Partial Success - Sourdough Bread

Since winter has set in pretty good and I’m rehabbing a hip replacement I thought I would occupy my time with learning how to make bread. My first immersion steps were with baguettes and that turned out acceptable enough for me to move onto to sourdough breads. I’ve got the making starter down pretty well but still learning more on feeding cycles of the starter. After a couple of weeks messing around with starters I decided to make 2 sourdough boules. Everything at the start went well but I knew after the first rise I might be in trouble. With that in mind I continued on to the final proofing stage. That stage clinched my suspicions that not all was well. At that point I turned to salvage value for the dough and made a couple of thin pizzas. Also have found that all the excess starter on feedings is useful in making crackers. So not all is lost. I’m reloading at the moment and getting the sourdough starter staged for another attempt. I know my problem lies in the first step of mixing hydrated dough with sourdough starter and getting it relatively smooth and retaining the hydration and high yeast activity. I must admit that it’s fun to try and figure all of this out. Had no idea that different flours have different hydration % levels and that it requires a bit of experimentation…

Excess can also be frozen for later use. If your starter or other dough develops some dry-flour clumps, the best way to disperse and hydrate them is to stick in kitchen shears and slice them apart. Then their bits can mix better into the rest of the batch, with much less effort than otherwise.

Feel better soon.

Isn’t partial success in making bread also known as Matzah?

A lot of us here follow this method. Sourdough is not the easiest bread to start out with! Good luck!

Can you explain a bit more? I use the Tartine Bread recipe (with some modifications) and have reliable results. To me, there are several keys. First is getting your starter very active and using it at or near peak activity. I learned this by trial and error, but for the most part, I now know that I feed my starter at night and let it work it’s magic overnight and make the dough in the AM. Second, I drop a bit of active starter in room temperature water. If that drop of starter floats, I should be good. If it sinks and stays sunk…no bueno.

I also have a proofing function on my oven, so its nice to have a reliable, steady environment for the first rise to occur while turning the dough.

I mix a large dollop of starter in water, whereby the resultant slurry is the vehicle to ensure that all the subsequently added dry flour is inoculated evenly with yeast.
Consider keeping your starter in the refrigerator, so that it does not get overly active and thereby weaken between feedings. It can then re-awaken powerfully when added to room-temperature water.

But ignore me. I know only noodles…even that, not so well. [bleh.gif]

Thank you very much for the replies. The guidance I have been following is from a few sources including: Artisan Sourdough Made Simple by Emilie Raffa, Local Breads by Daniel Leader, and online recipes & videos by King Arthur Baking. One thing I am noticing is that the unbleached King Arthur All Purpose Flour that I use for feeding is variable in the activity it produces even though it is suggested for feeding. There is activity but not nearly as much if I use whole wheat flour or whole pumpernickel flour. In a couple of the daily feedings I was getting hooch and not much rise. I do measure my ingredients by weight. On my first bread batch I did make the rookie error by not doing the float test. I’m staging to try again but right now my starter had not rising much since last feeding but it is bubbly and does have a small amount of hooch. My inclination is to ditch the KA All Purpose Flour for feeding and use the King Arthur Whole Wheat to get a robustly active starter and use near peak and run the float test. BTW the smell of my starters is nice and fruity with no off smells and colors. Thank you again for the suggestions and video. I’ll let you know when success hits my kitchen.

Eventually, you can keep feeding and using the starter by pure feel, look, and smell. I never use recipes or measuring tools when cooking, because the home environment and personal tastes can drive most of any success.

I feed my starter the same flour mix I use for the bread I’m making. I start with 150g of starter taken from the fridge
(placed into fridge after it had tripled in size at room temp)
I’d say my average time in the fridge is 6 days.

The day before I plan on baking my loaf I take the starter out of the fridge and remove 50g from the starter and place it into a jar
I then add 50g water room temp or a bit warm, and 50g of my pre-mixed flour (1/2 KABF, 1/2 KAWW)
I mix up the new starter and place a rubber band around the jar at the level of the starter.
This helps me judge the rise of the new starter. It now sits till it triples in size.

The original starter now weighing 100g goes back into the fridge,
I’ll make a second loaf with 50g in a couple of days and restart the remaining 50g for the next couple of loaves.
This way there is no leftover starter.


As a backup I used the KA method to dry a batch of starter on parchment and then placed the “chips” into a clean jar that is stored in the cabinet.

Yes, one continuous circle. Excess starter becomes dough for baking. Excess dough becomes starter for leavening.

I just tried my first sourdough ever and the recipe I used was far more simple. My first ended badly in that the
boule over-baked and burned, but that seemed to have been due to an unreliable oven, rack placement and bake timing. The inside was pretty decent. Once I get the baking part figured out I’ll get into figuring out starter.

Here’s the recipe for comment. I used Platinum brand sourdough dry yeast which was listed as a viable alternative.
Thank you to my friend Jon Phillips of Inspiration Vineyards in Santa Rosa.

Aside from sourdough, if you want to branch out to other breads, I always recommend Beard on Bread by James Beard. An amazing array of breads … and great guidance. Many years ago, I baked all of our family’s breads - usually 5 or 6 varieties per week including croissants and English Muffins. Beard was my bible.

Gary, I use KA AP flour for my starter. Works great. If your starter only rises slightly but bubbles and has hooch on top, I’d do the following:

1 Pour off as much of the watery hooch as possible.
2. Feed with KA AP.
3. Leave overnight uncovered on the counter at room temp.
4. 99% of the time, a dried crust will form and the strength of this crust will inhibit the starter from continuing to grow. Pop off the crust and discard it thus allowing the rest of the starter that is still active to continue to grow.

If that doesn’t work, pop off the crust and feed again. My gut feeling is your starter is a bit sleepy and/or the crusty top inhibits expansion.

That gray waste water which the yeast generates is a big inhibitor.

I’ve gone a couple of months where I didn’t make SD bread and the starter needed to have liquid poured off and the top layer of starter removed (turned dark) then, after a couple of feeding cycles it was back to it’s usual self.

We have frozen our starter for the winter, but expect it to return to life in the spring. My daughter found an SD focaccia recipe online and it was by far the best bread we had all last year, very rich in oil though.

Forgot to mention is that if you have significant excess the starter makes a nice savory pancake that my spouse calls “Korean” pancakes. I make the pancakes and she makes the sauce with teriyaki-mirin-sesame oil blend.

Well try number 2 got me closer to an acceptable sourdough boule. The final texture, crust, flavor were just right but the bread was not tall enough…yes it was slightly flattened. My gluten was really good but I was not getting a tight skin and final shape during the shaping process. I’m guessing that my dough was slightly too wet or I did not do enough in the lamination stage. Where do you think my error was?

A second proofing is where the loft builds.

My second try at this went much better than the first. Still used dry sourdough yeast but I’d like to make starter now. I’d appreciate info or links to the best way to make one. The bread I made last night is good but I’d like a more ‘sourdough-y’ flavor. Hopefully a starter would make a difference.