I tried my hand at making a starter years ago and it went poorly. I was gifted some starter earlier this week and have been bulking it up in order to bake some bread this weekend. The starter is MUCH better than any of the ones I’ve ever made, so Ive had high hopes all week that my sourdough will actually come out decent this time.
I’ve been following this recipe, and it’s been going…not well. Everything was weighed to the gram, including the starter, and “lukewarm” water was about 80ish degrees. The dough is so unbelievably sticky that I can barely scrape it off the sides of the bowl.
Is this normal? It’s been years since I’ve done this so I’m back to questioning everything. I’m planning to just drop the whole thing into a Dutch oven and cook it, but I understand that I’m deviating from the recipe. My Dutch oven cooks were just so much better.
Cna anyone provide a better recipe for just a basic sourdough boule that you’ve had decent success with? I’d really like to continue baking bread, but I know for a fact that I’ll wind up giving up again if I have too many failures (I think I baked 8 different times a few years ago, and I gave up because they were always so dense, and flat.). Really want something with a good, fluffy, stretchy crumb.
Any advice or questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Yeah, it’s gonna be sticky. The ratios in that recipe are similar to my own recipe. It’s easier to work with if you wet your hands thoroughly. It should tighten up each time you give it a fresh fold, and by the time it’s fully risen, a dusting of flour should make it easy to work with floured hands.
I find that the dough tightens up nicely all at once if you combine the starter and water first, then mix in the flour, and let that sit covered for twenty minutes or be before adding salt and kneading that in; the salt causes the gluten to tighten up. Bread flour might also help there.
Baking is really more of a feel. Super sticky is good for some bread, more stiff for others. I tend to use as much moisture as I can comfortably handle.
It tends to stiffen up as it rests, especially if you used any whole grain. The fluffy crumb comes from a lot of gluten development. I like the 30 minutes rest, then fold method to get windowpane. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, search up “windowpane sourdough.”
Bear in mind if you use high levels of whole grain, windowpane is tougher to reach, if not impossible.
I used all purpose white baking flour. It never did stiffen up, I tried folding it over a few times, but had to use a spatula to pry it from the sides.
It came out pretty good.
I live in a warm and humid climate so generally start my dough with cool water. Usually for what my kids call “the sourdough” I aim for 70% white flour (30% any whole grain) and 70% hydration. You probably want to use bread flour for most of the white flour, all purpose doesn’t usually have enough gluten.
When a dough is too sticky, I do not knead it, put in a bowl and stretch and fold every half hour (ETA: until it feels developed, usually 3 or 4 times total) with the help of a spatula, let rise, then bake in a bread pan, pour it if I can’t shape it. I have done that successfully with 100% whole grain and 90% hydration. It ended up really good, but at all points till final rise in the oven I was skeptical.
I will say that sourdough is much less sticky than dough made with dry yeast in my experience.
Thanks for this! I’ll try it next weekend.
You’ve gotten some good advice. I’m surprised your dough was sticky with the recipe you linked, but that’s not a bad thing. Maybe your starter was more wet. I’ve had good results with both sticky and stuff dough. I wet my hands with cold water to handle the sticky dough.
Let us know how it comes along!
It came out good. I tried to post a photo, but none of my Lemmy apps will allow me to upload. I’m going to try doing it from the computer tomorrow.
It didn’t rise as much as I’d like, but I think I can just drop it in my Dutch oven and let it rise there for an hour or so before putting it in the oven.
The taste was great, and the crumb was nice. It’s much, much better than the last time I tried to do it.
