Loaf 15 – Sourdough Failure

Posted on Feb 5, 2012 in loaves, starter

This weekend I tried to make sourdough bread with the home grown sourdough starter I made. It failed. The final dough never rose, so I suspect the mother starter had lost its power.

Step by Step

Following the directions in Reinhart’s “Artisan Breads Every Day,” on Saturday morning I took 2 oz. of my mother starter, combined it with 8 oz. of flour and 5 oz. of water to make my starter for this batch of bread. I let it rise at room temperature until “nearly doubled,” which took about 9 1/2 hours – a bit longer than predicted, but our kitchen is cool. I then combined the new starter with more flour (20 oz.), water (14 oz.), and salt (2 1/2 tsp.). I added another 6 tbsp. of flour during the mixing process to get the dough to firm up. It was still a little wetter than I think it should have been, but I did’t want to add much more flour to it (mistake?). After a long series of kneading, resting and folding, it rose at room temperature for another two hours before retiring to the fridge for the night. The directions said it wouldn’t rise much but would show signs of growth – it didn’t really move at all.

The next morning I took the dough out of the fridge and let it sit for two hours before shaping and letting it rise for another two hours. During this time the dough only changed marginally – it was clear there wasn’t going to be a rise.

I baked the loaves anyway to see what would happen and to test the taste to see if there was any sour to the sourdough. The baguettes had a bit of oven pop to them, though I didn’t steam properly so they didn’t develop a dark brown crust.

After a short tasting session the loaves headed to the compost bin – maybe in a few hundred years parts of them will work their way into another loaf of bread somewhere.

The flavor was uninteresting, though there was a slight sour tang in the aftertaste. The texture was thick and doughy, as you’d expect from an unrisen loaf.

Lessons

• I need to research reasons why the starter didn’t work. I suspect the mother starter was tired.
• I don’t know if not adding additional flour to stiffen up the dough would have made a difference. I’m guessing that in this case it was moot since the yeast never came alive.
• Scoring makes a huge difference. I didn’t score the baguettes before putting them in the oven because I wasn’t expecting them to do anything. Once I saw them starting to pop after only a few minutes I quickly scored them in the oven. The scores definitely directed the rise to their locations.
• Steaming – I didn’t include a water pan during preheating in the over that had the baguettes in it. I added a pan when I put the bread in the oven, so the water just slowly boiled off rather than creating a burst of stream. The crusts were pale.

I refreshed the mother starter afterwards to see if that will bring it back to life.