Hi there, I recently moved from the US back to Germany. I’ve been baking simple no-knead sourdough bread for years without issues (recipe has mostly white bread flour, 78% hydration when including the levain in the calculation, I bake it in a cast iron pan). Now I am trying to make the same recipe, I am using 1050 flour, which is the “strongest” flour in Germany, with 13 to 14.5% gluten. But I could tell that the dough was more slack than usual during bulk fermentation/stretch and folds. And sure enough, I am looking at a very sad loaf that spread rather than rose and that even dipped a little in the middle.
(As a side note: I noticed the same the other day when making a 100% dark rye sourdough - even though I cut the water by 20g, the resulting dough was much softer than it used to be when I made it in the US.)
What is the solution to this problem? Do I have to bake lower hydration loaves? Do I have to stretch and fold more for the same level of hydration? And what about the flour determines this behavior (given that I am using a high gluten flour)?
Would really appreciate any thoughts. Thanks!
The only thing I can think of is go as low hydration as the flour needs. Autolyse at a hydration that is a bit too low for the final dough then, when making the final dough, add water little by little and stop when it feels right. Make a note of how much water you’ve added and you’ll get an idea of the best hydration for that flour.
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I just learned that indeed, German flour is weaker, even at comparable protein levels. Not sure whether it’s the varieties or the growing conditions or both. Fascinating. Guess that means I’ll have to adapt all my recipes.
A YouTube guy called The Bread Code (he happens to be German) has video on testing new flours for hydration. You might want to take a look!
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