I am new to sourdough and all my breads have more or less turn out like this, despite different bulk time. My starter is from 13th of march, and has been in the fridge two times for a couple of days. I am never feeding 1:1:1, and always 5-10 gr less water than flour. I feed organic wheat flour and approx 5-10 gr rye flour depending on feed ratio.
Recipe
100 gr sourdough
350 gr water
500 gr Manitoba flour (12,5 gr protein - has also tried with 14 gr)
13 gr salt
Mix sourdough and water. Add flour. Rest 45 min.
Add salt. Mix by hand approx 5 minutes.
20 min rest. Stretch and fold.
20 min rest. Stretch and fold.
20 min rest. Coli fold.
20 min rest. Coli fold.
The dough looks beautiful with bubbles and clean/shiny on top. Holds shape fine when doing the folds.
I added the sourdough at 7.30 (morning) and shaped at 13.45. I did one final shape. Dough was not sticky and fell out of the container by itself. Fridge 3-4 hours. When I started the dough, the temperature was around 24.5 degrees, during bulk it was 23.5-24, the last 1 hour around 25 degrees.
Preheat oven 350+ degrees for 30 min. When I score, I see no structure. Insert bread and add water to create steam. Turn down oven to 200. Bake 20 min. Remove water. Turn oven to 230-240 degrees. Bake 20 min. I gave 10 min more at 200 degrees. I took the temp and it was around 96 degrees. I bake without Dutch oven.
To me the crumb looks underfermented, but the temperature and time tells me it must be over…
There is no way this can be extremely underfermented.
But I have tried the same recipe (except 150 gr sourdough) with 2 hours bulk after last fold where it was on my radiator, and I got exact same crumb.
This bread has more gummy stripes than my previous and is probably a bit underbaked, but this cannot explain the crumb and no oven spring. The big hole is probably shaping technique.
Edit: I find it hard to determine the rising percentage because it holds shape for some time after the last fold, so it is false high. But I am trying to target 50%