation, but can sometimes be a shaping issue too. First, good effort, but where did you get the recipe from? This will result in a more. The more gluten it contains, the better it holds together. The flour will absorb water and become incorporated during the stretches and folds. This just means that you are taking the sides of the dough, stretching them up, and folding them over the dough 4-8 times, or until the dough is too tight to do any more. Place a lidded pot (Dutch Oven) in the oven to preheat. Mix everything together. This excess water is not retained inside the dough but rather coats the doughs surface causing it to be wet and sticky. This is the preferred method used by professional artisan bakers. If your kitchen is too warm, the dough can become a sloppy, wet mess. Approximate size of sourdough bread: Approximate cooling time: small dinner rolls: 30 minutes: small white loaf (1 lb): 4 hours: large white loaf (1.5 lb): 8 hours: small wholegrain loaf (1lb): 5 hours CAUSE - Spreading can be caused by a few factors including under fermented or over fermented dough as well as poor shaping technique. Thank you so much for the guidance! It's really important to develop the gluten in your sourdough to ensure you don't end up with a wet and sticky mess. Jack Sturgess. Alternatively, you'll need to adjust the amount of starter in your dough to suit the temperature of your kitchen. If youre using a lot of wholewheat, youre going to be left with a very sticky dough, especially if its paired with high hydration. Instead of kneading your dough manually for 8-10 minutes, youd be better off using a series of stretch and folds to develop gluten. If your sourdough has a very thick base which is burnt or just very tough, there's a very simple fix for this. #1 Sourdough Bread Baking 101 - The Baking Network I bake high hydration (88-90%) near 100% whole-grain loaves. Ensure that your dough is well fermented prior to shaping. This is the most comprehensive and easily understandable explanation of sourdough I have read. Your email address will not be published. This is the dry mixture. Sourdough baking is a never ending journey of learning - and that's what makes troubleshooting it so damn interesting! The Number #1 Reason your sourdough bread might be flat is using the wrong flour. Your dough might be too sticky because you added too much water when making the initial mix, too. Young sourdough starter lacks the established yeast colonies necessary to raise bread. Cover with plastic wrap and keep covered in a warmish place in your kitchen at around 77F (24C) for 1 hour. You might think it seems dry when you first mix it and add extra water. Preheat the oven to 230C fan/456F/gas mark 8 with a baking stone on the middle shelf and a deep tray on the bottom. The problem here is, there's not a lot you can do with over fermented dough. The average total mixing time when using a spiral mixer is around 6 minutes of total mixing (includes first speed mixing time and second speed mixing time). Dont try traditional kneading techniques like punch and turn with moist sourdough. Place in bannetons. When to Cut Sourdough Bread to get Beautiful Even Slices Your email address will not be published. It can be caused by over fermenting or under fermenting your dough, but also by other things like shaping issues. no one but me would notice or care). This is particular difficult if you're working in humid conditions. This is the sourdough baking course you need if you are just starting out in sourdough bread baking. Unfortunately, this results in tougher bread. 16 hour cold (38F) retard, in closed plastic bags. For now, you need to know exactly whats causing your sourdough to be sticky and what you can do to help yourself with it. It may be that you just need to cut back on the water. Why Is My Sourdough Too Sticky? Thanks @Barryval and @ifs201! During shaping, a light dusting of flour is what you need to prevent the sourdough from sticking to your kitchen counter. Begin mixing the flour in with a spoon or fork, then continue mixing with your hand, until all the flour is incorporated and you have a shaggy dough. If adjusting the bake times is something you want to explore, I'd suggest trying 450 covered for 25 minutes, then 400 uncovered for 25-30 minutes. Sourdough Bread Troubleshooting Guide and FAQ - A Beautiful Plate Once you get comfortable, you can gradually increase the water content of your dough and see how you manage it. The good news is, there's always a way to fix your sourdough bread problems for your next bake! However, it is possible to get sticky sourdough that is hard to get out of the pan or cut into pieces. Then, I use my wet hands to pick up a side of the dough, stretch it up, and fold it over. When this has cooled, add the rye sour, yeast mixture, 2 cups medium rye flour and the remaining 4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour. Make sure that you develop your gluten network really well during the stretch and fold stage. Let the integrated flour-and-water mass sit for up to an hour. Bake in preheated, covered DO at 475F for 20 minutes, then uncovered at 450F for 20 minutes. How to handle sticky, wet . CAUSE - Logically, the cause of this is not baking your bread for long enough. So I suspect a miscalculation, and you might actually be doing 80% final hydration. It'll just take about 30 minutes in the fridge for the dough to firm until it's ready to roll. Try placing your dough in warmer area of your kitchen (75F-80F is ideal) - monitoring your final dough temperature to keep it as consistent as possible - or consider investing in a bread proofing box . Would really appreciate some pointers, thank you in advance!! 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. The two main bread baking systems commonly used today are the sponge/pre-ferment system and the straight dough system. 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. Cut one loaf of sourdough bread into 1" cubes. CAUSE - This is typically caused by under fermenting your dough, but can also happen through using too much flour when you shape your bread. When working with high hydration level dough, the dough gets very close to the point of 100% saturation from the high quantity of water, and it is difficult to get any more water to be incorporated into the dough. Why Is My Sourdough Bread Gummy? - Busby's In my other courses, I teach how to bake all sorts of sourdough breads, but in this course, I won't load you down with lots of information, just enough so it is easy and fun to bake your first loaf of sourdough. 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. During this time, the flour has the chance to fully hydrate and gluten network is able to develop in spite of the lack of mechanical mixing. You should aim to handle your dough more like that as you get more practice. More often than not, gumminess is a result of under fermentation (cutting the bulk fermentation time too short). We all know that drier dough is easier to handle since it sticks less, so use this to your advantage and make a basic low-to-medium hydration sourdough before you try the more difficult higher hydration ones. Help! You wont be able to shape it when its wet. Instructions. Hi community, i am new to this forum but have been reading a lot of advice from fellow bakers here while my sister and I are trying out our very first sourdough.. We have gotten to "Charlie" (we name our sourdoughs alphabetically hoping to get it right before the alphabet "Z"), but our sourdoughs were never right. Ensure gluten development and fermentation are correctly executed. It will give you a better understanding of what you can do when it comes to handling your dough at different stages. You can make a loaf of perfectly good sourdough bread at around 65% hydration if you want to. SOLUTION - Depending on the cause of your spread, you can implement the following fixes: PROBLEM - Dough splits in places other than where you've scored or even splits messing up your decorative scoring. I have done wetter doughs at similar times/temps without the gumminess but I take your point - your lower/slower suggestion makes sense to me and I may well try that on my next go-round. Sourdough can take up to 24 hours to fully cool and come to room temperature. Charlie was a little better probably because we increased the bake time, but the higher hydration did it in. Evenly roll out your small 2- to 4-ounce balls into small circles a scant quarter inch thick. Easy Sourdough Bread | Feasting At Home Remove the potion from the refrigerator before chopping and boiling it. link to Yeasted Pre-ferment (Poolish & Biga) VS Sponge VS Dough, link to Pate Fermentee VS Poolish VS Biga VS Sourdough Starter, Stand Mixer (KitchenAid Type All Purpose Mixer). Internal temp when I took them out of the oven was, again, 211F Just a tiny hint of tackiness this time around, well within the bounds of acceptability (I.e. Required fields are marked *. If the sourdough is unworkable at the very start, this obviously isnt because the oven temperature isnt set right for your elevation. I understand in the beginning you want to see the inside but do yourself a favor and wait at least 3 ours. You can then start to increase the hydration if you wish. And sometimes the issue is the recipe. Over fermentation is a cause of wet, sticky dough. Add the dry mixture. Add the honey or maple syrup, pumpkin pure, pumpkin spice and salt. - longer waiting period before cutting --> this to me seems where you should start. The science of making sourdough bread Put the lid on and place into the hot oven. We would like to share the recipe we used here, hopefully to get some help from the experienced bakers around! 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. Old bread becomes sticky - Seasoned Advice They give you what is called slack dough.If the dough is very slack and it isnt because you added too much water, then autolyze. Seeded Multigrain Sourdough Bread | Vanilla And Bean What is a Pate Fermentee? Throughout the shaping, the dough felt aerated and light and bouncy and it was easy to handle after dipping our hands in water. If you do have a watery starter, you'll need to adjust the amount of water in your dough or set about finding a solution to thicken it up. Day 1 - The Start. Sliced through the bread in an hour and it left sticky residue on the knife and the insides was tacky. Some recipes are simply wetter and stickier than others. Russian Sourdough Dark Rye Bread Recipe The recipe technically calls to bake the bread in a preheated dutch oven (I use a casserole dish because I don't own a dutch oven), but the dough is so sticky that if I preheat the dish and transfer the dough to it once it's preheated, I find that the dough deflates and I get a flat loaf. If your bread contains rye, it can take up to 24 hours! We want to mix the dough until it develops adequate gluten network which is indicated by a dough that is stretchable without tearing but at the same time offers a degree of resistance when pulled apart. In the first few minutes of the bake, the surface of the bread must be kept moist and pliable. I've been making breads recently which, while they're delicious, seemingly well-baked, and with an open crumb, are a bit tacky/sticky to the touch and during slicing. You/we need a hydration % of the levain too, to figure out how much flour and how much water is in the levain. If those figures do not include your levain, then you have at least 77% final hydration assuming a levain of 100% hydration. You can try to fix things like high humidity in your house or waiting until the kitchen has warmed to room temperature before getting to work. Many thanks for this. Some Student Reviews: by Pam H - Outstanding. PROBLEM - My sourdough bread has an unusual cone shape after baking. Place in bannetons. Bake the Bread. Pour the hot water from the kettle into the tray to create steam and shut the door. The hardness of water measureshow much calcium and magnesium ion is present (expressed as ppm). You might get a drier dough, but you wont get the same rise in the dough and a solid crust that you were expecting. This allows the gluten to start to develop on its own before any kneading. I ran your numbers, and unless my math is wrong, your are above 90% hydration, which is extremely high. This is really only an issue once you've done bulk fermentation and you are trying to shape your dough. Baking parchment paper is characteristic for its non stick ability without the need for any dusting of flour or oiling. The only solution for this is to toss your dough and put your time into strengthening and maturing your sourdough starter. Add a little flour and knead it a few times to make it more manageable. Well, sourdough is a stickier, wetter dough than regular yeasted bread. Nor should it be sticky after youve baked it. You can find resources on shaping. Rest for 30 minutes @76F. We should aim to minimize the use of dusting flour in the baking process as the introduction of additional flour into our mix can significantly change the hydration level of the dough, resulting in a crumb that is drier and denser. Yes you read that right! If you find that your sourdough sticks to most things, take a look at my guide on how to stop sourdough sticking to everything. 14. Its very important to avoid tearing the gluten as this causes it to become sticky again. Mix with the paddle on low speed until it forms a thick batter. This method involves mixing the dough so the flour is fully hydrated before performing a series of stretch and folds. Stir together until the starter is dissolved and the water looks cloudy. I hope this guide helps you to troubleshoot your sourdough bread problems and ultimately bake a better loaf! At the same time, we should dust the work surface lightly during shaping as we need some level of stickiness and friction between the dough and the work surface to create sufficient skin tension. Bake for 15-30 minutes until golden brown and dry (not burned). Hot water strengthens the gluten in the flour. Final internal temp 211F Sliced after cooling for 4 hours. Sourdough bread problems are often multi faceted and you will find that they are not always caused by one issue. High hydration can be anything with 70% water content or higher. Extend your bulk fermentation time. You just need to reduce the heat on the base of your Dutch Oven or baking tray. Then the dough cant stick to them. A. Thanks!! 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. High temperatures can cause premature over fermentation, which will result in wet, sticky sourdough.