This weeks bread is completely different from last weeks. I had a tooth pulled and some oral surgery on Monday. I am on a soft diet for 2 weeks. So no crusty bread for me.
This week I am making a couple of soft sourdough sandwich loaves. The original recipe was a hybrid loaf calling for both sourdough starter and commercial yeast. I don’t understand why that was done that way. There was more that enough starter and yeast to each raise the loave on their own. I have not made this bread the way I am making it today so we’ll see how it comes out.
I am not looking for large holes in sandwich loaf. I don’t want to lose my tuna salad through a large hole, so I decided to mix a knead the dough in the mixer. After a quick knead by hand until the dough was smooth then into my container for bulk fermentation.
I have no pictures to this point as I am a little distracted. Early this morning one of our neighbors’ house burned to the ground. Luckily no one was home. We never heard a thing until the backup alert from a truck woke both of us up. My wife got up and looked out the window. By that time the house was completely engulfed by flames and there was nothing the firemen could do. Scary!
Back to bread. Last night I made a leaven from 10 grams of started, 100 grams of water and 50 grams each of bread flour and white whole wheat flour. That sat on the counter at room temperature overnight.
The dough was started 12 hours after the dough was mixed. It contains 200 grams of leaven, 450 grams of water, 431 grams of bread flour, 227 grams of white whole wheat flour, 13 grams salt and 20 grams of honey. The leaven and honey was mixed into the water using the paddle blade. The flours and salt were then mixed in using the dough hook. The dough was then kneaded until it pulled clear of the sides of the bowl and was mostly pulled clear of the bottom of the bowl. Into my bulk fermentation container and into the dough proofer at 78 F.
Because of the high percentage of whole wheat I did not want to over ferment the dough. 3-1/2 hours and the dough was ready to divide and pre-shape.
After a 30 minute rest on the board it was ready to final shape a place in the loaf pans. The pans then went into the proofer at 75 F.
The bread proofed in the proofer for 4-1/2 hours, way longer than I expected. I thought it would take 2 to 3 hours. Even at the time it took, it did not rise the way I expected. I thought the dough at least the top of the pan and it was close. The recipe calls for the dough to be 1” above the top of the pan before baking.
The bread baked at 340 F for 41 minutes. I had hoped for more oven spring and while there was some, just not that much. It was barely above the top of pans.
The flavor of the bread is good, however it is dense and borderline tough. I would call this a fail. I am not sure why. It may be that the bulk fermentation was not long enough. The dough felt good but there weren’t many bubbles. Also, the dough may gotten too hot during bulk fermentation. I measured it at 80 F even though the proofer was at 78 F, but I doubt that was the issue.
I plan to try this again very soon. The only change I plan to make is to bulk fermentation time and temperature. I want to see if that is the issue.
After the fact I discovered that I had used 9” by 5” instead of the 8-1/2” by 4-1/4” pans called for. I don’t believe that this impacted the outcome. If the bread had risen like it should have, then it would not have risen as high as it should have. But it didn’t rise as it should have, and I knew it wasn’t ready for the oven when it went in. A finger poke into the dough was still filling in quickly indicating it wasn’t ready. I was convinced that it should have been ready based on the time it had taken. So, I ignored what the dough was telling me.