Help! I'm a newbie in this group but I love my sourdough starter!! I
have been having a real problem the last couple of months, though, and
it's making me nuts. The starter seems fine, it gets nice and bubbly
but the bread is really gross after baking. When I am kneading it, it
feels perfect to the touch--wonderfully elastic, ever-so-slightly tacky
when done. It rises nicely in the oven, but the top seems to separate
from the bottom. The crumb has a chewy, even leathery gross texture and
is very dense, except for the fact that it will always develop a row of
very large holes that are go straight through the bread from one end to
another. The holes occur in I would say the top third of the bread or
even on the very top, with just a cracker-thin, hard crust disguising
the holes. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've been working with
sourdough for about two years now. I tried using potato water to no
avail. I've read that you can add vinegar but am loathe to take what to
me seems a rather dramatic step of adding so much acid. Can anyone give
me any advice? Thanks so much!!

krtrfee

wrote:
It rises nicely in the oven, but the top seems to separate
> from the bottom.
>
> krtrfee


Ed Bechtel replies:

That phenomenon is common. You will find discussion on air pockets if
you google "flying crust" from the groups.google reader at:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.food.sourdough

Slashing the loaves solved my flying crust problem.

Also, Mr. Perry has a theory. It involves bread faeries.
That deserves its own groups.google search.

Ed Bechtel

> wrote in message . com...

> [ ... ]

> It rises nicely in the oven, but the top seems to separate
> from the bottom. The crumb has a chewy, even leathery gross texture and
> is very dense, except for the fact that it will always develop a row of
> very large holes that are go straight through the bread from one end to
> another. The holes occur in I would say the top third of the bread or
> even on the very top, with just a cracker-thin, hard crust disguising
> the holes...

A good search of rec.food.sourdough on <flying crust> brings up a
lot of discussion and speculation.

My latest theory is that, when the rise time is long (low yeast activity)
and/or the web structure is weak (porous), gas will diffuse out of the
web towards the top where it collects under the crust (assuming the
crust is tight). Some will say slashing is the remedy. I think that good
gluten development and a fast rise (well activated starter) is a better
one.

--
Dicky

Maybe you could try some buttermilk (instead of vinegar) and see if this
helps.

> wrote in message
. com...
> Help! I'm a newbie in this group but I love my sourdough starter!! I
> have been having a real problem the last couple of months, though, and
> it's making me nuts. The starter seems fine, it gets nice and bubbly but
> the bread is really gross after baking. When I am kneading it, it feels
> perfect to the touch--wonderfully elastic, ever-so-slightly tacky when
> done. It rises nicely in the oven, but the top seems to separate from the
> bottom. The crumb has a chewy, even leathery gross texture and is very
> dense, except for the fact that it will always develop a row of very large
> holes that are go straight through the bread from one end to another. The
> holes occur in I would say the top third of the bread or even on the very
> top, with just a cracker-thin, hard crust disguising the holes. I don't
> know what I'm doing wrong. I've been working with sourdough for about two
> years now. I tried using potato water to no avail. I've read that you
> can add vinegar but am loathe to take what to me seems a rather dramatic
> step of adding so much acid. Can anyone give me any advice? Thanks so
> much!!
>
> krtrfee

"Dick Adams" > wrote in message
newss76g.8547$ZL6.1706@trndny04...

Some will say slashing is the remedy. I think that good
gluten development and a fast rise (well activated starter) is a better
one.



I am agreeing with Dicky. (!)

h

Ed Bechtel wrote:
> Ed Bechtel replies:
>
> That phenomenon is common. You will find discussion on air pockets if
> you google "flying crust" from the groups.google reader at:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.food.sourdough
>
> Slashing the loaves solved my flying crust problem.
>
> Also, Mr. Perry has a theory. It involves bread faeries.
> That deserves its own groups.google search.
>
> Ed Bechtel
>
>

Thanks for the info. I'll try to bake another bread later this
afternoon. I always bake freestanding sourdough loaves. The info about
the large bubbles is helpful, but at the same time the crumb is I
wouldn't say gummy, but certainly leathery but edible, though
unenjoyable and unpalatable and also it is very dense. I looked at one
photo on the website showing an unslashed bread with a huge hole, but
the crumb that remained looked good. I consistantly slash my loaves, so
I don't think that can be a problem. I have tried making deeper
slashes, but then the bread rises in the oven so much that a wedge of
bread appears to have slipped of the rest of the loaf by the time it was
done!! My San Fransisco sourdough works better than the Carl's Starter.
Can it be that when I took the San Fran out of the fridge this morning I
found that the jar had been laying on its side and the hooch had all
spilled out? Maybe I have too much hooch on my Carl's Starter? Thanks
for all your help!!

krtrfee

wrote:

> I'll try to bake another bread later this afternoon...

> Can it be that when I took the San Fran out of the fridge this morning I
> found that the jar had been laying on its side and the hooch had all
> spilled out? Maybe I have too much hooch on my Carl's Starter? Thanks
> for all your help!!


I think the clues to the dense crumb and flyaway crust are found
above...

a) Retreiving the starter from the refrigerator in the morning and
baking in the afternoon.

b) hooch (been sitting a while)

Mike Avery has some great advice on starter maintenance he

http://www.sourdoughhome.com/tips.html

Good luck. The fix is easy.

Will

"Will" > wrote in message
ups.com...
>
> wrote:
>
> > I'll try to bake another bread later this afternoon...
>
> > Can it be that when I took the San Fran out of the fridge this morning I
> > found that the jar had been laying on its side and the hooch had all
> > spilled out? Maybe I have too much hooch on my Carl's Starter? Thanks
> > for all your help!!
>
>
> I think the clues to the dense crumb and flyaway crust are found
> above...
>
> a) Retreiving the starter from the refrigerator in the morning and
> baking in the afternoon.
>
> b) hooch (been sitting a while)
>
> Mike Avery has some great advice on starter maintenance he
>
> http://www.sourdoughhome.com/tips.html
>
> Good luck. The fix is easy.
>
> Will
>
if you really want to have an active and always ready starter, (and have no
life) do what i do: each day make bread. keep 1 tsp of starter and add
approx 1/2 c flour and enough water to make thick paste. put on counter
until next bake. repeat.

dan w

dan w wrote:

> if you really want to have an active and always ready starter, (and have no
> life) do what i do: each day make bread. keep 1 tsp of starter and add
> approx 1/2 c flour and enough water to make thick paste. put on counter
> until next bake. repeat.

Well no question that's active stuff... but without your scale, water
bath, thermopen, and pH analyser, what can you do with it? <bg>

Dan... I am taking a vacation from techno-baking (love that word). I
told my wife that was what I was. She said she knew, but it was OK.

Anyway... I am moving out of my comfortable, convenient gas oven. The
one with the adjustable racks, the thermostatic controls and so forth.
Going to try my hand at masonry. I lucked into a 600 pound refractory
cement beast called a Kamado.

Advice cheerfully solicited.

Will

"Will" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> Dan... I am taking a vacation from techno-baking (love that word). I
> told my wife that was what I was. She said she knew, but it was OK.
>


Will good luck with the oven, and your weaning off from "techno baking".
Your posts usually are quite helpful, but as of late you have been going all
NASA on us.

h

hutchndi wrote:

> Will good luck with the oven, and your weaning off from "techno baking".
> Your posts usually are quite helpful, but as of late you have been going all
> NASA on us.

Well Hutch, it's not like I'm turning over a dramatic new leaf or
anything. I am mostly looking to give up the "techno" oven: you know
the one that has a thermostat, cycles on and off as necessary, some
have fans (mine does not). I figured I might bypass the fire pit and
the mud+straw construction and move up to 9th or 10th century Korean
technology.

The thing that grabs me is, firing a 600 pound cement oven, is I will
need to expand my production quite a bit. 2 loaves no longer make
sense, given the time and fuel issues. I will have to make more dough
now. It's OK since I can scale everything up. But... I'll need more
baskets and I should build another couple of proof boxes. They're
cheap, easy and since I need to be able to drive a schedule... kind'a
necessary. Don't want to have dough ready and the oven cold, or vice
versa.

Anyway, I'm not sure this will be less technical. It certainly will
take more planning.

I understand your NASA comment though. I have been working through
chemistry issues over the last year and that is reflected in my posts
here. The microbes fascinate me... the temperatures they like, the
acids they produce. I will try to tone that down going forward. It's
not for everyone.

But I gotta tell you, this touchy-feely business that's being posted
makes me uncomfortable. Our ancestors weren't dilettantes. They
respected the craft.

On 5 May 2006 18:45:24 -0700, Will > wrote:
>
>
> But I gotta tell you, this touchy-feely business that's being posted
> makes me uncomfortable. Our ancestors weren't dilettantes. They
> respected the craft.


Despite having been on the "you gotta measure!" side of the last flame-war,
I think you are underestimating how sensitive your senses are.

When I've really screwed up in the bakery, and I have more often than I care
to remember, the main reason is because I ignored the feel of the bread and
the voice of my experience.

Someone posted a recipe here a while back for Borodinsky rye. Part of the
recipe was a statement along the lines of, "Don't even think about changing
the amount of flour in this recipe!" Right. It sucked rocks. And I knew
it would before I tried to bake it. The dough felt wrong. Way wrong. And
I ignored that. "Don't think about changing..." is a way of saying, "don't
think about what you're doing".

Our ancestors dealt with inconsistent wheat, a lack of understanding of what
raised the bread - Yeast wasn't discovered until Louis Pasteur came along
(1822 - 1895). Charles' references to bread faeries were taken a lot more
seriously before then. Others felt daemons were involved.

Despite the lack of understanding of what they were doing on a bio-chemical
level, despite a lack of standardized and consistent ingredients, the bakers
produced good, if not always consistent, bread. How do we know they made
good bread? Because bakers were part of a respected craft, if the product
wasn't good, they'd have gone hungry and been despised.

When I was a photography student, one of my favorite teachers commented that
craft and art have to balance. It's easy for a home baker to get carried
away by either extreme. Measure everything to the nearest .001 gram, use
pure cultures, and only this brand of flour.... or measure nothing, let
nature take its course. I think there is madness in either direction.

When I was in college, a friend taught me how to brew beer and wine. One of
his professors was a world class micro-biologist who was also an amateur
wine maker. He used none of his professional skills in brewing - and his
wine was awful! It kept getting contaminated, the acid balance was off, off
tastes ruled. Finally, my friend convinced his professor that, yes, a
knowledge of microbiology could help one make better wine. His prof started
using his professional skills and his wine got better. Better than my
buddies.

To me, balance involves care in ones work, measuring that which can be
meaningfully measured, taking notes, and paying attention to ones senses.

In the end, it is your senses that you are trying to please, so you should
pay as much attention to them as you make the bread as when you eat it.

Mike

<http://www.accessexcellence.org/AB/BC/Louis_Pasteur.html>

"Mike Avery" > wrote in message news:mailman.7.1146888622.64518.rec.food.sourdough @mail.otherwhen.com...
On 5 May 2006 18:45:24 -0700, Will > wrote:

But I gotta tell you, this touchy-feely business that's being posted
makes me uncomfortable. Our ancestors weren't dilettantes. They
respected the craft.

Despite having been on the "you gotta measure!" side of the last flame-war, I think you are underestimating how sensitive your senses are.

When I've really screwed up in the bakery, and I have more often than I care to remember, the main reason is because I ignored the feel of the bread and the voice of my experience.

Someone posted a recipe here a while back for Borodinsky rye. Part of the recipe was a statement along the lines of, "Don't even think about changing the amount of flour in this recipe!" Right. It sucked rocks. And I knew it would before I tried to bake it. The dough felt wrong. Way wrong. And I ignored that. "Don't think about changing..." is a way of saying, "don't think about what you're doing".

Our ancestors dealt with inconsistent wheat, a lack of understanding of what raised the bread - Yeast wasn't discovered until Louis Pasteur came along (1822 - 1895). Charles' references to bread faeries were taken a lot more seriously before then. Others felt daemons were involved.

Despite the lack of understanding of what they were doing on a bio-chemical level, despite a lack of standardized and consistent ingredients, the bakers produced good, if not always consistent, bread. How do we know they made good bread? Because bakers were part of a respected craft, if the product wasn't good, they'd have gone hungry and been despised.

When I was a photography student, one of my favorite teachers commented that craft and art have to balance. It's easy for a home baker to get carried away by either extreme. Measure everything to the nearest .001 gram, use pure cultures, and only this brand of flour.... or measure nothing, let nature take its course. I think there is madness in either direction.

When I was in college, a friend taught me how to brew beer and wine. One of his professors was a world class micro-biologist who was also an amateur wine maker. He used none of his professional skills in brewing - and his wine was awful! It kept getting contaminated, the acid balance was off, off tastes ruled. Finally, my friend convinced his professor that, yes, a knowledge of microbiology could help one make better wine. His prof started using his professional skills and his wine got better. Better than my buddies.

To me, balance involves care in ones work, measuring that which can be meaningfully measured, taking notes, and paying attention to ones senses.

In the end, it is your senses that you are trying to please, so you should pay as much attention to them as you make the bread as when you eat it.

Mike

in the spirit of the idea that we need to be sometimes a "techno-baker" and other times a "by feel-baker", i would like to offer another term: schizo-baker.

dan w

Will wrote:

>
>
> Well Hutch, it's not like I'm turning over a dramatic new leaf or
> anything. I am mostly looking to give up the "techno" oven: you know
> the one that has a thermostat, cycles on and off as necessary, some
> have fans (mine does not). I figured I might bypass the fire pit and
> the mud+straw construction and move up to 9th or 10th century Korean
> technology.
>
What is a 9th or 10th century Korean technology.?
I dig not know Koreans Bake.

Joe Umstead

Mike Avery wrote:

> To me, balance involves care in ones work, measuring that which can be
> meaningfully measured, taking notes, and paying attention to ones senses.

Good post and one that I agree with 100%. I like to smell the ferment,
and while that's very easy to discuss with my son as we work: "...smell
this. It's ripe." It's impossible to do in a use-net forum. So I stick
to numbers: hydration numbers, temperature numbers, etc... so one
inevitably gets into the "measure or not" situation. I should add here,
that we don't machine mix. It's all by hand... so touch is central to
evaluating where things are. But in my view, scaling and touch are
entirely complimentary approaches.

I never made that Borodinsky bread. But rye is damn tricky stuff <g>.
The borodinsky poster was interesting though, I have never saponified
flour either. Samartha's mentioned it. And I see that Peter Reinhart is
fooling around with it over in his blog as he works out the issues for
his upcoming sourdough book. So maybe there's something to it.

I'm about to go baffle that Kamado. The fire is at the bottom. I don't
want that line-of-sight connection with the bread's baking surface.

Will

Will wrote:


> Samartha's mentioned it.

Yes, I played with it a little - friends gave me samples from Russian
stores, translated the recipe, I made one, had it evaluated by Russian
colleagues; it needed some more work.... it's not my focus at this point
on the bread front, if I would have any;-)

I find the bread nice - once and a while - as a daily staple, I find it
too sweet. And they put this molasses stuff in.

Neither the products I got, nor the bread I made I would call "hearty"
or "interesting" - something with great crust outbursts or interesting
crumb structures. Taste - maybe, probably needed more sourness.

The scalding process is interesting and could be used for other rye
breads, without so much sweetness.

Samartha

Samartha Deva wrote:
> The scalding process is interesting and could be used for other rye
> breads, without so much sweetness.

In the book that is fully dedicated to the bread made with the above
"scalding" process is found an info that the method was already known
in Anscient Greece and Rome and one of the oldest and most known kind
of "scalded" bread is Vestfalien Pumpernikel made with scalded "shrot"
( is referred to W. (or V.) W(V)ernike "Baking Bread"