Maybe some of you will understand when I say: “Sourdough bread making can be fun, even when you mess up.” Yep, that’s what I did. I messed up and it ended up in my producing a not so good-looking loaf of bread. But, if it weren’t for that mess up, I wouldn’t have learned how to develop a skill I call Sourdough Troubleshooting. And, let me tell you, Sourdough Troubleshooting is just what every practical man or woman needs to learn to make a good loaf of crusty bread.
Hi! Old Fuzz Face here! – Today, I’m going to give you two examples of how I solved sourdough problems using practical “Sourdough Troubleshooting.” But first, I must let you know that it was actually Mr. Monte, our SFH Test Kitchen Quality Control Expert, who taught me how to employ these troubleshooting techniques.
So, without further ado, let’s jump right into Problem #1 – Sticky Dough & A Flat Loaf.
Problem #1 – Sticky Dough & A Flat Loaf
The problem with Sticky Dough and A Flat Loaf first appeared when I attempted to make a loaf that was half all-purpose flour and half home-milled hard white wheat. I followed my basic recipe to the “T”. I used 1½ cups of King Arthur All-Purpose flour.
The King Arthur website gives the weight of its all-purpose flour as 120 grams per cup. So, 1½ cups of all-purpose flour would be 180 grams. Using that statement, I milled 180 grams of hard white wheat to give me the second 1½ cups of flour to make a total of 3 cups.
That’s when Mr. Monte started voicing his disapproval in his straightforward unmerciful way. – He knew things were going wrong. In fact, he even published a highly critical YouTube short showing how wrong it was for me not to listen to him. (See: Fuzzy! You messed up again!)
In essence, he was correct. There was too much water for the amount of flour I used.
Sourdough Troubleshooting by Guesstimate
I weighed a cup of my all-purpose flour. It was 145 grams, that is 25 grams more than the expected 120 grams. That means thall all my loaves before this were roughly 436 grams, 76 grams more than the 360 grams I thought I had been using.
– Simply put, when I used only 360 grams for this loaf, I had too much water. Of course, my dough would be wet and sticky, and my loaf would spread out and be flat.
When I made my next loaf. I compensated by adding equal amounts of flour by weight. That is 218 grams of all-purpose flour and 218 grams of hard white wheat. For the remainder of the ingredients, I used the same amount in the second loaf as I did in the first.
This time, the dough was not sticky, and it rose much better. – Take a look at the two loaves side-by-side.
The problem with this method of troubleshooting is, I was merely experimenting based on guesstimates. There was no supporting math or science for my conclusions.
Problem #2 – Recipe Fails to Fit the Standard Percentage
Problem #1 naturally led me to question why all my loaves using 100% all-purpose flour came out perfectly. If I had been using roughly 436 grams of flour, instead of the 360 grams that King Arthur cup to grams conversion would indicate. To troubleshoot this problem, I had to hit the books.
Baker’s Math for Sourdough Troubleshooting
It took a while, but I discovered a whole new world (at least for me) of baking wisdom.
That new world was Baker’s Math. – This is where I learned how to troubleshoot using supporting math, science, and centuries of bakers’ observations and experiences.
Rather than bore you with details, let me get to the point. Bakers can work out formulas for baking any quantity of bread by using a common measure of weight. The amount of water, salt, and yeast or sourdough starter is a standard percentage of the weight of the flour. No matter what the weight of flour, it is always considered to be 100%.
In the case of sourdough bread the standard percentages look like this:
Of course, the percentages are approximations. With the exception of the flour which is always 100%, the weight of the remaining ingredients can be varied by several percentage points higher or lower. Nevertheless, the percentages shown will normally give you a very good loaf of sourdough bread.
Sourdough Troubleshooting Finds the Problem
After learning about the standard percentage, I then examined my basic sourdough bread recipe and realized there was a problem. – In this graph the gold bars represent the standard percentage. The orange bars represent the percentage of ingredients in my recipe. – As you can see, the water, starter, and salt percentages were all higher than the standard, especially the water.
The fact my regular loaves were turning out looking good was because of a fluke. I was unknowingly using more flour by weight than the recipe specified. That fact, unknown to me, compensated for the excess water in the recipe.
Lesson Learned & an Experiment to Prove It
So, as an experiment, I used 432 grams (that is 3 cups using my measuring cup) of King Arthur flour to make a loaf of bread. Instead of using my regular recipe, I computed and used the standard percentages for the remaining ingredients. – The results were amazing. – Look at this loaf of bread.
Now, there’s much more to this story. If you’d like to find out the rest of the story, check out our YouTube video. And, if you’ve learned a little something new and you like what you see, please subscribe to our blog and to our YouTube channel.
Until next time, keep it simple, keep it practical, and happy baking!!
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