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Spent 4 hours on a sourdough loaf last Sunday and it came out like a hockey puck
I've been baking bread for about 3 years now and usually my sourdough turns out decent. But last weekend I followed my same exact routine, fed the starter, did the folds, the whole 9 yards. After 4 hours of waiting around my kitchen it came out flat and dense as a brick. I'm wondering if anyone else has had a loaf just randomly fail for no obvious reason? What did you figure out was the problem?
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margaret_taylor421mo ago
My starter went through a weird phase last winter where it looked bubbly and doubled but was actually weak. I started doing a float test before mixing my dough a tiny pinch of starter in water, if it floats you're good. That saved me from a few hockey pucks. Also check your flour temperature, I had a bag of whole wheat that was way too old and the gluten just gave up. Another thing that helped me was switching to weighing my water instead of measuring cups, I was using way too much hydration without realizing it. Your mileage may vary but those three things fixed my random dense loaf problem.
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ben_nguyen1mo ago
Wait how old is too old for whole wheat flour?
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sagew501mo ago
...that whole wheat thing is a real trap because people think flour is just flour, you know? @ben_nguyen I've noticed the same thing with a lot of pantry staples actually, like spices or even coffee beans... they look fine but the magic is gone. Whole wheat goes bad faster than white flour because the oils in the germ go rancid, and your taste buds might not catch it at first but your dough will totally know the difference. I started writing dates on my bags with a sharpie after I ruined a batch of bread with some six-month-old whole wheat that smelled totally normal but acted dead. It's wild how something so simple can mess up a whole batch, makes you wonder what else we're using past its prime without realizing it.
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