Melissa,
Thank you! For my next loaf, I’ll try the recipe once again, but I’ll work on my starter beforehand.
Do you think keeping an active whole-wheat starter is more difficult than maintaining an active starter made from all-purpose flour?
Not more difficult - I recently did that for the einkorn project and it was fine.
Whole grain may peak sooner, and thus get hungry faster, and it can have a more sour character i think…
Someone please correct me or add info if you’ve got any 
Melissa,
I’ll use the whole-wheat starter, then.
If my starter contains more active cultures next time, would that make the dough tighter? The loose dough made handling difficult.
The stretching and folding – gluten development interventions – can improve the dough feel in my experience.
Also, using slightly less water.
If possible change only one variable for the next bake, rather than both so you know which one made (or didn’t make) a difference.
Underproofed dough doesn’t feel loose in my experience, so I don’t think a stronger starter will help with the loose feeling.
Melissa,
After reading your note, I changed how I fed my starter. I believe I had become careless in that I added only 50 grams or so of flour and 50 grams of water to about a cup and a half of deflated starter. So I lessened the amount of starter I kept when adding that amount of flour and water—down to maybe a half to three-quarters cup. I figured that would make my starter stronger. It had holes that spread apart when I spooned some out—as it had before—but the smell seemed stronger. So I thought I was right, and I kept feeding the starter that way for several days.
Yesterday, I started my third attempt at this bread. I followed the same procedure, and everything seemed the same as before. Unfortunately, what also seemed the same was that the dough did not rise after eleven hours in the refrigerator. I pulled it out this morning and left it at room temperature; after more than three hours, it still hasn’t risen. I will continue to leave it out.
The dough seems too wet to be able to put on a cutting board under a bowl, although I haven’t taken it out of the container yet. I don’t understand. If someone uses the same proportion of flour and water and gets a workable dough, how come I can’t? Could the King Arthur flour absorb less water than Breadtopia flour?
If my dough takes the same amount of time to rise as it did during my last attempt at this bread, would you suggest something else I could do differently? Thank you!
Try feeding your starter the same weight flour and water as starter, so use 50g starter (<1/4 cup) for 50 water and 50 flour.
My second advice is leave your dough at room temperature for 3+ hours before refrigerating it. By refrigerating it immediately, you’re not letting the fermentation get jump-started, and the whole process is going to require significantly more time. Or simply don’t refrigerate it all and see how long it takes.
Do you mean not the same weight combined but two-to-one flour-water combined to starter? I was shooting for 100g starter to 100g flour-water.
I understand about how leaving the dough out could help. Would that be because my starter still isn’t strong enough, or would that be helpful for the recipe in general?
1:1:1 or 1:2:2 are common feeding ratios to build the leaven/starter to use in a bread
The colder the dough is, the less activity. At 37 degrees Fahrenheit I believe things are close to shut down. I’ve put dough in the fridge right after mixing for 4 days and seen it be relatively dormant the whole time, and still had to bring it up to room temperature for many hours on that fourth day before it was ready to shape.
this mostly talks about fermentation at the higher temps but it gives you a general idea of the curve
https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/a-few-tips-on-dough-temperature/
I should note, though, that I rarely take my dough temperature. I pop it in and out of the fridge as needed to slow or speed things up and I look at it and not the clock. That flexibility is the joy of being a home baker – I’m not running a bakery that demands a hundred loaves at opening time.
On your next batch, try doing three rounds of stretching and folding in the first three hours after mixing at room temp as I suggested in the recipe.
This batch should be fine too. You can do some stretching and folding now with wet fingertips or a dough scraper. This will build dough strength and it sounds like you’re still early in the fermentation process.
Flour absorbtion can indeed be different, so you should always add water with caution – but when you build dough strength, a wetter dough feels more manageable.
Yes, I did stretch and fold three times as suggested for this batch, at 0.5, 1.5, and 2.5 hours after mixing. The stretches and folds were in the bowl, eight times per round with a 90-degree bowl turn after each. Should I stretch and fold again? Could my Rubaud mixing or stretch and folds not have been adequate?
I did not stretch and fold again because I figured your suggestion was because you assumed I had skipped that step.
This morning I baked the bread; scoring the top of the loaf did nothing, as before, because the dough was too loose. I did not even attempt to shape it. The result was different—the crumb was more open than last time in that the bread had more holes, though less large ones. But the bread was gummy like before.
As far as adding water cautiously, the dough did not feel too wet when I first mixed it with the dough whisk, nor when I used the Rubaud method of mixing. Only when I stretched and folded did the dough seem too loose. I wet my fingers continually during the process because the dough had been sticking to the bowl. That wouldn’t add an appreciable amount of water to the dough, would it? I had mixed water with starter before adding flour to the mixture. So I wasn’t adding water. Should I instead withhold some water to possibly add later?
Shall I assume that my Rubaud mixing or stretch and folds are inadequate?
I’m guessing the main issue is how much water you’re adding on your fingers during stretching and folding…since you say the dough doesn’t start out feeling overly wet.
See if you can use less water on your hands, and just have doughy fingers.
Also, yes, it is fine to not dissolve your starter in the water before adding it to the flour.
Finally your flour could be a little less absorbent than mine. Especially when I mill the wheat berries, the resulting flour is thirsty.
The more you handle dough, though, the more comfortable you will be with wet feeling dough, and that is also possibly part of the situation here.
Dial back the water and possibly start with half or a quarter of the flour being bread flour or all-purpose, so that you get a handle on the fermentation and shaping, before you jump into the more tricky all whole grain.
I’ve been very busy with a project over the past couple weeks until today, so I haven’t been able to respond until now.
I think you were right about my King Arthur flour not being as absorbent as the flour listed here. For two successive loaves, I cut back on the water to 460 grams and used 300 g. red whole-wheat flour, 150 g. white whole-wheat flour, and 100 g. bread flour. The results were good. I’ll continue to tinker with the recipe, and I’ll buy Breadtopia flour to see how a loaf made from that turns out.
Thank you for your help!
I’m so glad you’re getting good results!
I should have said that even the good results required longer bulk fermentation than suggested.
I tried this recipe again today and had problems, but the bread surprisingly turned out okay. I stretched-and-folded last night as before, with no problem. Then I left the dough out instead of refrigerating it; I waited for it to rise. Three hours later, it didn’t (with my kitchen in the upper 70s), and I was too tired to stay up any longer. So I checked the dough in the morning; it had risen quite a bit twelve hours after the last fold. Then I started shaping, which was an adventure because the dough was oozing all over, even though I used 460 g. water instead of the 510 g. I figured the bulk fermentation was too long.
I proofed for about an hour. When I transferred the dough to my dutch oven, it caught on the proofing basket, resulting in a glop on top.
I baked as usual. The finished loaf did not burst open at the scoring—even my failures had—plus the loaf didn’t rise that much.
So I suspected the bread would be gummy. But I just cut it open and tried a slice. If it is gummy, the bread is only slightly so. The crust crisped well, the taste is wonderfully sour, and the crumb came out fairly open.
So I’m confused. If the bulk fermentation was too long and resulted in runny dough, why did it turn out as well as it did, especially considering that the bloom was nonexistent? Also, I assumed that retarding would result in the sour taste because of acid buildup. Although I didn’t retard at all, the taste was more sour than when I did. Do you have a guess about why that is?
Maybe I should have retarded the dough before I turned in last night and then set the dough out several hours in the morning before resuming the procedure. I’ll try that in my next similar circumstance.
Thank you for your suggestions!
Sounds like you are making good observations and learning, and this loaf might not have been your ideal, but much closer than previous ones
Possibly you overproofed it a bit during the bulk fermentation. That could explain manageability issues, lack of bloom, sourness and pretty good crumb.
Had you retarded the dough overnight, I would only caution you that the room temp fermentation time the next day could be longer than you expect. You’ll get a sense of how long the more you bake. I find if I retard when the dough is barely developed, then the dough needs a lot of time to warm up and continue to grow when i take it out of the refrigerator the next day.
Another option for when you feel your dough is overproofed already is to make the final proof only 30 minutes, or 1 hour in the refrigerator (reduces sticking).
I have not tried this recipe yet but plan to. One thing I noticed is the comment you made regarding Breadtopias whole wheat having higher protein content. I have experimented 2x now using Turkey Red whole wheat and sifted with a 40 & 50 mesh screen then adding Vital Wheat Gluten on a recipe on Breadwerx where it is a stiff dough and getting an open crumb. I have failed miserably on each bake and IT SEEMS from my notes it is the grain. One of the problems baking with the Heritage or Ancient grains is not knowing how each are going to react. And it seems very difficult to find this info. Anyways I am going to post my notes for comments in another post in recipes.
Dennis
Melissa,
I tried the recipe several times since my last post, and I believe that my main problem before was that wetting my fingers added too much water to the dough. I first cut back on that considerably and then worked on the doughs without wetting my fingers at all. I increased my water from 460 grams to 480 and then, last week, to the full 510. With that last attempt, the dough oozed a bit under the bowl. I decreased the bread flour and then eliminated it last week in favor of the measurements in the original recipe. I also recently switched the King Arthur red whole wheat flour to Breadtopia’s, so knowing for sure which variable counted the most is tricky, but I think it is wetting my fingers.
The recipe states to retard the dough right after the last round of stretching and folding. Should that instead be to leave the dough out at room temperature and to retard it only after it rises? That’s what I’ve been doing. When I proof the dough for 1.0 to 1.75 hours the next day, should I look for the dough to expand as a sign that the proofing is over? If not, will the dough give me any other sign?
My last attempt turned out well, though the crumb isn’t quite as open as was pictured in the recipe, the bread might have been slightly gummy, and the crust wasn’t as crisp as it had been before. After stretching and folding, I had left the dough out for 3.25 hours in my 85-degree kitchen, retarded it for 9.0 hours, left it out a couple hours, proofed it for about an hour, and baked it as usual. Should I have done anything differently? Thanks!
I’m glad you’ve gotten to the bottom of the wet dough mystery. As for timing of everything, absolutely look at your dough and not the recipe or clock. I might even suggest doing everything at room temperature once to get a sense of rise/expansion and subsequent results, without the confusing element of cold compressing gas.
Thank you! With regard to proofing, when I examine the dough after an hour or so, what sort of sign will the dough give me?