r/Breadit • u/AutoModerator • 6d ago

Weekly /r/Breadit Questions thread

Please use this thread to ask whatever questions have come up while baking!

Beginner baking friends, please check out the sidebar resources to help get started, like FAQs and External Links

Please be clear and concise in your question, and don't be afraid to add pictures and video links to help illustrate the problem you're facing.

Since this thread is likely to fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts.

For a subreddit devoted to this type of discussion during the rest of the week, please check out r/ArtisanBread or r/Sourdough.

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

1

u/Acrobatic-Bus-9330 6d ago

when your starter doubles in 3 hours but your loaf still comes out looking like a hockey puck… is that a shaping problem or my oven just hates me?

1

u/foodieholly 6d ago

Your oven may be innocent 😂

A starter doubling in 3 hours means “healthy starter,” not automatically “properly fermented loaf.”If the bread is coming out as a puck, I’d look at bulk fermentation first, then shaping, then the oven. Dense/gummy inside with hardly any bubbles? Give the dough more fermentation. Loose, sticky, spreading everywhere with no oven spring? You may have gone too far. Nicely bubbly/fermented but collapses into a pancake as soon as you turn it out? Then shaping/gluten strength becomes more suspicious. Next time mark the starting height of the dough and watch what the dough itself does rather than relying on the starter test or a fixed number of hours. Also: post the crumb. The crumb is the crime scene 😂

1

u/Cantaffordrice 6d ago

Trying to isolate my problem. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I have made (4 times) the same 65% loaf. It's sticky. I'm talking 85%+ sticky.

I'm using KA bread flour, my usual yeast, same salt, store brand sugar. All of these ingredients are the same. However, I just moved into a new apartment. The water tastes a little hard, but I don't even know if that would affect the hydration.

If my scale was damaged in the move, then everything would be off.

It's just not adding up to me. The loaves bake okay. Gluten is developed. Crumb is about what I would (ignorantly) expect from a much higher hydration than 65%. There is just zero chance that I can shape it into anything other than a round loaf.

Thoughts?

1

u/enry_cami 4d ago

That's really strange. I'm leaning on the scale being off somehow. You could try weighing something with a known weight to check. For example 1 liter of water will weigh 1000 grams (I'm sure you can find conversions for other measures of volume if you don't use metric).

Water hardness should not have that much of a difference, if any. Maybe you got a different blend of flour? I'm not from the US so I don't have experience with King Arthur's flours, but maybe you accidentally got a different one than usual?

1

u/Cantaffordrice 4d ago

I'll see if I can find a known valued weight, soon.

I'm certain that it's the same bag of flour as I usually do. If they changed their process, I feel like we'd have heard about it by now.

I appreciate the input. Maybe I'll just research a new scale. Mine is it a bit old.

1

u/Cantaffordrice 4d ago

500 mils of water is weighing 497g. :/

1

u/Cantaffordrice 2d ago

Long story short: I'm an idiot that's been working too many hours. I'm adding olive oil at the very end of the knead for flavor and wasn't accounting for the additional hydration.

Took out 15% of the starting water and now we're back to where it should be.

1

u/vivalet 6d ago

Is King Arthurs flour at costco the same quality as on their web site?

1

u/Miaka_yukichan 3d ago

I'm not sure what I've done wrong, but tonight's batch of pandesal (filipino bread rolls) came out completely blackened on the bottom and pale/not golden on top. I used the same recipe/ingredients/oven two days ago and they came out lovely. What did I do wrong this time? 

It sucks. I actually hate baking but my mother in law found out I could make pandesal so this batch was meant to be her birthday gift from me. I need to get up extra early to bake a new batch, but first I would like to figure out what to change so it comez out right next time. Her birthday lunch is just over 12 hours from now.