Here we go again. Having decided that I’m better at French bread than sourdough, decided to stick with the former. But a daughter with a sadistic streak – less smarts than her law degree suggests – gave me a Xmas present of three starters from South Africa, Russia and Saudi Arabia. I should have known better but decided to try to the South African both in the bread machine’s 4-hour basic cycle and another in the oven. The bread machine version rose well to a nice puffed-up height, then fell like a lead balloon before baking and emerged with the consistency of an adobe brick. Oven version comes next but here’s a picture of the first attempt.
Over fermented. Either find a shorter program or reduce the starter. Eventually you’ll hit the magic formula with tweaks here and there.
What is the 4 hour basic programme. Does the manual give a breakdown of the cycle? And what was your recipe? Perhaps we can come up with an idea just for the next trial/step.
Four-hour basic program in my machine is 30-60 min rest, 15-30 min knead, 1hr50min-2hr20min rise, 50 min bake. Don’t quite understand the time spread for various cycles given in the manual but assume it has to do with loaf sizes (small, large, xlarge) and crust (dark, medium, light).
I followed a bread machine recipe I’ve had some success with in the past — 225g of starter, 170g warm water, 360g flour, 2 tsp salt, 3tsb butter, 1tsb yeast. Only variant was I usd AP flour instead of bread flour, but I’ve interchanged the two frequently in making French bread and the end result always came out the same. This time with the South African starter, I set it for a large loaf with a dark crust. the rest, knead and rise cycle seemed to work well, a peek under the lid at 1hr 48min showed it rising nice and smooth and then at about 2:30 or 2:45 it collapsed just before the bake.
I do have a no-knead oven recipe for sourdough using virtually the same amounts and all the same ingedients except for the yeast which called for a 12-hour ovrnight rise before a one-hour bake. Didn’t get much rise with that one so don’t know if it was over-fermented, or under or whether it’s even worth baking.
That is a lot of starter + yeast. The first tweak that would be the obvious next step is the same recipe without the yeast. Might not be perfect but I’m sure will be the next step in the right direction. So feed you starter and get it nice and active then try it again without the yeast. How are you maintaining your starter?
I got the starter bubbling nicely in 5 or so days and have maintained at 1:2:2 starter, flour and water. The recipe called for one cup of starter and since starter weighs more than flour I translated that to mean 225g rather than 120g. I’ll try it without the yeast in the machine but also wonder why my oven loaf (which did not have any yeast in it) didn’t get much of a rise overnight.
I might add temperature in the house is a constant 72 Fahrenheit.
With that much starter to flour ratio i expect the bulk ferment to be more within the time frame of the bread machine cycle then all night which will be far too long and probably over fermented. 220g is about right for one cup starter at 100% hydration. Try the tweak and let me know. It won’t be worse and hopefully that bit better! We’ll make the necessary tweaks once we see how it turns out.
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Oven version a complete flop. No rise, bake came out with the consistency of a petrified dynosaur turd. Bread machine version came out better with starter decreased to 120g, flour increased to 400g. Without yeast, the four-hour basic cycle produced a nice rise but the amounts recommended for a 1-1/2 pound loaf produced a pygmy loaf of a little over a pound, minimizing the “large” setting and burning the sides and bottom of the “dark” crus setting without darkening the crust. Picture attached.
What is your machine and does it come with recipes? I thought you were just going to miss the yeast out without changing anything else!?
My machine is a Panasonic and it does not come with recipes for sourdough since it does not have a sourdough setting. However I have collected a whole slew of sourdough recipes for bread machines over the past year and the one I used was the same as I advised you of without the yeast added. Didn’t change anything else.
Which Panasonic? The aim was to slightly toggle the recipe till we hit the magic formula. Changing one thing at a time. For example the recipe of the first photo without the yeast. But then you switched to another recipe. The only way a recipe gets perfected is through small trial and errors. The recipe I have you came from a friend where it works for that particular machine at that particular setting for her starter. Just collecting sourdough recipes for machines isn’t necessarily going to work unless we troubleshoot making adjustments. Most machines are not made for sourdough in mind so we have to work around that.
I’ve been using the same recipe you gave me months ago which as I recall you said a friend provided. The oven bake I experimented with was a carbon copy of the first machine bake minus the yeast that you said over-fermented the loaf. When that flopped I tried another machine bake with a tweak, decreasing the amount of starter and increasing the amount of flour, again without adding any yeast. It came out OK as far as rise was concerned but the loaf was very small and the machine’s dark setting for the crust was not dark enough on top while slightly burning the sides and bottom. I’ll keep tweaking
What I had in mind is to take your best success so far, i.e the starter to flour ratio, and a recipe from the manual and converting it. This will give you a good result like you have had but with recipe amounts for a nice loaf.