Referring to this graphic that someone else had posted here, my loaves consistently look like the second one in Nicely Fermented. A consistent crumb making a good sandwich bread, but I don’t get any of the larger bubbles that I see in other sourdoughs.
A rough rundown of my process is:
Form the dough using 1/3 cup of starter to 4 cups flour
Let sit and fold onto itself every fifteen minutes for an hour
Let ferment on the counter for 4-8 hours before putting into the fridge to ferment overnight.
Let it rest on the counter before cooking.
Any insights are appreciated!
by PsychoGrad
7 Comments
What’s your full recipe? I highly recommend measuring everything in grams, cups of flour have wildly inconsistent weight, it can make a big difference.
I’m not chasing the big holes and extremely open crumb myself, but you need a very strong, high protein flour and pretty high hydration to pull that off, as far as I know. Of course nailing bulk fermentation is essential too.
From which website or book this picture from?
Can I get a version with more than 30 pixels?
If you want an open crumb for a nicely fermented loaf you have to increase hydration. More moisture evaporating during baking creates a more open crumb (larger holes).
For those looking for the OG post. I happened to just look this one up this evening
[here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/Sourdough/s/zAVqlSOBjn)
https://preview.redd.it/x54k34jn5std1.jpeg?width=1113&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1a801a2ab8ae51c05d905e7607f00bdb05e83c7
Understand the importance of temperature on both your starter and your bulk ferment.
My house is 70F. It takes 6hours for my starter to double and then 12 hours for me to reach well-very well fermented.
If you are a few degrees lower or higher, the time will increase/decrease by hours.
Also, if you add more yeast the bulk time will be less.
If I use 100g starter, 100g Whole Wheat, 500g All Purpose my bulk ferment is 12hrs at 70F. At 120g starter, the bulk ferment decreases to around 8.5-9hrs.
Mine almost always looked like the first two in the second row as well. I just pushed my BF longer. I still shape around the same point (80% increase) and then it stays in the banneton at room temp until it looks the right amount of full (which was just trial and error).
I was always scared of over proofing but I’ve still never had a loaf that looks like the bottom row so I’ve clearly still got room for more!