I was so excited for this recipe but my bread did not rise! I used a very active starter, but nada! Where did I go wrong!? I did use whole wheat instead of red fife, but I wouldn’t think that would totally alter it rising!
I will have to go back and see if I understand the math.
Used regular flour and whole wheat flour and Guinness. .
Did my Autolyse. Added ingredients. Stretched and folded. It was really wet. 1:00 PM
Throughout the afternoon I folded the dough about every hour. Put in frig around 8:00 PM because I was running out of time. Removed at 7:00 AM still very moist and runny.
At 1:00 PM still runny and not sure if it ever rose. It was too runny to put on counter to shape. It went right into my parchment lined bowl to prove. Hot pot ready, dropped in the parchment and dough. Still to runny to score. With all that moisture I was betting on the oven spring.
Well it came out great. I have to conclude that this recipe is almost bullet proof.
Enjoying it here on mother’s day. Cheers! Phil
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I just made my first sourdough starter and chose this recipe to make my first sourdough bread. It turned out beautiful and had great flavor and I’m so happy with my first try. That said, my loaf was a little undercooked/gummy, and the bottom was a little burnt. I’m thinking the slightly burnt bottom was due to my oven (it’s a double oven, each has less space than a typical oven, and so the baking vessel has to be pretty close to the bottom). The undercooked aspect…the only idea I have is that I didn’t have Red Fife so substituted with regular whole wheat flour. Is it possible that using whole wheat doesn’t absorb as much water and makes the dough too wet? I read in all the comments how the dough is very wet was so I wasn’t concerned when mine was, but maybe I need to adjust and add more flour. Or was it over proofed? Either way, I’m happy with my first loaf and look forward to trying again.
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Proofing there looks spot on.
Definitely different flours have different responses to water and you often have to adjust on the fly. But looking at the crumb of your bread, I’d say you nailed it pretty well perfectly.
How long after it came out of the oven did you wait before you cut into it?
You can often mitigate burnt bottoms by putting an empty baking sheet on a rack in your oven beneath the one your vessel is on - if you have space for that in your double oven.
Thanks for the response Paul. I will definitely use the baking sheet beneath next time - great tip! I waited about 90 minutes before cutting this loaf.
90 minutes is probably the minimum - probably better to wait a couple hours if you can, but I’d guess that 90 minutes should be past the gumminess stage, so maybe add another 5 - 10 minutes of baking time at the lower, uncovered temperature.
Sounds easy enough. I will try again with these modifications and check back in. Thank you for the helpful info!
Here is my 100% Guiness (i.e., no water added except through the starter) sourdough with about 40% whole wheat (mostly red fife). It was about 77% hydration and I don’t have exact flour amounts as I ran out of bread flour and was adding extra red fife as well as a bit of A/P flour.
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Now that is my idea of a fantastic crumb. The guinness must bring fantastic malty flavour too. What a lovely bake.
Can anyone recommend a spelt-based dunkel beer, aka dinkel dunkel? Spelt is dinkel in German. I want to make sourdough beer bread using spelt flour and a spelt dunkel – in other words, dinkel dunkel dinkel.
Obviously this is for partly silly reasons – I like the name – but then again I love beer and I love spelt, too.
–Susan
Love it 
I hope someone comes forward with a dinkel dunkel recommendation for your dinkel dunkel dinkel brot.
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Been doing some google searches but all I’ve found are recipes and grains for home brewed spelt beers/lagers. Perhaps you should try brewing some yourself 
However did find one commercial spelt beer that seems to be the only 100% spelt beer available.
How about the Arrogant Bastard recipe for a cheeky bake?
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So excited to find this recipe and forum. Yes Im a very excited newby quarantine sourdough maker. Got starter from a friend, made 2 batches with the Tartine method, turned out great but I ran across this Beer recipe in all my you-tubing and such. I used a Scottish Ale, although my husband didnt like me using a “good” beer for making bread. After the autolyse process the dough was a little looser then Im use to so I added more wheat flour and more starter after reading other recommendations. Im thinking it turned out pretty darn good and will look forward to experimenting with other recipes on this site,
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Ok…so I needed something I thought would be simple to dip my toes in this, and I am feel like I can follow directions pretty well.
Overall, it is edible, but I may have baked it too long (really dark on the bottom, really thick chewy crust.) I grabbed a Pale Ale that no one was going to drink, and that flavor really did a number on the taste here. My dough was a pretty soggy mess (it did more than double in size on the long rise though.) The crumb is moist, but it did not rise much in the oven.
I will try again, definitely with a different beer, and try to make it not so soggy. Other than ordering, I don’t know how to get all the fancy flour locally (I combined King Arthur white, white whole wheat, and some soft Korean bread flour.)
Following directions accurately with sourdough baking often doesn’t yield good results.
I think your crumb looks great. For more height, I bet using a little less liquid will make shaping easier. You’ll get more tension and spring.
Keeping the lid on longer can make for a softer crust, and throwing a baking sheet under your dutch oven halfway through the bake should resolve the burnt bottom (if that doesn’t work, also put aluminum foil and parchment between the dough and the cast iron when you load the dough).
Flour types do impact outcomes, whether from protein/gluten levels or thirstiness. But if you stick with what you have for a while, you will get to know how it works – its hydration needs and bounce/stretch.
In case you’re curious, here’s a blog post on shaping dough https://breadtopia.com/how-to-shape-dough/ and another on gluten development https://breadtopia.com/gluten-development-for-artisan-bread/ Both with a lot of videos.
I did watch all the shaping videos…they were pretty cool. My dough was a bit loose to do much with this time. I am not giving up…but in SoCal its a bit warm to bake much right now. So I am going to do some testing once a week or so. I will watch the gluten development one next. Thank you so much for your feedback.
